Both to
uncle and niece he had always spoken of Alec in familiar and friendly
manner; and now, he would occasionally drop a word or two with
reference to him and break off with a laugh.
"What _do_ you mean, Mr Beauchamp?" said Kate on one of these
occasions.
"I was only thinking how Forbes would enjoy some lines I found in
Shelley yesterday."
"What are they?"
"Ah, I must not repeat them to you. You would turn pale again, and it
would kill me to see your white face."
Whereupon Kate pressed the question no further, and an additional
feeling of discomfort associated itself with the name of Alec Forbes.
CHAPTER LXVIII.
I have said that Mrs Forbes brought Annie home with her. For several
months she lay in her own little room at Howglen. Mrs Forbes was
dreadfully anxious about her, often fearing much that her son's heroism
had only prolonged the process--that she was dying notwithstanding from
the effects of that awful night. At length on a morning in February,
the first wave of the feebly returning flow of the life-tide visited
her heart, and she opened her eyes, seekingly. Through her little
window, at which in summer she knew that the honeysuckle leaned in as
if peeping and hearkening, she saw the country wrapt in a winding-sheet
of snow, through which patches of bright green had begun to dawn, just
as her life had begun to show its returning bloom above the wan waves
of death.
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