‘That will be awfully good of you. I’ll be as proud as a peacock; no’—with a sudden flush—‘not that, but very much obliged and thankful to show his friends that all the people I ever knew have not turned their backs upon me.’ She finished with bitterness, still her voice and face betrayed some shame and regret. ‘Would you mind walking and talking with me a bit, Mr. Oliver?’ she asked almost gently. ‘We’ll turn down into Jervis’s yard, where there is nobody working at this hour. I should like to speak out to you this once. It is not late, and though it were, there’s nobody to hinder me from stopping out till after ten, now. But, oh! Mr. Oliver’—breaking out passionately—‘it was mother herself put the finishing touch to my folly. I had been wild and flown in her face, and disobeyed her, but I was not bad, when she turned me from my father’s door, and locked it in my face. She has herself to thank for what came of it,—no, no, I don’t mean that’—cried ’Mily, calling herself back with an accent of terror in her despair—‘What is it the Bible says about them as curses father and mother? And it is only them as honours father and mother that lives long; so that any way I’m booked to die young like Jack Dadd and Fan—I beg your pardon, Mr. Oliver—Mrs. Harry Stanhope. Well, I’ve got an inkling there are worse fates going. But it was heartless and ill-done of me,’ confessed poor ’Mily, with something like real contrition in the tears which welled up into her round eyes,—‘to come forward and look in your face, and at the band round your hat, and begin with my idle nonsense—only it’s such sore nonsense now-a-days—you can’t guess, Mr. Oliver. Did you ever think it would come to this—that my banns should be put up here, in Friarton, and my marriage day next week, yet neither mother, nor ’Liza, nor any of them, should care to come near me? That they should not be able to tell what I’m to wear, or seek to bid me good-bye before I go?’ ‘It will be better when you are gone,’ said Oliver. ‘Forgiveness and forgetfulness will come in time. You will try to do your best, ’Mily, God helping you, in the future, and when you come back——’