"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.--Sickness is just a fight between life and death.--A thrill
of gladness, too pleasant to be borne without tears, made her close her
eyes. They throbbed and ached beneath their lids, and the hot tears ran
down her cheeks. It was not gladness for this reason or for that, but
the essential gladness of being that made her weep: there lay the
world, white and green; and here lay she, faint and alive. And nothing
was wanting to the gladness and kindness of Mrs Forbes but the
indescribable aroma of motherhood, which she was not divine-woman
enough to generate, save towards the offspring of her own body; and
that Annie did not miss much, because all knowledge she had of such
"heavenly health" was associated with the memory of her father.

As the spring advanced, her strength increased, till she became able to
move about the house again. Nothing was said of her return to the
Bruces, who were not more desirous of having her than Mrs Forbes was of
parting with her. But if there had ever been any danger of Alec's
falling in love with Annie, there was much more now. For as her health
returned, it became evident that a change had passed upon her. She had
always been a womanly child; now she was a childlike woman. Her eyes
had grown deeper, and the outlines of her form more graceful; and a
flush as of sunrise dawned oftener over the white roses of her cheeks.
She had ripened under the snow of her si