The door had not been quite closed, and it opened noiselessly.
"She does not mean me, mother," said Alister; "she means Jesus
Christ. He would say to you, LET HER ALONE. He does not care for
Society. Its ways are not his ways, nor its laws his laws. Come in,
Mercy. I am sorry my mother's trouble about me should have made her
inhospitable to you!"
"I cannot come in, Alister, if she will not let me!" answered Mercy.
"Pray walk in!" said Mrs. Macruadh.
She would have passed Mercy, going toward the kitchen, but the
TRANCE was narrow, and Mercy did not move.
"You see, Alister, I cannot!" she insisted. "That would not please, would it?" she added reverently. "Tell me how you are, and I will go, and come again to-morrow."
Alister told her what had befallen, making little of the affair, and saying he suspected it was an accident.
"Oh, thank you!" she said, with a sigh of relief. "I meant to sit by the castle wall till the doctor came; but now I shall get back before they discover I am gone."
Without a word more, she turned and ran from the house, and reached her room unmissed and unseen.
The next was a dreary hour—the most painful that mother and son had ever passed together. The mother was all this time buttressing her pride with her grief, and the son was cut to the heart that he should have had to take part against his mother. But when the doctor came at length, and the mother saw him take out his instruments, the pride that parted her from her boy melted away.