‘Despair is a hard word,’ said the minister.
‘Oh, aye; far too hard a word. I’ve not vigour enough left to nourish a passion. It’s more a sense of the impossibility of any change, and a kind of content; and, minister, I’m free to acknowledge it—I thought you were but an old fool, setting your heart on a young thing; but I see now you were a wise man.’
‘A happy one at least,’ said Mr. Lothian; ‘but it would be harder now to leave this life than ever it was before.’
‘Well, well, there’s little likelihood,’ said the Dominie, with some impatience; ‘let us be thankful—you are as likely to live till a hundred as any man I know.’
But just then Isabel came hastily up and brushed past them almost running, as if in fear.
‘I thought I saw a man in the garden,’ she said, shedding, for the first time for ever so long, a few hasty tears.
‘My darling,’ cried the minister, starting up, ‘where?’
‘Oh, down among the trees,’ she said, ‘down there—outside the garden wall. I saw the branches stir—and I thought——’
‘But, my dear, any man that likes may be on the other side of the wall,’ said her husband: ‘why should that frighten you?’
And then Isabel dried her tears. ‘It was very foolish,’ she said, ‘I know it might be anybody; but it gave me a fright—as if he were going to jump over the wall and come in to us here.’