“And if it’s just preceesely the morn that Miss Eelen’s coming!” cried Katrin, with great and solid effect, while Lily, alarmed, began to explain and deprecate, pleading that she could find the way herself so easily, and would not disturb Dougal for the world. She hurried in after this little episode to avoid any further dangers, to be met by Beenie’s round eyes and troubled face in the dark under the stair. “Oh, Miss Lily!” Beenie cried, putting a hand of remonstrance on her arm, which Lily shook off and flew upstairs, very happy, it must be allowed, in her first attempt at deceit. Robina looked more scared and serious than ever when she appeared with a lighted candle in the drawing-room, shaking her solemn head. Her eyes were so round, and her look so solemn, that she looked not unlike a large white owl in the imperfect light, and so Lily told her with a tremulous laugh, to avert, if possible, the coming storm. But Beenie’s storm, though confused and full of much vague rumble of ineffectual thunder, was not to be averted. She repeated her undefined but powerful remonstrance, “Oh, Miss Lily!” as she set down the one small candle in the midst of the darkness, with much shaking of her head. “Well, what is it? Stop shaking your head, or you will shake it off, and you and me will break our backs looking for it on the floor, and speak out your mind and be done with it!” cried Lily, stamping her foot upon the carpet. Robina made a solemn pause, before she repeated, still more emphatically, her “Oh, Miss Lily!” again. “To bring in Miss Eelen’s name, puir thing, puir thing, that has nothing to do with such vanities, just to give ye a countenance and be a screen to you, and you going to meet your lad, and no leddy near ye at a’.” “Don’t speak so loud!” cried Lily with an affectation of alarm; and then she added: “I never said Helen was coming; I only----” “Put it so that Katrin thought that was what you meant. Oh, I ken fine! It’s no a falsehood, you say, but it’s a falsehood you put into folk’s heads. And, ’deed, Katrin was a great fool to take heed for a moment of what you said, when it was just written plain in your eyes and every line of your countenance, and the very gown on your back, that you had come from a meeting with your lad!” “I wish you would not use such common words, Beenie! as if I were the house-maid meeting my lad!” “I fail to see where the difference lies,” said Beenie with dignity; “the thing’s just the same. You’re maybe no running the risks a poor lass runs, that has naebody to take care of her. But this is no more than the second time he’s come, and lo! there’s a wall of lees rising round your feet already, trippin’ ye up at every step. What will ye say to Katrin, Miss Lily, the morn’s night when ye come hame? Will ye keep it up and pretend till her that Miss Eelen’s met ye at the auld brig? or will ye invent some waur story to account for her no coming? or what, I ask ye, will ye do?”