"I'm glad that you have come to some sort of understanding with your brother, my dear," he said, as Isla helped him on with his big travelling-coat in the hall, while Rosmead's horses were waiting at the door. "Just one thing more. Malcolm can't loaf about here longer than is necessary. Your duty now, having been so faithfully ended where your dear father is concerned, is to put a bit of your own smeddum into your brother. What I'd like--what we'd all like--is to get him back to his regiment. It's the only honourable way out of a big difficulty."
Isla busied herself with smoothing the creases in the back of the coat and made no answer at all.
"What about his Colonel--Martindale, isn't it? Your aunt is intimate with his sister, Lady Chester. We can get at him in that way, though I still think that a straight application from Malcolm couldn't possibly fail of its purpose. Eh--what?"
"Don't do anything, Uncle Tom," pleaded Isla, "please, don't. There are reasons--other reasons--why it would be better not, and Malcolm is quite determined. Anyone can see that."
"Well, well. It doesn't seem the right thing, but I don't want to be officious, and you at least have shown yourself capable of managing your own affairs up to now. Take Malcolm in hand now. The best of us need the mothering that a good woman can give. But I hope, my dear, that my next visit to Achree will be a happier one--namely, to give you away perhaps to some gallant bridegroom. Eh--what?"
He smiled his big, enveloping smile as he lifted her chin in his hand and kissed her face.
"That isn't likely to happen. But thank you all the same, dear Uncle Tom," said Isla gratefully.
"And, if we really are to be buried in the sand dunes over there and have to subsist on anæmic omelettes and the everlasting poulet roti, mind you come to us. And Barras in the winter is a very good place. It had a Riviera temperature up to March this year. In November, thank God, we'll make tracks for Barras again."
Again Isla thanked him, and, Malcolm appearing on the scene, she said no more. But she was sensible of relief as she saw them drive away. So long as Uncle Tom remained at Achree anything might happen. His big, kindly, blundering feet would stray into all sorts of forbidden paths.
She spent the morning in the house, going slowly and with a sort of lingering tenderness over every bit of it. The smart servants of the Rosmeads had managed to efface themselves in a very wonderful way, and the magnificent simplicity of the funeral of Mackinnon had left its deep impression on their minds.