This change in the life of the little sempstress could not fail to produce some corresponding change at home.  We read smoothly the play we have acted ourselves; and so the mother read love in the daughter’s eyes, and heard it, too, in her long sighs; nor did she fail to read the sign that the song which used to lighten her beautiful work was no longer heard; for love to creatures so formed as Mysie Craig is too serious an affair for poetical warbling.  But she said nothing; for while she had faith in the good sense and virtue of her daughter, she knew also that there was forbearance due to one who was her support.  Nor, as yet, had she reason to fear, for Mysie still plied her needle, and the roses and the lilies sprang up in all their varied colours out of the ground of the silk or satin as quickly and as beautifully as they were wont, though the lilies of her checks waxed paler as the days flitted.  And why the latter should have been, we must leave to the reader; for ourselves only hazarding the supposition that, perhaps, she already thought that Balgarnie should be setting about to make her his wife—­an issue which behoved to be the result of their intimacy sooner or later; for that in her simple mind there should be any other issue, was just about as impossible as that, in the event of the world lasting as long, the next moon would not, at her proper time, again shine in that green hollow, between the Lion’s Head and Samson’s Ribs, which had so often been the scene of their happiness.  Nay, we might say that though a doubt on the subject had by any means got into her mind, it would not have remained there longer than it took a shudder to scare the wild thing away.

Of course, all this was only a question of time; but certain it is, that by-and-by the mother could see some connection between Mysie’s being more seldom out on those moonlight nights than formerly, and a greater paleness in her thin face, as if the one had been the cause of the other.  But still she said nothing, for she daily expected that Mysie would herself break the subject to her; and so she was left only to increasing fears that her daughter’s heart and affections had been tampered with, and perhaps she had fears that went farther.  Still, so far as yet had gone, there was no remission in the labours of Mysie’s fingers, as if in the midst of all—­whatever that all might be—­she recognised the paramount necessity of bringing in by those fingers the required and usual amount of the means of their livelihood.  Nay, somehow or other, there was at that very time, when her cheek was at the palest, and her sighs were at their longest, and her disinclination to speak was at the strongest, an increase of work upon her; for was not there a grand tunic to embroider for Miss Anabella, which was wanted on a given day; and were there not other things for Miss Anabella’s friend, Miss Allardice, which were not to be delayed beyond that same day?  And so she stitched and stitched on and on, till sometimes the little lamp seemed to go out for want of oil, while the true cause of her diminished light was really the intrusion of the morning sun, against which it had no chance.  It might be, too, that her very anxiety to get these grand dresses finished helped to keep out of her mind ideas which could have done her small good, even if they had got in.