Anne looked up—she could not find words to communicate her “living dread”—she only murmured “Lewis.”
Mrs. Catherine started. “Lewis? Child what is it ye mean? No that there is anything—No, no, what makes me fear that—there can be no liking between the two.”
“There is, there is,” said Anne.
Mrs. Catherine rose, and walked through the room uneasily.
“It must be put to an end—immediate—without delay. I brought the bairn here to do her a kindness, no to give her a sore heart. Child, Lewis must not enter my house again till Alison Aytoun is home. She is but a bairn—it can have gone no further than the slight liking of a boy and a girl. Where were my eyes that I did not see the peril? Child, it must end this very day—better the pang of a sudden parting—better that each of them should think they were slighted by the other, than that it should ever come to an explanation between them, and then to the rendering of reasons—it must go no further.”
“It is too late,” said Anne; “there has already been an explanation between them. Mrs. Catherine, they are engaged.”
Mrs. Catherine paced up and down the small apartment with quick steps.
“I am compassed with troubles! no sooner seeing my way out of one, than another opens before me. Anne, my puir bairn, I am a selfish fool to think of my own gray head, when the burden falls the heaviest on your young one. What will we do? there is a purpose in your eye as I can see—tell me what it is.”
Anne did not know how to proceed: she could not betray Norman’s secret even to Mrs. Catherine.
“I will tell Lewis,” she said, “and perhaps, Mrs. Catherine—I do not know what is best to be done with poor Alice, so happy and young as she is—perhaps you will tell her—not all—but something to excuse Lewis.”