I cannot tell how Mrs. Anderson and her daughter found it out. The last Consul, it is true, had been from Perthshire, but that of itself gave them little information. They had gone to Edinburgh first, and then, feeling that scarcely sufficiently out of the way, had gone further north, until at last Kinloch-Arroch received them; and they stayed there, they could not tell why, partly because the people looked so kind. The note which Kate received on her birthday had no date, and the post-mark on it was of a distant place, that no distinct clue might be given to their retreat; but Ombra always believed, though without the slightest ground for it, that this note of her mother’s, like all her other injudicious kindnesses to Kate, had done harm, and been the means of betraying them. For it was true that they were now in a kind of hiding, these two women, fearing to be recognised, not wishing to see any one, for reasons which need not be dwelt upon here. They had left Langton-Courtenay with a miserable sense of friendlessness and loneliness, and yet it had been in some respects a relief to them to get away; and the stillness of Loch Arroch, its absolute seclusion, and the kind faces of the people they found there, all concurred in making them decide upon this as their resting-place. They were to stay all the summer, and already they were known to everybody round. Old Francesca had already achieved a great succès in the Perthshire village. The people declared that they understood her much better than if she had been ‘ane o’ thae mincing English.’ She was supposed to be French, and Scotland still remembers that France was once her auld and kind alley. The women in their white mutches wondered a little, it is true, at the little old Italian’s capless head, and knot of scanty hair; but her kind little brown face, and her clever rapid ways, took them by storm. When she spoke Italian to her mistress they gathered round her in admiration. ‘Losh! did you ever hear the like o’ that?’ they cried, with hearty laughs, half restrained by politeness—though half of them spoke Gaelic, and saw nothing wonderful in that achievement.
Ombra, the discontented and unhappy, had never in her life before been so gentle and so sweet. She was not happy still, but for the moment she was penitent, and subdued and at peace, and the admiration and the interest of their humble neighbours pleased her. Mrs. Anderson had given a description of her daughter to the kind landlady of the little inn, which did not tally with the circumstances which the reader knows; but probably she had her own reasons for that, and the tale was such as filled everybody with sympathy. ‘You maunna be doon-hearted, my bonnie lamb,’ the old woman would say to her; and Ombra would blush with painful emotion, and yet would be in her heart touched and consoled by the homely sympathy. Ah! if those kind people had but known how much harder her burden really was! But yet to know how kindly all these poor stranger folk felt towards them was pleasant to the two women, and they clung together closer than ever in the enforced quiet. They were very anxious, restless, and miserable, and yet for a little while they were as nearly happy as two women could be. This is a paradox which some women will understand, but which I cannot pause to explain.
Things were going on in this quiet way, and it was the end of May, a season when as yet few even of the fishers who frequent that spot by nature, and none of the wise wanderers who have discovered Loch Arroch had begun to arrive, when one evening a very tall man, strong and heavy, trudged round the corner into the village, with his knapsack over his shoulders. He was walking through the Highlands alone at this early period of the year. He put his knapsack down on the bench outside the door, and came into the little hall, decorated with glazed cases, in which stuffed trout of gigantic proportions still seemed to swim among the green, green river weeds, to ask kind Mrs. Macdonald, the landlady, if she could put him up. He was ‘a soft-spoken gentleman,’ courteous, such as Highlanders love, and there was a look of sadness about him which moved the mistress of the ‘Macdonald Arms.’ But all at once, while he was talking to her, he started wildly, made a dart at the stair, which Francesca at that moment was leisurely ascending, and upset, as he passed, little Duncan, Mrs. Macdonald’s favourite grandchild.
‘The man’s gane gyte!’ said the landlady.
Francesca for her part took no notice of the stranger. If she saw him, she either did not recognise him, or thought it expedient to ignore him. She went on, carrying high in front of her a tray full of newly-ironed fine linen, her own work, which she was carrying from the kitchen. The stranger stood at the foot of the stairs and watched her, with his face lifted to the light, which streamed from a long window opposite. There was an expression in his countenance (Mrs. Macdonald said afterwards) which was like a picture. He had found what he sought!
‘That is old Francesca,’ he said, coming back to her, ‘Mrs. Anderson’s maid. Then, of course, Mrs. Anderson is here.’
‘Ou ay, sir, the leddies are here,’ said Mrs. Macdonald—‘maybe they are expecting you? There was something said a while ago about a gentleman—a brother, or some near friend to the young goodman.’
‘The young goodman?’
‘Ou ay, sir—him that’s in India, puir gentleman!—at sic a time, too, when he would far rather be at hame. But ye’ll gang up the stair? Kath’rin, take the gentleman up the stair—he’s come to visit the leddies—and put him into No. 10 next door. Being so near the leddies, I never put no man there that I dinna ken something aboot. You’ll find Loch Arroch air, sir, has done the young mistress good.’
The stranger followed upstairs, with a startled sense of other wonders to come; and thus it happened that, without warning, Mr. Sugden suddenly walked into the room where Ombra lay on a sofa by the fireside, with her mother sitting by. Both the ladies started up in dismay. They were so bewildered that neither could speak for a moment. The blood rushed to Ombra’s face in an overpowering blush. He thought he had never seen her look so beautiful, so strange—he did not know how; and her look of bewildered inquiry and suspicion suddenly showed him what he had never thought of till that moment—that he had no right to pry into their privacy—to hunt her, as it were, into a corner—to pursue her here.