“Oh, dinna say that!” said Isabell, with appealing eyes. They all fought over this patient, unresisting creature. To all of them it was a secondary matter--to her it was life and death. In the pause that ensued she was driven almost to despair. All that her imagination could conceive she had already done. She had told her tale, she had opened her heart, she had thrown herself upon their sympathy, she had appealed to them by every argument in her power. The only thing yet remaining to her she did now. With a sudden movement, which was almost too much for her weakness, she lifted the infant by her side, and thrust it, without any warning, into Marjory’s arms. Partly it was a simple artifice to prevent the possibility of a refusal, and partly it was the hurry of weakness which made this act so rapid. “This is--his bairn,” said poor Isabell, falling back upon her pillow, and closing her pale eyelids. The tears stole softly out from under those lids, the hectic colour faded from her face. She turned her head aside, as if to avoid seeing the failure of her last experiment. And the others stood looking on with keen interest, with feelings vaguely quickened, with a sense of reality in the whole matter such as they had never felt before. Marjory was disconcerted more than she could say. She was not used to young children. She had almost a repugnance to this morsel of humanity suddenly thrust into her arms--this creature, which should have come into the world amid the clamour of rejoicing, which should have been its mother’s pride, the hope of an old family, the inheritor of wealth and influence, and a kind of power. At the present moment it was its mother’s shame; it was the shame of the dead man who had made no provision for it in this world, who had allowed it to be supplanted in his heedlessness, and made its future insecure; and over the child’s existence a certain cloud of shame must always hover: legitimate indeed, but legitimate only by that expedient to make guilt less guilty--making only a hairbreadth escape from humiliation and ignominy. The baby was fast asleep; it was warm and downy like a little nestling taken suddenly out of the nest. Even the rapid movement did not disturb its utter calm. It lay on Marjory’s lap, among the circle of agitated spectators, rapt in an absolute tranquillity which went to the heart of these women. The old mother began to weep. Agnes stood by with hungry eyes, ready to snatch the child from the stranger, who was as closely related to it as she, but who was an interloper, having nothing to do with it, she felt; while Marjory sat still, without touching it, with the long white dress streaming over her black one, looking into its sleeping face. Another scene came over her with a flood of recollection, mingling itself somehow in this one, giving to it an added effect. Once before an infant like this had been placed in her arms by a dying mother. The child was