To subdue it, she rose abruptly, and went up-stairs to the drawing-room, where Agnes now sat by the fire, watching the wintry sunshine steal in at the window. Over the bright hair, which never before had been covered with a matron’s hood, Agnes wore the close, sombre cap of a widow. They had tried to persuade her that this was unnecessary; but poor little invalid, heart-broken Agnes had a little petulance too, and insisted. Wrapped in a heavy black shawl, and with everything about her of the deepest mourning, her face, closely surrounded by those folds of muslin, looked very thin and pale; but the faint colour of reviving health began to rise in her cheek, and Agnes sometimes, in the impatience of early sorrow, wept that she could not die. Uncle Sandy sat beside her, and a faint attempt at conversation had been going on; but it failed often, and had long breaks of listless silence; and Cuthbert fancied the patient, uncomplaining sorrow of the old man--the weakness which seemed to have fallen over him, the trembling hand, and husky voice, were almost the most moving of all. Rose sat by the table, working; Lettie and Katie Calder were at the window; but you scarcely needed to look at their black dresses, to know that those strange words, “It is all over,” with their solemn mystery of significance, had been lately spoken here. All was over--everything--life, death, anxiety, excitement. Their heads were dizzy, and their minds reeled under the recent blow; yet nothing was visible but langour, and a dim exhausted calm. And this evening passed, as every other evening seemed to pass, like some strange vacant space, blank and still; yet Rose, when Cuthbert sat beside her, felt a grateful ease at her heart. It seemed as if some one had lifted from her, for a moment, her individual burden; and sad though the family was, and languid and melancholy the afflicted house, Cuthbert remembered this evening with a thrill of subdued and half-guilty delight, and again his heart longed, and his arms expanded, to carry away into the sunshine his drooping Rose. CHAPTER XVI. Albeit I neither lend nor borrow; Yet, to supply the ripe wants of a friend, I’ll break a custom. MERCHANT OF VENICE. “ANOTHER day--I must give another day,” said Cuthbert as he hesitated between the Edinburgh and the Glasgow coach. “Nobody but I can do this business, and the business must be done, let my own do what it will--so now for Glasgow and my uncle.” And Cuthbert climbed to the top of the coach, and discovered that the winds between Stirling and Glasgow are very keen in November. He buttoned his coat tightly, and drew his plaid around him, with care and repeated exertions; but neither coat nor plaid, nor both together, made such an excellent defence against cold, as the glow at his heart.