Lewis Ross and his sister walked home together in silence and alienation. Lewis was sullenly indignant, while Anne, still overpowered by that whirl of agitation, pain and fear, felt grateful for Duncan's officious attendance with his lanthorn, which precluded any conversation of a private kind, between her brother and herself. In her first shock and bewilderment, she knew not what to do--whether to communicate her secret at once, or to delay until she herself knew the terrible story more perfectly. She determined on the latter course, before they reached Merkland, and pained still further by her brother's averted looks, and sullen silence, whispered: "Lewis, forgive me, I knew not what I was doing," as they entered the house. Lewis took no notice, but went angrily into the parlor, in which his mother usually sat. A fit of ill-humor had prevented Mrs. Ross from accompanying them to the Tower--the same cause had afflicted her with headache, and sent her to her room, full two hours before they returned home, and to Anne's satisfaction, there was no family intercourse of any kind that night. Once safe in the shelter of her own apartment, she sat through the dead hours of that chill January night, laboring to form some plan for her further proceedings. She could not concentrate her mind upon them--shooting off, now here, now there, those floods of distempered thoughts refused that bondage--now called back from a long and vivid picturing of Norman's desolate and hopeless way, and Norman's blighted life--now from recalling in strange caprice the girlish gaiety and sunny future of Alice Aytoun, dwelling upon its bright particulars, as if to exaggerate the gloom that now lowered over the gladness of those youthful days. The host of indefinite and conflicting purposes, which terminated all these discursive wanderings of thought, would not be reconciled. Crowding about her like so many phantoms, they even stifled the voice of her appeal to that One counsellor from whom it was Anne Ross's constant wont to seek wisdom and guidance. Confused words, meaningless and often repeated, swelled up from her heart, constantly--a mere vacant cry of agony--for her mind was wandering all the while, from point to point, in aimless and bewildered speed.