“I’ve nothing to say against Sir Robert,” cried Katrin--“he’s our maister, it’s true, and no an ill maister, just gude enough as maisters go--but the auld leddy was just your ain grandmother, Miss Lily, and your plenishing would come out of her hands in the course of nature, and for wha but you would she have given all that yarn (that she span herself, most likely) to be made into a bonnie web o’ linen? There is not a word to be said, as Robina will tell ye as weel as me. It’s just a law afore a’ the laws that a woman has her daughter’s plenishing to look to as soon as the bairn is born, and her bairn’s bairn with a’ the stronger reason, the only one that is left in the auld house.” “Eh, Miss Lily, that’s just as sure as death,” Beenie said. But Lily was not to be convinced. She flung the great web of linen, in its glossy and slippery whiteness, at the two anxious figures standing by her, involving them both in its folds. “Take it yourselves, then,” she said, with a laugh. “I am an honest lass in one way, if not in another. I will have none of grandmamma’s linen that belongs to Sir Robert and not to me.” And then Lily snatched her plaid from the wardrobe and wrapped it round her, and ran out from all their exclamations and struggles for a ramble on the moor. Oh, the moor was cold these February days, the frost was gone and every thing was running wet with moisture, the turf between the ling bushes yielding like bog beneath the foot, the long, withered stalks of the heather flinging off showers of water at every touch, the black cuttings gleaming, the burn running fast and full. Lily began a devious course between the hummocks, leaping from one spot to another, as she had done with Ronald, saturating herself with the chilly freshness, as well as with the actual moisture, of the moor; but this was an amusement which soon palled upon the girl alone. She felt the exercise fatigue her. And the contrast between her solitude and the hand so ready and so eager to help her was more than she could bear. It was because they had to cling to each other so, because the mutual help was so sweet, that they had loved it. Lily was reluctantly obliged to confess that it was no fun alone, and though it was a relief to walk even a little on the road, that was but a faint alleviation of the monotony of life. Sometimes the aspect of the mountains stole her from herself, or a sudden pageant of sunset, or something of a darker drama going on, if she had but any interpretation of it, among those hills. Any thing going on, if it were but the gathering of the mist and the scent of the coming storm, was a relief to Lily. It was the long blank, not a passenger on the road, not an event in the day, which she could not bear.