‘Yes,’ she said, hastily, ‘there have been changes; but no doubt you would hear of the chief of them at the time they happened. We will not go over an old story. You have been in distress yourself, if I am to judge by your dress.’
‘Yes,’ he said; ‘my father is dead; but he lingered long after the time I left the Loch so hurriedly. I was kept in close attendance upon him for nearly a year. He had a tedious illness. But for that I should have returned sooner; and, I am sorry to say,’ he added, ‘my position is not quite so good as I had hoped.’
When he paused, inviting sympathy, Miss Catherine found herself obliged to show some sign of interest. Isabel had not spoken. She was busy with the baby, whispering to it, encouraging its play with old Marion, the maid, who had come to her other side, with a perfect understanding of the position, ‘to take off her attention.’ But yet Isabel had betrayed that his affairs were not indifferent to her. At this point she raised her brown eyes to him with a questioning look, much more significant than words. It asked, more plainly than her lips could have done, what it was, and all about it? And then the eyes sank confused—becoming conscious. All this pantomime Miss Catherine saw and noted with an ache in her heart.
‘I have been in America this last year, looking about,’ he said. ‘I am cut off, if not with a shilling, still with a very poor remnant of what I ought to have had. What with my mother and sisters, and all the rest—but I cannot expect you to be interested in this,’ he added, looking at her pointedly, and then at Isabel.
‘I am sorry you’ve been disappointed,’ said Miss Catherine. ‘I hope you have good prospects now.’
He shrugged his shoulders and then he stretched out his hand for one of the folding-stools which stood about the deck, and sat down in front of the little party, commanding it. ‘I am thinking of settling in America,’ he said.
‘I have heard it is a very fine thing to do,’ Miss Catherine answered with alacrity, ‘for a young man.’
And then there was a pause—Isabel did not even look up this time; but her absorbed face as she arranged her child’s dress, the nervous twitch of her fingers, her apparent blank of inattention, told their own tale to the anxious observer at her elbow. Did he observe it too? He did not seem to look at Isabel, but—‘it cannot be for me he is coming so close, and staying so long,’ Miss Catherine said to herself.
‘I had thought of Scotland once,’ he said; ‘I have let my own place; no chance of keeping that up at present—and if I could hear of a good farm——’
‘Dear me, I would think that was a poor business for the like of you,’ said Miss Catherine: ‘farming makes no fortunes nowadays. For a young active man, with no encumbrance, I would say America was the thing.’