Archibald sat down on the stone seat at the threshold, by Anne’s side. Lilie was very talkative—she had seen the little ruined chapel on Oranside for the first time that day.
“There’s grass upon the steps,” said Lilie, “and they’re broken—and then up high it’s a gray, but the branches, and they’re like the lang arms of the brown spirits on the muir that Jacky kens about. Ye would think they had hands waving—”
Anne patted the child’s head, bidding her describe this at another time: but Lilie was i’ the vein.
“And upon the wall there’s something white, printed in letters like a book—and down below, Oh, ye dinna ken what I found!—Jacky’s got it. It was a wee, wee blue flower, growing in a corner, where it could see naithing but the sky. Would that be the way it was blue?”
Anne could give no satisfactory answer, and Lilie went on.
“Jacky was to keep it for me, but I’ll give it to you, because it’s pretty,—like the Oran, in the gloaming, when the sky’s shining in the water. There’s no flower but it—no—” said Lilie, comprehending in one vast glance the whole wide sweep of hill and valley round her—infinite as it seemed to the child’s eyes; “no in the world—only it, and folk were sleeping below it. Jacky says the angels plant them—is that true? wait till I get it.”
The child darted away, and returned in a moment, bringing a small, wild, blue violet, one of those little, shapeless flowers, whose minute, dark leaves have so exquisite a fragrance. Anne took it from her, smiling, and repeating: “It will return in spring,” offered it to Archibald. He received it with some emotion.—This sole flower in the world, as Lilie said, brought to him from the grave of father and of mother—the only spot of earth in Strathoran where he was not a stranger. He accepted the emblem, fragrant of their memories, as it seemed, fragrant of hope and life in the dreary winter-time, and, with its promise breathing from its leaves: “It will return in spring!”
They were both silent and thoughtful: Archibald absorbed with these remembrances and anticipations, while Anne, sympathizing fully with him, was yet half inclined to blame herself for her involuntary exhilaration. The weight was lifted off Anne’s heart. It was no longer a dread and horror, that secret life of Norman’s but a thing to be rejoiced in, and to draw brightest encouragement from—a very star of hope.
The sound of wheels upon the road recalled her thoughts. Mrs. Catherine’s ponies had been led away by Johnnie Halflin. It was a shabby inn-gig, driven by one of the hangers-on of the ‘Sutherland Arms,’ in Portoran, which now drove up, and took the phaeton’s place. A young man, with a pleasant, manly face, alighted, and, looking at Anne and Archibald dubiously, stood hesitating before them, and, at last, with some embarrassment, asked for Mrs. Catherine.
Jacky darted forward to show him in, and, in a few minutes, reappeared, breathless, with the stranger’s card in her hand.—Archibald had gone in—Anne had risen, and stood looking towards the little gate, waiting for Mrs. Catherine and Miss Falconer.