She looked at them again with a jealous eye; the feeling was instinctive. Isabell did not know why she was suspicious of those friends of Mossgray.
“Do you not know me, Isabell?” said the graceful old lady, holding out her hand.
Isabell drew back with a slight curtsey.
“Na—there’s few ladies ever came about Murrayshaugh in my time; Miss Lucy had mair maids than me—ye’re maybe taking me for my sister.”
“There was no one else but Jean, I think, Isabell,” said Lucy, smiling; “and Jean was not like you. She was as tall as I am, and she had red hair. We gave her blue ribbons on Hew’s birthday because they suited her ruddy face—do you mind, Isabell?—and do you not know me now!”
Isabell drew further back—the old woman looked scared, suspicious, afraid.
“Na, I dinna ken ye, Madam,” she repeated firmly. “I ken few fremd ladies—I haena been in the way o’ them—how should I?”
Lucy smiled: it brightened her face in the calm of its peacefulness into warmer and sunnier life.
“If you do not know me, Isabell, do you know Hew?”
The old woman cast a jealous, angry look upon the sunburnt face of Hew Murray—her tone became abrupt and peevish.