“Now Anne,” said Lewis, “what has become of your famous resolution? Has your heart failed you already? I am glad of it: better faint before you enter the wood, than when you are on the way.”
“I have no idea of fainting at all,” said Anne, “unless, indeed, when we have fairly emerged into the clear air again, with Norman honorably in his own house, and Alice at Merkland—I may have leisure for fainting then. Now, Lewis—listen to me, I beg, mother—I want you to consent that I should go to this place—to Aberford—immediately, or if not immediately, at least soon.—Let me have some one with me—May would do, or old Esther Fleming. I can take quiet lodgings and live there, professedly for the sake of sea air, if, indeed, any pretence is necessary. Once there, with no other claim on my time, and patience enough to bear any ordinary disagreeables, I may make quiet, noiseless unsuspected investigations. Let me try; the matter is of consequence to us all, and the expense will not be great. I beg that I may not be hindered from making this endeavor; it may produce something—and if it does not, there is nothing lost.”
“Upon my word you take it very coolly,” said Mrs. Ross. “I should like to know why my son’s means should be wasted in such an absurd expedition. You will never make anything of it, it is quite nonsense: besides, the idea of a girl going away from home, and living alone, engaged in such a search!—perfectly improper! I am amazed at you, Anne!”
Anne blushed deeply. It might, indeed, be called improper and indecorous, and she was not given to neglect the veriest outer garment and vesture of good fame; but for this, a matter so very dear and precious, involving so many interests, a mere punctilio might surely be disregarded—a ceremonial dispensed with.
“Mother!” she said, “if I were ill, you would not object to this: on the mere order of a doctor, you would have thought it perfectly proper to suffer me to go to the sea-side: how much more now, when interests so great are at stake—Lewis and Norman—your hope and mine! Mother! let me have your consent.”
Lewis was touched. This Norman, whom she emphatically called her hope, did not live at all in Anne’s remembrance, except in the merest shadow. He began to perceive how void of personal hopes and joys her life was. There were some—deeper, graver, more earnest than his—foremost among them, the deliverance and return of this exile brother; should he, her nearest relative, dim and darken this great hope for her? Lewis forgot himself, and his forgetfulness ennobled him.
“Anne,” he said, “let us speak of this hereafter—nay, I mean soon; but not—” he glanced at his mother, “not to-night.”
Anne understood, and was satisfied. Lewis had turned peacemaker. Lewis was devising means to turn his mother’s ill-humor and undeserved reproofs from her. All honor and praise to that kindly household of Aytoun; the manly son, the gracious mother, the gentle little girl, Alice, who had found out for him, and brought into the pleasant air of day, the hidden heart of Lewis Ross.
The next morning, Lewis himself proposed a consultation with Mrs. Catherine. Anne consented gladly, and they set out. The Oran was frozen hard, and lay, a glittering road of ice, far below the high pathway of crisp snow they were walking on, through which the topmost branches of the buried hedge peered forth like wayside weeds. The snow lay three or four feet deep, and it was intensely cold.
They found Mrs. Catherine in her ruddy inner room, hemming fine cambric still. In the one article of linen, Archibald Sutherland was not likely to find himself deficient for years. Lewis gave in his report. Mrs. Catherine was disappointed.