Mrs. Catherine started. "Lewis? Child what is it ye mean? No that there is anything--No, no, what makes me fear that--there can be no liking between the two." "There is, there is," said Anne. Mrs. Catherine rose, and walked through the room uneasily. "It must be put to an end--immediate--without delay. I brought the bairn here to do her a kindness, no to give her a sore heart. Child, Lewis must not enter my house again till Alison Aytoun is home. She is but a bairn--it can have gone no further than the slight liking of a boy and a girl. Where were my eyes that I did not see the peril? Child, it must end this very day--better the pang of a sudden parting--better that each of them should think they were slighted by the other, than that it should ever come to an explanation between them, and then to the rendering of reasons--it must go no further." "It is too late," said Anne; "there has already been an explanation between them. Mrs. Catherine, they are engaged." Mrs. Catherine paced up and down the small apartment with quick steps. "I am compassed with troubles! no sooner seeing my way out of one, than another opens before me. Anne, my puir bairn, I am a selfish fool to think of my own gray head, when the burden falls the heaviest on your young one. What will we do? there is a purpose in your eye as I can see--tell me what it is." Anne did not know how to proceed: she could not betray Norman's secret even to Mrs. Catherine. "I will tell Lewis," she said, "and perhaps, Mrs. Catherine--I do not know what is best to be done with poor Alice, so happy and young as she is--perhaps you will tell her--not all--but something to excuse Lewis." Mrs. Catherine shook her head. "It will not do. It will not do. If I excuse Lewis, she will think it is but some passing thing that awhile will wear away.--No, child, no, if the bairn hears anything, she must hear all." "I will tell Lewis," said Anne; "but I must first learn the whole of this dreadful story more perfectly. I thought of going to old Esther Fleming: she was Norman's nurse, Mrs. Catherine--is she likely to know of this?" "I mind much of it myself," said Mrs. Catherine, "but you will get it better from Esther Fleming than from any other mortal. I have been taken up with many diverse things, but Norman and her own son were year's bairns, and Norman was the light of Esther Fleming's eyes. Your father made no endeavor to help the miserable young man, child. I know what you would say--there was no time--and it is true--for the deed had not been two days done, when he was on the sea--be thankful, child, that he perished in the sea and did not die a shameful death." Anne trembled--the consciousness of her secret overpowering her as if it had been guilt. Alas! over the head of the murderer the shameful death impended still. "Did the family know?" she asked, her mind becoming strangely familiar with the subject: "could they know of Norman's relationship to Lewis?"