"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. "But it is no marvel to me, mind, though you yourself, Lewis, are in trouble, as I see, that your skill, and wisdom, and great experience, have failed in the first trial. Take good heart, boy; when you have come to years, you will understand that men are not wont to win the head of the contest, in the first trial. Set your breast to it, man; begin again." "Why, we have done everything, Mrs. Catherine," said Lewis. "Ay! you are a clever chield, Lewis Ross. Is it a month since the two gallants went away, Anne? Truly, I had no thought there were two such giants under my roof yon bright January day--done everything!--in _four_ weeks! It is a comfort to folk of an older generation, that have worn out lifetimes at one labor, to hear tell of the like of that." Lewis did not know whether to laugh, or to be angry: acting on his new notions of manliness, he chose the former. "Of course, Mrs. Catherine, I mean everything we could do."