"Don't get hard, Isla. It is so unbecoming to a woman. I know that you have had a lot to think of, but now that Malcolm has come home roll it off on to his broad shoulders. It is what broad shoulders are given to our menfolk for. And, above all, don't get thinking that nobody can do things except yourself. Don't you think you're just a wee bit inclined that way, Isla?"
"Yes, I am all that way," answered Isla stolidly. "I fully admit it. But don't imagine I like it, Aunt Jean. The thing that I most want in this world is peace, and I can't get it. Good night, auntie. I'm sorry that I'm so disappointing."
Lady Mackinnon kissed her fondly, yet with a little regret.
"Isla's getting hard, Tom," she said to her husband when he came up a little later. "It's very bad for a girl to lose her mother, though in Isla's case, of course, it would have been worse if her mother had been spared. Don't you notice how hard and dull she has got to be of late? What a pity she couldn't marry! She used to be quite pretty."
"Used to be, Jean! What are you talking about?" asked Sir Tom rather irritably. "She's pretty yet, with the sort of beauty that a man doesn't tire of, and she's clever too. Depend on it, if Isla's hard she has had something to make her so. Malcolm's charming, of course, and much improved, but just once or twice to-night I felt that he didn't ring true."
"Nonsense, Tom. We have been out of the world too long and haven't marched with the times. I should like them to stop for a week or two, but Isla won't hear of it. She says she must go on Friday."
"Let Isla alone. She knows her own business best. As for Malcolm, please yourself, but I haven't got at the bottom of the meaning of this leave of his yet. It's unusual. I shouldn't wonder to hear that there is something behind it."
Lady Mackinnon did not take her husband's words at all seriously. She had no son, and her heart warmed to Malcolm, and she fell asleep, thinking how blessed she would have been among women had he been hers. Another of the mistakes this into which poor humanity, seeing through a glass darkly, is so liable to fall!
Next morning Isla left the house about eleven o'clock to go to an obscure street on the other side of Bayswater for the purpose of calling on an old servant at Achree, who had married a butler, and who now conducted a small boarding-house off the Edgeware Road.
It was a lovely spring morning, and she said she would prefer to walk across the Park. She greatly enjoyed that walk. The wide spaces of the Park, the enchanting glimpses through the trees which, though still bare, were beautiful with the sun upon their delicate tracery of branch and bough, seemed to fill her soul.