The child was now awake, smiling upon her, after the first momentary blank of forgetfulness, and had made her heart leap by saying, or stammering, ‘Mamma,’ the accomplishment which all this time Jean had been labouring to teach her. Little Margaret danced and babbled in her mother’s arms, and stretched out her hands to the running burn and to the bare branches of the other Margaret’s rowan-tree, when Isabel paused beneath it. She had meant to bring her great trouble out with her there, and to ask God’s counsel, when she left the cottage; but the baby’s mirth beguiled the poor young mother. She sat down on the grassy seat, and forgot everything, and played with her child. What good would thinking do her? What good (she had almost said, and stopped herself with a pang of reproach) would prayer do her? Oh, if she could but pray! and then, in her agitation, she caught at the momentary delight that was nearest to her, and played with her baby, and on the edge of the precipice forgot her terror. Then, as softer and softer thoughts gained her mind, Isabel rose up again, and, half stealthily, went past her own door and up the hill-side to the spot where she had so often met her lover under the little birch-tree. The grass and the heather were heavy with wintry moisture, but she was unaware of it. And again her head grew giddy, and everything looked to her like a dream. Was it Stapylton’s wife who was standing there under the tree, where he had been so fond and so cruel? Was this his child in her arms? Was her life one and indivisible, or a thing of shreds and patches, broken into fragments? She stood and grew giddy with the thought, looking over the wintry braes, while little Margaret caught at the drooping branches of the birch, and laughed at the shower of dewy spray which they scattered over her. Her baby laugh seemed to her mother to wake echoes all over earth and Heaven--echoes that reached the churchyard, where _they_ were lying who would have defended the child--which might reach the child’s enemy on the road miles away, and put evil thoughts in his mind against the innocent, unconscious creature. And her child’s enemy was her own lover and husband--could such a misery be? She was standing thus as in a dream, when a voice in her ear made her start, and spring aside in mortal terror. She could not have told what she was afraid of. Something--anything--ghosts in the daylight; and what she saw was not unlike a ghost. It was Ailie in her white dress, with a shawl over her head--Ailie, who had fallen as entirely out of Isabel’s self-absorbed musings as if she had never been. ‘What are you doing here, Isabel Diarmid?’ she said, ‘your courting’s past, and you’re married to another man. You have chosen this world, and you’re satisfied. What are you doing here?’ ‘Oh, Ailie! you frighten me,’ said Isabel, holding her child fast in her arms.