Isabel turned away, and threw herself down noiselessly on her knees by the side of her child’s cradle. The baby’s breathing was regular and soft; its hand was thrown up over its head, with the unconscious grace of infancy; its attitude full of ease and perfect repose. She lay all the night through with her child breathing sweetly beside her, debating the question with herself--Should she remain, and put her fate into God’s hands, and perhaps propitiate Him by such an appearance of trust? She did not sleep, but lay in the rustling palpable darkness, sometimes fancying the child’s breathing grew hurried, sometimes that it stopped altogether, and looking all kinds of horrors in the face. She rose from her bed in the same uncertainty; and the day was cold, and Jean wavered, doubting whether such an uncertain and distant danger as that of the ‘English lad’s’ reappearance was sufficient inducement for the immediate sacrifice demanded of her. ‘I doubt it’s an east wind,’ Jean said, as she went into Isabel’s room to call her; ‘I doubt it’s tempting Providence;’ and went about all her arrangements languidly, with no goodwill in them. ‘I’ll put in all her warm winter things,’ she said, as she packed the box for them; ‘ye maun take awfu’ care of cold. Travelling is ay dangerous, and at _her_ age, the bonnie lamb!’ ‘Oh, tell me,’ said Isabel, suddenly throwing her arms round her stepmother’s neck. ‘I am distracted, thinking one thing and another. Should I go, or should I stay----?’ Jean paused. She was put on her honour. It was hard to part with the baby, and allow old Marion, Miss Catherine’s maid, to get her hands upon it. But she had given her word. And then ‘another man’ was something too frightful to be contemplated; and Isabel was young, and had once loved Stapylton, or thought she loved him. It was hard upon her stepmother to be obliged to decide; but she did so magnanimously for Isabel’s good. ‘It’s no so cold as I thought,’ she said. ‘The wind’s only in the north. It’s no a warm wind, but it’s no dangerous, like the east; and if you keep her well and keep her warm, and no trust too much to Marion, who knows nothing about bairns, no doubt a change of air would do her good.’ And after a while Miss Catherine’s carriage came to the door, and took the mother and the child away. CHAPTER XXXIV