“And you will have a harder battle with the youth,” said Mrs. Catherine. “Child, there are bairns in this generation that would fain inherit the rights and possessions of their fathers, without the ills and the wrongs. Take heed of Lewis, lest he endeavor to hold this black deed lightly. I will not have it. The blood that a Ross spilt must never be joined in near kindred to another Ross. There is a deadly bar between the houses. Forgiveness there may be, full and free—I doubt it not—but union never. Mind, there can be no softening—no forgetting. The spirit that was sent to its account in violence and haste, by Norman’s hand, would rise to bar that ill-trysted betrothal. It must end.”
Anne rose.
“I will go,” she said. “I parted from Lewis last night in anger, because I had no kind word to say to Alice when he bade me be her sister. I must hasten now to learn these terrible details more accurately. Lewis might refuse to believe a story which came so suddenly upon him, and came for such a purpose, if I did not know it all. I must go now.”
“You will get it best from Esther,” said Mrs. Catherine. “I know she has brooded, in secret, over his sin and his death, since ever his sun set in yon terrible waves of blood-guiltiness. Anne, my bairn!” Mrs. Catherine paused, laid her hand upon Anne’s drooping head, and went on, her voice sounding low and solemn. “The Lord uphold and strengthen you for your work; the Lord guide you with the uplifting of His countenance, and give you to walk firm in the midst of tribulation, and not to falter or be weary in the way.”
Once out again upon Oranside, Anne felt the oppression of her terrible secret grow upon her to suffocation. “He is alive! he is alive!”—the words came bursting to her lips; she felt tempted, in the strange, almost irresistible, insanity of the moment, to proclaim it aloud, as she hurried along; running sometimes, with a sick feeling of escaping thereby from the phantom that overshadowed her inmost heart. The crime itself seemed to become dimmer, in its far distance. The thought that Norman was alive, laden with his fearful burden of remorse and blood-guiltiness, abiding perchance the shameful death of the murderer, filled her whole being almost to frenzy, and, with its circle of possibilities, curdled her very blood with terror.
Mrs. Ross and Lewis were about sitting down to breakfast, when Anne returned to Merkland, and the domestic horizon was anything but clear. Lewis, forgetful of his last night’s sullen petulance, was in high spirits—spirits so high as to aggravate his mother’s ill-humor. She grudged that he should have found so much pleasure at the Tower; and, sneering at Mrs. Catherine, whose unquestioned superiority had always galled her, kept up a biting war of inuendo and covert sarcasm.
“A pleasant morning for walking, Miss Ross,” she said, as Anne took her seat at the table.
“Why, Anne, have you been out?” exclaimed Lewis. “You have good taste certainly, so far as weather goes. Where do you go to, so early in the morning?”
“Oh, no doubt she has been at the Tower,” said Mrs. Ross. “Duncan and May will be going next. We are possessed with a Tower fever. I presume you were making tender inquiries after Mr. Sutherland, Miss Ross? At this time, of course, it is quite sentimental and romantic to entertain a friendship—nay, perhaps, something warmer than friendship—for the interesting unfortunate.”
“I might have asked for poor Archibald,” said Anne, “if I had thought of him at all; but I did not remember even that he had come home.”