“Why, how so?” said I; “Miss Annie, what business have you here, doing nothing at this time of night?  And leaving me with all the trouble to entertain our guests!”

“You seem not to me to be doing it, John,” Annie answered softly; “what business have you here doing nothing, at this time of night?”

I was taken so aback with this, and the extreme impertinence of it, from a mere young girl like Annie, that I turned round to march away and have nothing more to say to her.  But she jumped up, and caught me by the hand, and threw herself upon my bosom, with her face all wet with tears.

“Oh, John, I will tell you.  I will tell you.  Only don’t be angry, John.”

“Angry! no indeed,” said I; “what right have I to be angry with you, because you have your secrets?  Every chit of a girl thinks now that she has a right to her secrets.”

“And you have none of your own, John; of course you have none of your own?  All your going out at night—­”

“We will not quarrel here, poor Annie,” I answered, with some loftiness; “there are many things upon my mind, which girls can have no notion of.”

“And so there are upon mine, John.  Oh, John, I will tell you everything, if you will look at me kindly, and promise to forgive me.  Oh, I am so miserable!”

Now this, though she was behaving so badly, moved me much towards her; especially as I longed to know what she had to tell me.  Therefore I allowed her to coax me, and to kiss me, and to lead me away a little, as far as the old yew-tree; for she would not tell me where she was.

But even in the shadow there, she was very long before beginning, and seemed to have two minds about it, or rather perhaps a dozen; and she laid her cheek against the tree, and sobbed till it was pitiful; and I knew what mother would say to her for spoiling her best frock so.

“Now will you stop?” I said at last, harder than I meant it, for I knew that she would go on all night, if any one encouraged her:  and though not well acquainted with women, I understood my sisters; or else I must be a born fool—­except, of course, that I never professed to understand Eliza.

“Yes, I will stop,” said Annie, panting; “you are very hard on me, John; but I know you mean it for the best.  If somebody else—­I am sure I don’t know who, and have no right to know, no doubt, but she must be a wicked thing—­if somebody else had been taken so with a pain all round the heart, John, and no power of telling it, perhaps you would have coaxed, and kissed her, and come a little nearer, and made opportunity to be very loving.”

Now this was so exactly what I had tried to do to Lorna, that my breath was almost taken away at Annie’s so describing it.  For a while I could not say a word, but wondered if she were a witch, which had never been in our family:  and then, all of a sudden, I saw the way to beat her, with the devil at my elbow.