‘That’s very true, no doubt,’ said Miss Catherine, gravely. ‘There was never one like her on the Loch, nor a lad worthy of her, since Wallace Wight. But yet Isabel has eyes like her neighbours. And there is nobody in your way. My word! if I were a comely man like you, little the worse for your years, and not another suitor in the field, she should be Isabel Lothian before the year was out!’
Mr. Lothian coloured like a girl with excitement and gratification. Scarcely on Isabel’s own cheeks could there have risen a purer red and white. He was, as Miss Catherine said, ‘little the worse for his years.’ He was as erect and elastic in his step as if he had been five-and-twenty—his colour as fresh, and his eyes as bright.
‘If it depends on me’—he said, with a sparkle in his eye.
‘And who else should it depend on?’ said Miss Catherine. ‘Take your courage by both hands, and, take my word, you’ll not fail.’
Thus the house of Lochhead rained influence on this eventful day. Isabel went home with a vague longing in her mind for wider air and a fuller life. But when the minister had left the door, going back with his mind full of tenderness, and just touched by hope, she sat down by the parlour window, and took out Stapylton’s letter, and began to read herself into satisfaction with it. The careless words which had struck her like stings at the first reading, she set herself to smooth and soften. ‘He meant them to cheer me,’ she said to herself; ‘to be cheery himself and to cheer me;’ and then she would make an effort and swallow the sentences to which no such explanation could be applied. ‘It was all his love,’ she said again. Words change their character when thus studied. Out of what seemed almost an insult this tender casuistry brought but another proof of the confidence and certainty of love. ‘He did not choose his words,’ Isabel said at length, with a certain indignation against herself; ‘he felt I would understand—how should I miss understanding when I knew his heart?’ And then there were other apologetic murmurings, less assured, but not less anxious. ‘After all, he is but a man—he does not think like the like of us;’ and—‘That will be the English way; he always said it was different.’ Thus the fanciful girl went on with her letter, until at length she kissed and put it away among her treasures, all anger having gone out of her heart.
Through all the interview between Miss Catherine and the minister, in which so very different an aspect of her affairs was discussed, Isabel sat gazing on the Loch as it faded to evening, with a vague smile about her mouth, and liquid soft eyes, and dreamed. She saw how it would all happen as well as she saw the boat on the Loch making its way from Ardnamore. Perhaps he might not come for three or even six months. His friends would tell him what time must pass before Margaret’s sister could consent. His mother would tell him, for surely even in England mothers could not be so far different. And he would come asking pardon with his lips, claiming more than forgiveness. And Margaret would bless her sister—would plead up yonder for a blessing. And the two would stand side by side on the spot where Margaret had died, and plight their troth as it were to her, in her very presence, to love each other for ever and ever. She sat and dreamed while the minister, with unusual light in his eyes, went home to dream on his side of how different an ending. And neither the one nor the other saw aught but boundless happiness, the very climax of life and love, and perfection of human existence in the visionary future that lay beyond.
And then a great quietness came over the Loch. The marriage of Mr. John and Ailie Macfarlane was a nine days’ wonder, but that died out by degrees; and even among his relatives or hers, little, after a while, was said of the pair. They had gone out ‘into the world,’ like Adam and Eve, seeking the unknown region in which their Tongue would be intelligible, and themselves received as the bringers in of a new dispensation. But in the meantime they disappeared from Loch Diarmid, and the lesser prophets they had left behind soon failed to interest the crowd which was used to excitement. Things fell into their former quietness: worldly amusements began again to be heard of.
All was very quiet at the Glebe. Day after day, week after week—nay, month after month, Isabel had sat silent, expecting, looking for the letter which never came, for the familiar step and voice which she had made so sure would come back to her. And neither letter nor visitor had come to break the wistful silence; no one knew the longing looks she cast from her window, as the winter twilight darkened night by night, over the gleaming surface of the Loch. She felt sure he must write, until the time was past for writing; and then a strange confidence that he would come seized upon her. And she had no one to whom she could say a word of her expectations, to whom she could even whisper his name. If Jean perceived her eager watch for the postman, her shivering start and thrill when any footstep was audible by night, or knock came to the door, she mentioned it to no one. Three months and not a word—then six months, the year turning again unawares, the snow melting from the hills, the snowdrops beginning to peep above the surface of the soil—
It would be impossible to describe all the alternations between fear and hope which moved her as the months went on. Spring came, stretching day by day, more green, more warm, more cheery and sunny on the hills. The poor girl, in her loneliness, sat watching, holding on, as it were, to the darker season which melted away under her grasp, taking comfort in every gloomy day, saying to herself, ‘It is winter still!’ The birds warbling in all the trees about was a trouble to her. No; not spring again—not so far on as everybody thought; only a little lightening of the cold, or gleam of exceptional weather. She kept this thought steadily before her mind, through March and April, refusing to understand what months they were. But in May she could no longer refuse to perceive. The trees had shaken out all their new leaves from the folds. The hill-side was sweet with wild flowers, the primroses were over. ‘Everything is so early this year,’ Isabel said to herself with a sick heart.
‘No so early either,’ said Jean, with profound unconsciousness of her stepdaughter’s sentiments; ‘no that early. I’ve seen the lilac-tree in flower a fortnight sooner than now.’