"I may as well tell you now," went on Isla hotly. "Soon it will be the common property of the glen. Malcolm has had to send in his papers."
"My God, Isla, you don't say so!" said Drummond, and his fresh, kindly face grew a little white under the shock.
She nodded.
"Yes--and he owes over two thousand pounds to money-lenders, and our account is over-drawn at the bank. So now you know why the Americans must come to Achree."
She leaned back, and a small, very dismal smile just hovered about the corners of her sad, proud mouth.
Neil Drummond could scarcely have looked more thunderstruck and overwhelmed had the disaster come to his own Garrion, nor could he have felt it more acutely. He took a turn across the floor, and then he came and stood in front of her, his broad shoulders squared, a sudden look of strength and determination upon his kindly face.
"Why didn't you let us know before things got to this stage, Isla? What are friends for--that's what I'd like to know? Your silence just shows what a poor place, after all, any of us have in your estimation."
"No, no, Neil. But don't you see it was such a big, desperate, hopeless thing that nobody could give any help in the matter? And the dearer the friends are, the more impossible it would be to take money from them. You must understand that. You do understand it--only it pleases you to be denser than I have ever known you in the whole course of our acquaintance."
"The whole course of our acquaintance!" he repeated, half-eagerly, half-wistfully. "It's been spread over a pretty long period of years now, hasn't it, Isla?"
"Yes, but it looks like centuries. To-day I feel a century old myself."