‘Yes,’ said Miss Catherine, without hesitation; ‘I don’t pretend to deny it, my dear. It has been for you. And I am very glad I came. You are a different creature. But all the same it will be a great pleasure to get home.’
Isabel said nothing more. Oh, why was not the minister there to take her part? He would have read the sudden dullness in her eye, the change upon her voice. She sat for the rest of the day quenched out, making attempts to speak now and then, but failing utterly; trying to smile and to talk as Miss Catherine did about the proposed return. Oh! how the girl envied Miss Catherine! The old woman was as lonely as the young one. She had her duties, it was true; but no one to make Loch Diarmid pleasant to her. And yet how pleased she was to go back to all the tedium! Was it only because she was old and Isabel young?
‘You’ll feel the change, my dear,’ said Miss Catherine the day after, as they sat together alone. ‘It will be a trial to you going home.’
‘Oh, no,’ said Isabel, eagerly; and then she made an effort and said, very low, ‘It will bring everything to my mind—but, then, it was never out of my mind; it will be as if it had all happened over again——’
‘It would have been the same sooner or later,’ said Miss Catherine. ‘It has to be got over. And now, I hope, you are able to bear it. And when you weary, my dear, you can come to me. I will always be glad to see you—when I have the time.’
‘Thank you,’ said Isabel, feeling her heart sink in her breast. Glad to see her—when she had time! After having been a mother to her, and her companion for so long, opening up all her various stores of experience and knowledge on Isabel’s behalf, feeding her with legend and tale. And now that was over, too—and Jean Campbell and Jean Campbell’s bairns were all the companions she should have in the dim future. Oh, for Margaret! Oh, for the love that was gone! Oh, for—— Isabel knew not what she would have said. Anything that would have warded off from her the blank that was about to come.
‘It will not be cheerful for you, Isabel,’ said Miss Catherine; ‘but you have a stout heart, and you must not forget it is your duty. This has been very pleasant for the time. It is cheery to see new people and new places. But home is ay home.’
‘Yes,’ assented Isabel, feeling in her heart that she was the most abandoned of sinners not to be able to feel any rapture at the thought.
‘And there is no saying when we may have another such holiday,’ said Miss Catherine, cheerfully. Isabel could make no reply. The full force of the change rushed upon her. The sounds in the street seemed to grow melodious as she thought how short a time she would have it in her power to listen to them. And it seemed to her that her friend was quite unaware of the tumult which this intimation had raised in her breast. Had Isabel known how cunningly Miss Catherine had contrived it, how she had been working up to this climax, and kept the ‘cold plunge’ as her most effectual weapon, the girl’s mind would have risen up in arms against such cruelty. Miss Catherine left her seated, melancholy, over some work, with every line in her face turned downwards, and the new life gone out of her, and retired to her own room that she might be able to chuckle unrestrained over her success. ‘She’ll marry him, if he ask her, in six weeks,’ Miss Catherine said to herself.
Left to herself, Isabel cried—not altogether because she was going home—because she was so wicked as not to be glad at going home—because her badness of heart was such that she regretted her holiday life with all its indulgences. When she returned to the Glebe, should she be able, she asked herself, to resist the movements of her own feelings, to think as little of Stapylton as he did of her, to keep from longing and looking and listening till the suspense brought on another fever? What should she do to occupy herself? to keep off such a humbling absorption in one thought? There was but one bright spot in all the monotonous landscape: the minister would stand by her, whatever happened to her. Night or day she could trust to his sympathy. He would come to her when she called him, stand by her, be her support, her counsellor, her guide. She thought not of him, but of herself, with youth’s spontaneous, unintentional selfishness. It did not occur to her to think of him. But so far already Miss Catherine’s spells had wrought.