w and
grew also which saw in him that which it felt in itself. Nay, if any of
those moonlight-loving elves that have left their foot-marks in the
fairy rings to be seen near St. Anthony's Well had whispered in Mysie's
ear, "Balgarnie will never make you his wife," she would have believed
the words as readily as if they had impugned the sincerity of her own
heart. In short, we have again the analogue of the parasitic plant. The
very fragility and timidity of Mysie were at once the cause and
consequence of her confidence. She would cling to him and cover him with
the blossoms of her affection; nay, if there were unsoundness in the
stem, these very blossoms would cover the rottenness.

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
b