“And if ye please, Miss Anne, she saw a man; and it wasna Mr. —— it wasna the gentleman they ca’ young Redheugh—”
“Who was it, Jacky?”
“His face was whiter than white cloth, and he was like as if the blood was standing still in his veins, and he was running straight on, as if he neither saw the road nor who was looking at him; and as he ran, he wipit his brow, for a’ that he was whiter than death.”
Anne was walking through the room in burning agitation; she could not rest—now she came up to Jacky, as the girl made a pause for breath, and grasped her arm.
“Who was he, Jacky—who was he?”
“If ye please, Miss Anne, it was the gentleman at Schole. She called him Mr. Patrick Lillie.”
Anne put her hands up to her head, dizzy and stunned; she felt like one who had received a mighty shock, and scarcely knew either the instrument or the reality of it in the first extremity of its power. She did not say a word—she did not think—she sat down unconsciously on her chair, and pressed her hands to her head with some vague idea of crushing the dull indefinite pain out of it. Jacky stood beside her, pale, self-possessed, but trembling violently; the girl’s excitement had reached a white heat—intensely strong and still.
Deadly light and deadly darkness struggling for hopeless mastery—a goal so nearly won, and yet so utterly removed. A long, low cry of pain came from Anne’s parched lips; she had not strength or heart to inquire further; a fearful possibility came upon her now, which had never struck her mind before.
At length, when the violence of the first shock was moderated, she began again to question Jacky. Jean Miller’s explanation of the haggard looks and wild bewilderment of Norman’s friend composed, though it could not convince her. She must see him, this mysterious sufferer, must ascertain—standing before him face to face—what of this dark dread might be true, and what false. It would not leave her: before she had been alone for ten minutes, the deadly bewilderment had returned, and what to do she knew not!