Alison came to the bed, pulled the tumbled coverlet straight, and shook up the pillows, with her sensible literal air. ’You are feverish, ma’am,’ she said, ’and shouldn’t talk. Here is a warm shawl my mother sends to hap about you, and she says, please, will you keep still and warm, and she will bring you a hot posset presently.’ The invalid laughed in the grave, girlish face. ’Oh, Solomon!’ she said, ’and do you expect me to obey your good mother, and do the wise thing at the wise moment? You little know poor Nannie yet.’ Her dark, bright eyes grew full of sadness for a moment, and she had the air of some pretty, soft, appealing little animal—a kitten, perhaps—checked in its play by a hurt. ’I want to talk,’ she said, ’to talk, and talk, and talk. We must, you know, Alison, so as to see how we are to outwit Mr. Cheape.’ ’When you are better,’ said Alison, ’we will talk. I doubt you will hear plenty of Mr. Cheape,’ she added, soberly. At this moment a diversion occurred of a sufficiently prosaic nature to defer further confidences of a sentimental kind. The driver of the chaise in which Mrs. Maclehose had arrived the night before sent a message to say that he could wait no longer, but must return whence he came, and to that end he must be paid. ’Here, reach me my reticule, dear,’ said the invalid to Alison, and she hunted in the dainty velvet bag for her purse, and in the purse for the necessary coin. This, however, did not appear to be instantly forthcoming. A slight frown ruffled her forehead, and the faintest flush rose on her cheek. ’’Tis most provoking, Ally,’ she said. ’I have run short. Will you run and ask your father, love, to pay the man for me, and I will this day write for more money to my cousin Herries, in Edinburgh, who manages my affairs. You see I trusted to be back in town immediately, and that’s how I’ve let myself run into so beggarly a state.’ She laughed lightly; her embarrassment was gone. Alison duly ran down to her father, who paid two guineas to the driver, cocking his eye to himself as he did so. ’Women’s debts!’ he remarked within his own mind. ’It’s little likely I’ll ever see the colour of _that_ again.’ And it may here be mentioned, as a little matter strictly between him and the reader, that he never did. *CHAPTER VII.*