"I don't think so, Neil. He has been most awfully kind, don't you know? I dare say Isla has some message for his mother about when they can come back to the house."
Neil tried to accept this perfectly feasible explanation, but if he had seen the two talking earnestly together at the library window his mind would undoubtedly have been most seriously disturbed.
"It was so very kind of you to come to-day and take all the trouble for us," said Isla, as the door closed upon them. "Do you still intend to sail away on Thursday?"
"On Friday. My boat sails from Liverpool," he corrected gently. "I go to London on Thursday."
"And when will you come back?"
"Not before Christmas, I am afraid. I've had more than six months' furlough already, you see, and I haven't the ghost of an excuse for stopping on this side any longer."
"Except your mother. You will not like leaving her, I am sure."
"I don't. But she is accustomed to my journeyings to and fro in the earth and up and down in it. I shall be very happy, thinking of her here in this house. She has never felt so much at home since she left Virginia. I have had a talk with your brother, and it is practically settled that we take a two years' lease of Achree. I was fortunate in finding Cattanach here to-day also, and so the thing can be put on a proper basis without delay."
"Yes," said Isla, and her tone had a singularly spiritless note in it.
He looked steadily into her face, wondering just how much he might say, or whether he might say anything at all. But she was not looking at him. She was thinking how strange it would be to realize that this man had gone away clean out of the Glen, and that soon the ocean would roll between him and her. She had never felt so in her life about any human being outside of her family circle, and she was disturbed.