“Oh, Kirsteen! her heart’s broken!”
“And what is mine? She will get away to him. She will go where he is. But I’m young and we are all dour livers, that will not die—I’ll live—maybe a hundred years,” cried Kirsteen with a hard sob and a wave of her hand as if in demonstration of the hardness of her fate.
Here a maid entered the room bearing two lighted candles which shone upon a rosy tranquil face, the common unconcerned life coming in upon the exaltation of the other. She closed the other windows one by one as if that had been the only thing to do, but, when she approached that at which Kirsteen stood with the bars of shadow upon her, drew back with a frightened look and went away.
This enforced pause made them both a little calmer. “Ye will stay all night,” said Agnes, faltering, “now that you are here. Take off your bonnet, Kirsteen. And ye must take something.”
“Do you think,” said Kirsteen, “that I have come here to eat or to drink—or to bide?—oh, no, oh, no,—but get me the thing I have come for and let me go.”
“How can I get it when my mother will not give it up,” said Agnes overcome, falling into the natural refuge of tears.
“Let me see her,” said Kirsteen.
“She has seen nobody, not even the minister. She will scarcely look at the light. She cannot cry like me. She’s just like stone. He was her only son, and she just moans and says she never believed the Almighty would deal with her so.” Agnes, with the impatience of a patient and gentler nature of this intolerable grief, was relieved to be able to make her plaint. But it did not seem unnatural to Kirsteen that the mother should be like stone.
“When she sees me,” she said, “perhaps the tears will come.”
“Oh, Kirsteen, but I dare not ask her.”