"I vowed I would never marry again. I have been often asked," she said simply. "But I have always given the same answer. It is a little harder to-day--that is all."
She suffered her eyes to meet his, and the next moment his arms were round about her, and he knew that he had won.
It was a strange wooing, and when Vivien crept back to the house, knowing that she had pledged herself to another venture on the sea of matrimony, her eyes had unfathomed depths in them.
Yet when she went to her mother's side she said never a word about her own story, but with a little accent of sad wonder in her voice asked, "Mother, Isla Mackinnon is going to marry Drummond of Garrion and who is going to tell Peter?"
CHAPTER XXVII
THE CALL
Isla Mackinnon was sitting in the stone balustrade of the loggia in front of Lady Betty's villa at Nice, reading a letter that had been written three days before in the small hours of the morning at the Lodge of Creagh in Glenogle.
The sun was upon her hair and on her face, but her eyes were full of a wide and mute astonishment.
Lady Betty, attending to her own voluminous correspondence at the ormolu desk which stood across the open window of the drawing-room, saw that expression and wondered at it.
It was now a fortnight since Neil Drummond had left Nice, carrying Isla's promise with him, and this was Malcolm's first letter. It had cost him much travail, and as Isla read it through she felt its note of sincerity.