WHEN Anne entered Merkland after her visit to the nurse’s cottage, and was proceeding, as usual to her own room, she was stopped by Duncan.
“Miss Anne,” said Duncan, significantly, “Merkland is in the parlor.”
“Well, Duncan,” said Anne, “what of that? Does Lewis want me?”
“Na, I’m no saying that,” said the cautious Duncan; “but I just thought within mysel that maybe ye were wanting to see the Laird; and he’s in the parlor, and so’s the mistress. Mr. Lewis has been hame this half-hour.”
Anne comprehended. The clouds of the morning had broken into a storm, and Duncan, with whom “Mr. Lewis,” partly as a child of his own training, and partly as the Laird of Merkland, was a person of the very highest importance, and not to be teased and incommoded by “a wheen woman,” desired her interposition to receive the tempest upon her own head, and avert it from Lewis, as was the general wont, when Anne made her appearance in the midst of any quarrel between the mother and son.
“I will return immediately, Duncan,” she said, as she ran up stairs to take off her cloak and bonnet.
“A wheen, silly, fuils o’ women, as they are a’, the haill sect o’ them,” he soliloquized, fretfully; “wearing the very life and pith out o’the lad, wi’ their angers, and their makings o’. First the one and then the other. Ane would need lang tack o’ patience that ventured to yoke wi’ them, frae Job himsel, honest man, doun to Peter Hislop, the stock farmer at Wentrup Head. ‘Deed, and the twa are in no manner unlike, when ane has a talent for similarities. They were baith rich in cattle, and had a jaud of a wife to the piece o’ them. Clavering, ill-tongued randies, wearing out the lives of peaceable men.”
When Anne entered the room, she found Lewis pacing back and forward in it, in haste and anger, while Mrs. Ross sat leaning back in her chair with the air of a besieger, who has thrown his last bomb, and waits to see its effect.
“I cannot believe it,—I will not believe it!” exclaimed Lewis, as Anne entered. “If it had been so, I should have heard it before. Oh! I know you could not have kept this pleasure from me so long, mother! and I declare to you that this stratagem—I say this unworthy stratagem—only strengthens my determination. Anne,” continued Lewis, perceiving her as he turned, in his hasty progress from one end of the room to the other, “you have heard this story—this phantom of Norman—the murderer, as he is called—which my kind mother has conjured up to frighten me. Join with me in telling her it is not true—that we are not to be deceived—that we do not believe this!”