, Jeanie, after
my mother had been at a' these pains, the auld doited body Johnny Drottle turned
up his nose, and wadna hae aught to say to me! But it's little I care for him,
for I have led a merry life ever since, and ne'er a braw gentleman looks at me
but ye wad think he was gaun to drop off his horse for mere love of me. I have
ken'd some o' them put their hand in their pocket, and gie me as muckle as
sixpence at a time, just for my weel-faured face.«
    This speech gave Jeanie a dark insight into Madge's history. She had been
courted by a wealthy suitor, whose addresses her mother had favoured,
notwithstanding the objection of old age and deformity. She had been seduced by
some profligate, and, to conceal her shame and promote the advantageous match
she had planned, her mother had not hesitated to destroy the offspring of their
intrigue. That the consequence should be the total derangement of a mind which
was constitutionally unsettled by giddiness and vanity, was extremely natural;
and such was, in fact, the history of Madge Wildfire's insanity.
 

                               Chapter Thirtieth

 So free from danger, free from fear,
 They crossed the court - right glad they were.
                                                                     Christabel.
 
Pursuing the path which Madge had chosen, Jeanie Deans observed, to her no small
delight, that marks of more cultivation appeared, and the thatched roofs of
houses, with their blue smoke arising in little columns, were seen embosomed in
a tuft of trees at some distance. The track led in that direction, and Jeanie,
therefore, resolved, while Madge continued to pursue it, that she would ask her
no questions; having had the penetration to observe, that by doing so she ran
the risk of irritating her guide, or awakening suspicions, to the impressions of
which, persons in Madge's unsettled state of mind are particularly liable.
    Madge, therefore, uninterrupted, went on with the wild disjointed chat which
her rambling imagination suggested; a mood in which she was much more
communicative respecting her own history, and that of others, than when there
was any attempt made, by direct queries, or cross-examinations, to extract
information on these subjects.
    »It's a queer thing,« she said, »but whiles I can speak about the bit bairn
and the rest of it, just as if it had been another body's, and no my ain; and
whiles I am like to break my heart about it - Had you