CHAPTER VI

LOVE GLOOMING.





Ian, the light of his mother's eyes, was gone, and she felt
forsaken. Alister was too much occupied with Mercy to feel his
departure as on former occasions, yet he missed him every hour of
the day. Mercy and he met, but not for some time in open company, as
Christina refused to go near the cottage. Things were ripening to a
change.

Alister's occupation with Mercy, however, was far from absorption;
the moment Ian was gone, he increased his attention to his mother,
feeling she had but him. But his mother was not quite the same to
him now. At times she was even more tender; at other times she
seemed to hold him away from her, as one with whom she was not in
sympathy. The fear awoke in him that she might so speak to some one
of the Palmers as to raise an insuperable barrier between the
families; and this fear made him resolve to come at once to an
understanding with Mercy. The resulting difficulties might be great;
he felt keenly the possible alternative of his loss of Mercy, or
Mercy's loss of her family; but the fact that he loved her gave him