“I am afraid she is very ill,” said Marjory, gravely; “and very weak.” “Oh, it’s no her health I’m thinking of. She’s all that; but though Death is awful in a house, I’m no one that would put a dying creature to the door. It’s other things. We’re decent folk--and never have had a clash or a story about one of us, as long as I can mind. Am I right in keeping the like of her in my house?” “But why the like of her?” said Marjory. “She seems to me a little saint.” She thought for the moment that the poor girl’s most innocent “doubts” had affected, perhaps, some one of Scotland’s rigidly orthodox critics, and that this was the result. “Oh, dinna say it--dinna say that! I think so myself when I look at her, and when I hear her speak; but oh, mem, though she’s very good in words--the thing I cannot get over is--that bairn.” “What bairn?” cried Marjory, aghast. “Did they no tell you? I thought they would; for it’s no right to let a leddy come without hearing. It’s like deceiving a minister. Ay, mem, that’s just it. Poor thing, she has had a bairn.” It would be impossible to tell the revulsion of feeling with which Marjory received this news. She gazed aghast at her questioner, she coloured as deeply as if she herself had been the guilty person, and finally she turned and fled homeward without reply. To such a question, what answer could be made. “I cannot advise you, I cannot advise you!” she cried. She put her hands to her ears, that she might not hear more. She quickened her steps, stumbling over the grass. Was there then nothing in the world which could be accepted honestly, as pure and true, without horrors of questioning and investigation? When she had gone half the way, Marjory sank down on the turf, and covered her face with her hands, and wept bitter tears of grief and mortification. Her very heart was sick. After all her new friend was nothing to her--the chance acquaintance of an hour--a girl in a totally different sphere, where such sins were differently thought of; and yet, this new disappointment seemed somehow to chime in with the irritation of the previous night. Perhaps it was her nerves which were affected. Pain and shame, and a sensation of wounded and outraged feeling, such as she had never known before, overwhelmed her being. Was there nothing real--nothing reliable--nothing to be trusted in this whole miserable, sinful world? CHAPTER VIII.