The old lady gave a kind of Scotch guttural sound expressive of disappointment, and said, "I'll no say but I've seen the like beetle-broo. But we'll waken the bairn with our clavers. I'll away the noo. Maister Gorion will see her again ere night, but it were ill to break her sleep, the puir lassie!"
Nevertheless, she could not resist bending over and kissing the sleeper, so gently that there was no movement. Then she left the room, and Susan stood with clasped hands.
"My child! my child! Oh, is it coming on thee? Wilt thou be taken from me! Oh, and to what a fate! And to what hands! They will never never love thee as we have done! O God, protect her, and be her Father."
And Susan knelt by the bed in such a paroxysm of grief that her husband, coming in unshod that he might not disturb the girl, apprehended that she had become seriously worse.
However, his entrance awoke her, and she found herself much better, and was inclined to talk, so he sat down on a chest by the bed, and related what Diccon had told him of the reappearance of the woman with the basket of spar trinkets.
"Beads and bracelets," said Cicely.
"Ay?" said he. "What knowest thou of them?"
"Only that she spake the words so often; and the Queen, just ere that doctor began his speech, asked of me whether she did not sell beads and bracelets."
"'Tis a password, no doubt, and we must be on our guard," said Richard, while his wife demanded with whom Diccon had seen her speaking.
"With Gorion," returned he. "That was what made the lad suspect something, knowing that the chirurgeon can barely speak three sentences in any tongue but his own, and those are in their barbarous Scotch. I took the boy with me and inquired here, there, and everywhere this afternoon, but could find no one who had ever seen or heard of any one like her."