Then questioned the elder, “And thou my daughter, a woman, wilt not also leave me? It’s a woman’s heart that pitifully questions.”
“I’ll never forsake my mother!”
“And never leave?”
“Except, only as God commissions!”
“Oh, say that thou wilt never leave me in life! I said this in cruel pains for thee, Miriamne. Miriamne, daughter, here by the couch in which thou wert born, I plead.” So saying the mother dropped on one knee, flung one arm over the bed by her side, and stretched out the other toward her daughter.
The maiden was profoundly moved, her loving heart seemed to be swelling within her, all her emotional nature ready to exclaim, “I’ll tarry,” but again her royal sentence: “Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?” controlled.
“Loved mother, I am not my own. God has bought me, and in His dear love I go. The story of sorrow I’ve just heard confirms me in my purpose. I’m called, I know, to work out a new and brighter day for mother and father!”
Rizpah was both pained and chagrined, and burying her face in her pepulum moaned, “God, pity me!”
“He does, I know, and sends a daughter to bear thee proof, my mother.”