In a sudden burst of impulsiveness, Mysie flung her arms round the neck of the older woman, pouring out her young heart and all its troubles in an incoherent flood of sorrow and vexation.
"There now, dearie," said Mrs. Ramsay, again stroking Mysie's hair and her soft burning cheek. "Don't be frightened. You must go to your bed, for you are tired and upset, and will make yourself ill. Come now, like a good lass, and go to your bed."
"Oh, dear, I wonner what my mither will say aboot it," wailed the girl, sobbing. "She'll hae a sair, sair heart the nicht, an' my faither'll break his heart. Oh, if only something could tell them I am a' richt, an' safe, it would mak' things easier."
"There now. Don't worry about that any more, dearie. You'll only make yourself ill. Try and keep your mind off it, and go away to bed and rest."
"But it'll kill my mither!" cried Mysie wildly. "Her no' kennin' where I am! If she could only ken that I am a' richt! She'll be worryin', an' she'll be lyin' waken at nicht wonderin' aboot me, an' thinkin' o' every wild thing that has happened to me. Oh, dear, but it'll break her heart and kill my faither."
It needed all Mrs. Ramsay's tact and patience to quieten and allay her fears; but gradually the girl was prevailed upon to go to bed, and Mrs. Ramsay retired to the next room. But all night she heard Mysie tossing and turning, and quietly weeping, and she knew that despair was torturing and tearing her frightened little heart, and trying her beyond endurance.
Mysie lay wondering how the village gossips at home would discuss her disappearance. She knew how Mag Robertson, and Jean Fleming, and Leezie Johnstone and all the other "clash-bags," as they were locally called, would talk, and what stories they would tell.
But her mother would be different—her mother who had always loved her—crude, primitive love it was, but mother love just the same, and she felt that she would never be able again to go back and take up her old life—the old life which seemed so alluring, now that it was left forever behind.
Thus she tossed and worried, and finally in the gray hours of the morning her thoughts turned to Robert, who had loved her so well, and had always been her champion. She saw him looking at her with sad eyes, eyes which held something of accusation in them and were heavy with pain—eyes that told he had trusted her, had loved her, and that he had always hoped she would be his—eyes that told of all they had been to each other from the earliest remembered days, and which plainly said, as they looked at her from the foot of her bed: "Mysie! Oh, Mysie! What way did you do this!"
Unable to bear it any longer, she screamed out in anguish, a scream which brought good Mrs. Ramsay running to her bedside, to find Mysie raving in a high fever, her eyes wildly glowing, and her skin all afire. The good lady sat with her and tried to soothe her, but Mysie kept calling on Robert and her mother, and raving about matters of which Mrs. Ramsay knew nothing; and in the morning, when Peter arrived expecting to find his bride ready, he found her very ill, and his good landlady very much frightened about the whole matter.