"Yes; but if Maisrie came to you?" Vincent said, with the same eagerness—almost, indeed, with some trace of joyous assurance—"She would not have long to plead, I think! And then again, at any moment, my circumstances might be so altered as to give you all the guarantee for the future which you seem to think necessary. A word from my father to-morrow might settle that: if I went to him, and could get him to understand what Maisrie really was. Or I might obtain some definite post: I have some good friends: I am going up to London to-morrow, and could begin to make inquiries. In the meantime," he added hastily—for he heard someone on the stair—"do you object to my telling Maisrie what you have said?" "What I have said? I dare say she knows," old George Bethune made answer, in an absent sort of way—and at this moment Maisrie entered the room, bringing her sewing with her, and further speech was impossible. It was on this same afternoon that Lord Musselburgh carried along to his fair fiancée a report of the interview he had had with Vincent in the morning. The young widow was dreadfully alarmed. "Oh, my goodness!" she exclaimed, and she began to pace up and down the room in her agitation. "Marry the girl at once? Why, it is destruction! Fancy what all our plans and interests, all our lives, would be—with Vin cut out! It cannot be—it shall not be—it must be prevented at any cost! He would be dead—worse than dead—we should be pitying him always, and knowing where he was, and not able to go near him. You don’t mean to say he is definitely resolved?" she demanded in her desperation. "Indeed, there is no doubt about it—he spoke as plainly as you could wish," said Lord Musselburgh. "And he has argued the thing out; his head is clear enough, for all this wild infatuation of his. He sees that his father will not consent—beforehand; so he means to marry, and then hope for reconciliation when the whole affair is past praying for. That’s the programme, you may depend on it." "Harland must know at once," said Mrs. Ellison, going instantly to her writing-desk. "This must and shall be prevented. I am not going to have my boy’s life ruined by a pack of begging-letter swindlers and cheats!" CHAPTER IX. "AND HAST THOU PLAYED ME THIS!" And now in this time of urgency the appeal was to Maisrie herself; and how could he doubt what her answer would be, in spite of all those strange and inexplicable forebodings that seemed to haunt her mind?