Her only faithful henchman was Neil Drummond, but on the last occasion on which he had come with words of healing and sympathy on his lips she had sent him away, telling him she would not see him again unless he promised to talk of ordinary things.
"You've got into a beastly habit of nagging when you're not curled right up in a hard shell which nobody can open," said Malcolm, enjoying his opportunity now that candour was the order of the day. "You've choked off nearly everybody, and it's your own fault. I find folk very pleasant because I let them alone. I'm not for ever telling them to do this or that. I've enough to do to look after myself. I know you think me a rotter--and all that. But you might do worse than take a leaf out of my book. I've been out in the world, and I've learned two things--that it's ready to laugh with you, but that the moment you show the other side of your face it is bored to extinction. Your long face bores folk, Isla. Nobody has ever told you the truth about yourself before. You've arrogated the rôle of truth-teller to yourself, but that's it----"
Isla walked out of the room with her head held high in air and fire burning fiercely in her eyes. She was so angry that she dared not trust her voice. Now she knew exactly what position she occupied at Creagh--that Malcolm regarded her as an encumbrance and a nuisance, and that she dwelt there merely on sufferance and during his good pleasure. Well, such a situation being intolerable to a woman of spirit, it must be ended, and that without delay.
She ascended the stairs to her own room, and when she was intercepted by Margaret Maclaren with some inquiry about the meals for the day, she simply told her to get what she liked, and passed on.
Margaret, no stranger to wrangling, having had a bout of it that very morning with her arch-enemy Diarmid, understood that there had been a small storm raging in the dining-room, and discreetly retired.
New, strange, dreadful elements had crept into the quiet life on Creagh Moor, and all its sweet harmony was destroyed.
Isla shut the door of her own room, and dropped for a moment into her chair, wringing her hands the while with a sense of utter helplessness. She was at the end of her tether. Nobody wanted her, and the time had come for her to go away. Not a soul in the Glen, she told herself bitterly, would lament her going. She had dropped into obscurity, and even if she were never to come back any more to Glenogle, how many would mourn her absence or long for her return?
The impulse to go there and then was strong upon her. She even opened the door of her wardrobe and her drawers to take a brief inventory of her belongings and consider what she would take away.
If only she could walk out as she was! But travel, even of the simplest sort, is hampered by the multitude of our needs, by the things which complicate life. Then she looked at her little store of money, counting it out with careful fingers. Eighteen pounds in gold and two handfuls of silver--well, that would keep her until she could earn more for herself.
She was a forlorn creature, without plan or compass, proposing to let herself drift upon an unknown sea. She had not the smallest intention of going to the Barras Mackinnons at Wimereaux. She must get away quite alone, where she could realize herself, and arrive at some conclusion regarding her ultimate fate.