Christian suffered herself to be led down stairs. Into the little parlor Anne hastily brought tea, and, considerably to Jacky's horror, insisted upon rendering all needful services herself. It was evident that Christian felt the delicacy which kept strange eyes from beholding her grief. She took the tea eagerly, removed her cloak and bonnet, and met Anne's anxious look with a tremulous, tender smile, inviting, rather than deprecating, conversation now. "Let me go with you to your own room," said Anne; "you have been in Edinburgh, and are quite exhausted, I see. You will be better after you have slept." "Sit down, I need no sleep," said Christian: "I scarcely think now, after my long watching, that I can begin to think of rest.--Sometimes--sometimes--" She rose and stretched out her thin arms, like one who complains of some painful void within, drawing them in again wearily to her breast. "Sometimes, when I do not think of _them_, and mind that he is gone, I could be content to bear it all again, were he but back once more. God aid us, for we are weak. Patrick, my brother, are ye away at last? are ye at peace? And I am ready to lament and pine, and not to thank God! God be thanked! God be thanked! that he is away in blessedness at last." She paced the room slowly for a while, and sitting down by the window, drew the curtains aside, and looked out in silence upon the sea--the placid, wakeful sea--with which so often in her misery she had taken counsel. "The morning after he went home," she said at last, turning to Anne abruptly, "I saw you looking out upon the Firth, when I departed on my needful errand. You mind the soft fall of the air, like the breath of a young angel--a spirit in its first joy--the latest born of heaven? You mind the joy and gentleness that were in the air?" "Yes," said Anne. "On such a morning--as soft, as joyous, and as bright--he came to me, who is now in heaven at peace. There was no peace about him then. Within his soul, and in his face, was an agony more bitter than death. You know the reason. He had done the deed, for which, through eighteen lingering, terrible years, Norman Rutherford has been a banished man. "I took him in, and closed the door: he fell down upon the ground, at my feet. From the terrible words of his first madness, I gleaned something of the truth. Think of it--think of that.--The horror of great darkness that fell on me that day has scarce ever been lightened for an hour, from that time to this.