The impression Annie had made upon her master may be judged from the fact that he rose and went, leaving his son and the parlormaid together.
What then passed between them I cannot narrate precisely. Overwhelmed by Hector’s avowal, and quite unprepared as she had been for it, it was yet no unwelcome news to Annie. Indeed, the moment he addressed her, she knew in her heart that she had been loving him for a long time, though never acknowledging to herself the fact. Such must often be the case between two whom God has made for each other. And although he were a bold man who said that marriages were made in heaven, he were a bolder who denied that love at first sight was never there decreed. For where God has fitted persons for each other, what can they do but fall mutually in love? Who will then dare to say he did not decree that result? As to what may follow after from their own behavior, I would be as far from saying that was not decreed as from saying the conduct itself was decreed. Surely there shall be room left, even in the counsels of God, for as much liberty as belongs to our being made in his image—free like him to choose the good and refuse the evil! He who has chosen the good remains in the law of liberty, free to choose right again. He who always chooses the right, will at length be free to choose like God himself, for then shall his will itself be free. Freedom to choose and freedom of the will are two different conditions.
Before the lovers, which it wanted no moment to make them, left the room, they had agreed that Annie must at once leave the house. Hector took her to her mother’s door, and when he returned he found that his father and mother had retired. But it may be well that I should tell a little more of what had passed between the lovers before they parted.
Annie’s first thought when they were left together was, “Alas! what will my mistress say? She must think the worst possible of me!”
“Oh, Hector!” she broke out, “whatever will your mother think of me?”
“No good, I’m afraid,” answered Hector honestly. “But that is hardly what we have to think of at this precise moment.”
“Take back what you said!” cried Annie; “I will promise you never to think of it again—at least, I will try never once to do so. It must have been all my fault—though I do not know how, and never dreamed it was coming. Perhaps I shall find out, when I think over it, where I was to blame.”
“I have no doubt you are capable of inventing a hundred reasons—after hearing your awful guilty confession to my father, you little innocent!” answered Hector.
And the ice thus broken, things went on a good deal better, and they came to talk freely.
“Of course,” said Hector, “I am not so silly or so wicked as to try to persuade you that my mother will open her arms to you. She knows neither you nor herself.”
“Will she be terribly angry?” said Annie, with a foreboding quaver in her voice.
“Rather, I am afraid,” allowed Hector.
“Then don’t you think we had better give it up at once?”
“Never forever!” cried Hector. “That is not what I fell in love with you for! I will not give you up even for Death himself! He is not the ruler of our world. No lover is worthy of the name who does not defy Death and all his works!”
“I am not afraid of him, Hector. I, too, am ready to defy him. But is it right to defy your mother?”
“It is, when she wants one to be false and dishonorable. For herself, I will try to honor her as much as she leaves possible to me. But my mother is not my parents.”
“Oh, please, Hector, don’t quibble. You would make me doubt you!”
“Well, we won’t argue about it. Let us wait to hear what your mother will say to it tomorrow, when I come to see you.”
“You really will come? How pleased my mother will be!”
“Why, what else should I do? I thought you were just talking of the honor we owe to our parents! Your mother is mine too.”
“I was thinking of yours then.”
“Well, I dare say I shall have a talk with my mother first, but what your mother will think is of far more consequence to me. I know only too well what my mother will say; but you must not take that too much to heart. She has always had some girl or other in her mind for me; but if a man has any rights, surely the strongest of all is the right to choose for himself the girl to marry—if she will let him.”
“Perhaps his mother would choose better.”
“Perhaps you do not know, Annie, that I am five-and-twenty years of age: if I have no right yet to judge for myself, pray when do you suppose I shall?”
“It’s not the right I’m thinking of, but the experience.”
“Ah, I see! You want me to fall in love with a score of women first, so that I may have a chance of choosing. Really, Annie, I had not thought you would count that a great advantage. For my part, I have never once been in love but with you, and I confess to a fancy that that might almost prove a recommendation to you. But I suppose you will at least allow it desirable that a man should love the girl he marries? If my preference for you be a mere boyish fancy, as probably my mother is at this moment trying to persuade my father, at what age do you suppose it will please God to give me the heart of a man? My mother is sure to prefer somebody not fit to stand in your dingiest cotton frock.
