‘But you will not think ill of me?’ besought ’Liza—sinking again, in a moment, from the part of the heroine of romance she had formerly longed to play, which, even this morning, she had found some faint compensation in trying to support, for Jack was not dead, only very ill—into the affronted, unhappy, childish young woman. ‘You will not tell upon me? You see Jack Dadd and I have known each other all our days, and sometimes—well, he has looked and said things—though he was not always kind. He was fair angry because I let you talk to me first when you came back,’ explained ’Liza, with a little hysterical giggle. ‘I am sure, Mr. Oliver, we two said nothing which all the world might not have heard, and Jack had given himself no right to interfere with me for speaking to anybody. Now mother says nobody will ever care to come near us again, after the disgrace ’Mily has brought upon the family.’ ’Liza began to droop afresh, and to cry without the most distant admixture of small triumphant laughter. ‘It would be very hard and cruel, if it were true, for how could we—Ann and I, help it? Mother was always putting ’Mily before us,’ complained ’Liza resentfully, ‘and Jack and ’Mily would carry on together, just to plague me, I believe. Oh dear! what am I doing?’—stopping short and wringing her hands—‘Blaming Jack when he may be dying or dead for aught I know; and I may never see or speak to him again in my life. But I should not mind that, if God would only let Jack live and get well and be happy, though it were all away from me. Oh! Mr. Oliver, will he live? Will Jack live?’ The poor delicate girl was quite spent and shaken. She was forced to let Oliver—who was not without some apprehension of arousing the blind fury of Mrs. Polley—give her his arm within sight of her mother’s door. ‘So that was the way of it?’ Oliver said to himself softly, as he walked away. ‘Poor thing! poor old Jack—who can hardly move a finger at this moment! And I came between them and made mischief, did I? without the faintest suspicion, in my stupid bungling? But, let us be thankful, it may not be too Late to set this right if the beggar will only recover.’ Oliver was coming in to Jack, not going from him, when the gas-lights in the streets of Friarton looked white and bright and encouraging as they look with the night setting in—not yellow and faded and dispiriting, after a career of unwarrantable dissipation, according to their faithless discomfiting habit with the first streak of dawn.