Katrin stood by Lily’s bed trying to elicit from her a look or sign of intelligence. But Beenie could not have remained absent from her young mistress had the wisest of nurses been there to take her place. “Na, na; I’ve ta’en care of her a’ her days, and I’ll take care of her till the end,” Beenie said, when Katrin exhorted her to take a few minutes more of the outdoor freshness. “Hold your tongue, woman, with your ends!” cried Katrin--“a young thing like that with a’ her life in her! She will see us baith out.” “Oh, the Lord grant it!” cried Beenie, shaking her large head. “But how is she to live and face the truth and ken all that’s happened if ever she comes to herself? She will just sit up in her bed, and clap her two hands together as she did yon dreadful night--and give up the ghost.” “God forgive him--for I canna!” said Katrin, with a deep-drawn breath. “And Marg’ret! What do ye say to her, the deep designing woman, that had been planning it, nae doubt, all the time?” “Marg’ret!” cried Katrin with disdain, with the gesture of throwing something too contemptible for consideration from her. But she added: “There is just this to be said: We could not have keepit the bairn. No possible, her so ill, and the doctor about the house, and a wee thing that bid to have had the air and could not be keepit silent, nor yet hid. Oh, mony’s the thought I’ve had on that awful subject. It was the deed of a villain, Beenie! Maybe God will forgive him, but never me. And yet, being done, it’s weel that it was done.” “Katrin!” cried Beenie in dismay. But something, perhaps, in their low-toned but vehement conversation had caught some wandering and confused faculty not entirely overwhelmed in Lily’s bosom. She began to call out their names again with a wild appeal, “Marg’ret, Marg’ret!” above all the others, flinging out her arms and rising up in her bed, as Beenie had described in her gloomy anticipations, as if to give up the ghost.