Her eyes, too, were full of questioning as they travelled to the girl's pale pathetic face. Peter had been no common son to her, and it was to no common woman that she could give him up.
"Come here, my dear. You have no mother. I have room for you in my heart," she said.
And Rosmead, with smarting eyes, went out by the door and closed it very softly behind him.
"God bless her! God bless them both!" he said very softly, under his breath, as he went down to Vivien.
"I am all blown to pieces by the winds of the Moor of Creagh, Peterkin," she said. "If you are very good you can come up and sit in my dressing-room while I make myself decent. Then I can tell you what happened."
This dear intimacy, so precious to them both, had never been more precious than on that night. Half an hour later Isla sat down to eat with them in the old familiar room, and by that time the distress, the strain, the awful hopeless misery had gone from her face. She talked quite rationally and naturally of all the affairs of the Glen, and when she said that she would like to go home as soon after dinner as they could conveniently let her away, Peter asked whether he might have the privilege of driving her.
She thanked him with her eyes.
"Where I have to be grateful for so much there are not any words left," she said simply. "I will say good-bye to your mother, if you please, only until to-morrow."
"You are coming back to Achree to-morrow, then?" said Rosmead, when, with exceeding care and gentleness, he had tucked her into the comfortable cart.
"Yes, to-morrow. May we talk of it as we go up? I don't know how to thank you for so kindly driving me home. When I think of what otherwise it would have been like, I am quite speechless."