“I must be out of the house first, Mr. Hector,” she said—and I think she meant—“before I confess my love.”
The impression Annie had made upon her master may be judged from the fact that he rose and went, leaving his son and the parlor-maid together.
What then passed between them I cannot narrate precisely. Overwhelmed by Hector’s avowal, and quite unprepared as she had been for it, it was yet no unwelcome news to Annie. Indeed, the moment he addressed her, she knew in her heart that she had been loving him for a long time, though never acknowledging to herself the fact. Such must often be the case between two whom God has made for each other. And although he were a bold man who said that marriages were made in heaven, he were a bolder who denied that love at first sight was never there decreed. For where God has fitted persons for each other, what can they do but fall mutually in love? Who will then dare to say he did not decree that result? As to what may follow after from their own behavior, I would be as far from saying that was not decreed as from saying the conduct itself was decreed. Surely there shall be room left, even in the counsels of God, for as much liberty as belongs to our being made in his image—free like him to choose the good and refuse the evil! He who has chosen the good remains in the law of liberty, free to choose right again. He who always chooses the right, will at length be free to choose like God himself, for then shall his will itself be free. Freedom to choose and freedom of the will are two different conditions.
Before the lovers, which it wanted no moment to make them, left the room, they had agreed that Annie must at once leave the house. Hector took her to her mother’s door, and when he returned he found that his father and mother had retired. But it may be well that I should tell a little more of what had passed between the lovers before they parted.
Annie’s first thought when they were left together was, “Alas! what will my mistress say? She must think the worst possible of me!”
“Oh, Hector!” she broke out, “whatever will your mother think of me?”
“No good, I’m afraid,” answered Hector honestly. “But that is hardly what we have to think of at this precise moment.”
“Take back what you said!” cried Annie; “I will promise you never to think of it again—at least, I will try never once to do so. It must have been all my fault—though I do not know how, and never dreamed it was coming. Perhaps I shall find out, when I think over it, where I was to blame.”
“I have no doubt you are capable of inventing a hundred reasons—after hearing your awful guilty confession to my father, you little innocent!” answered Hector.
And the ice thus broken, things went on a good deal better, and they came to talk freely.