On this John made an inarticulate outburst, something between a sob and a groan--a roar of grief and impatience such as an animal in extremity might have uttered. He had stolen up behind his wife, not able to keep away from his old master. Bell had long been her husband’s interpreter when words failed him. She dried her eyes with her apron, and turned again to the bedside. “Sir Ludovic,” she said, solemnly, “he says you’ll break his heart.” “My good friend,” said the old man, with a humorous twitch about his mouth, “let us be honest. It must come some time, why shouldn’t it come now? I’ve been trying, like the rest of you, to push it off, and pretend I did not know. Come, you are not so young yourself, to be frightened. It must come, sooner or later. What is the use of being uncomfortable, trying to keep it at arm’s-length? I’m very well here. I am quite at my ease. Let us go through with it,” said Sir Ludovic, with a sparkle in his eye. “You’re speaking Hebrew-Greek to me, Sir Ludovic. I canna tell no more than the babe unborn what you’re going through with,” cried Bell; and when she had said this she threw her apron over her head and sobbed aloud. “Well, this is a cheerful beginning,” said Sir Ludovic. “Call ye this backing of your friends? Go away, you two old fools, and send me my little Peggy; and none of your wailing to her, Bell. Leave the little thing at peace as long as that may be.” “I hope I ken my duty to Miss Margret,” said Bell, with an air of offence, which was the easiest to put on in the circumstances. She hurried out of the room with hasty steps, keeping up this little fiction, and met Margaret coming down-stairs, fresh as the morning, in her light dress, with her shining hair. “You’re to go to your papa, Miss Margret,” said Bell, “in his ain room: where you’ll find him in his bed--” “He’s not ill, Bell?” cried Margaret, with quick anxiety. “Ill! He’s just as obstinate and as ill-willy as the mule in the Scriptures,” cried Bell, darting down the winding stair. She could not bear it any more than John. Margaret, standing on the spiral steps, an apparition of brightness, everything about her “Drawn From morning and the cheerful dawn;” her countenance all smiling, her eyes as soft and as happy as the morning light-- Bell could not see her for tears. She seemed to see the crape and blackness which so soon would envelop them all, and the deeper darkness of the world, in which this young creature would soon have no natural home. “No another moment to think upon it,” Bell said to herself; “no a moment. The ladies maun come now.”