“Mem, let me speak once, if I’m never to say a word again!” cried Beenie. “That your heart should be sore to see the dear bairn, to take him back into your airms, oh, that I can weel understand. So is mine, though I’m far, far from being what you are to him, and no to be named in the same breath. But, mem, oh, my dear leddy, my bonnie Miss Lily! if I may just say that once again, what will ye do with him when you have him? Oh, let me speak--just this once. You canna, canna take him to that auld gentleman at hame; you canna do it. He has maybe not been much to you in the years that are past, but he’s awfu’ fond of you now. He looks to you to make him a home, to be the comfort of his old age. Oh! I’m no saying he deserves it at your hands. But what do the best of us deserve? We just get what we dinna deserve from God the first, and sometimes from a tender he’rt here below. And he is an auld man and frail; he has maybe no long to live. Will you tell him a’ that long story, how we’ve deceived him and the whole world, and about your marriage, and about the birth, and a’ in his house, that he meant for such different things?” “Beenie,” said Lily, “stop, or you will kill me. If I have deceived him so long, it was with no will of mine. Oh, God knows, if none of you know, with no will of mine, nor yet intention! Is that not the more reason that I should deceive him no longer? He may turn me away. What will that matter? We will be poor creatures the two of us, you and me, if we cannot help ourselves and the darling bairn.” “But it will maitter to him,” said Beenie steadily, “the poor auld gentleman in that lonely house. He’s been a kind of a father to you, if no so tender a father as might have been. I’m no saying you should have deceived him, but that’s done, and it canna be undone. If you tell him now, it will maybe kill him at the hinder end, and whether that will be better you must just think for yoursel’, for I have said all that I’m caring to say.” Lily had covered her face with her hands, and there was a moment of silence, unbroken save by a sob from Beenie, who naturally, having spoken forth her soul, was now crying as if her heart would break. “Beenie,” said Lily, all at once looking up, “you will go to Mr. Lumsden, who will be now at his lodgings dressing, I would not wonder, to go out to dinner--that is what is most likely--and tell him I am here. I would not wish to make him lose his engagement if he has one; you can say that.” “Oh, mem!” murmured Beenie under her breath. “But when it suits with his convenience, I would like to see him, to ask him a question or two. Go now, go,” she said impatiently, “or you will be too late.”