‘It was no such thing,’ said Miss Catherine. ‘Ailie, indeed! My dear, you are thinking of something else, and you have not looked at her. That is the figure of a gentlewoman. They must have woke up to their interests at last, and let the house. An English family, I would not wonder. But even an Englishwoman can have no need to put on a moonstruck look like that.’
‘You are speaking of my wife,’ said someone at Miss Catherine’s ear.
Like most people who live among their inferiors, she had a way of expressing her sentiments without any constraint of her voice or concealment of her opinion. She was a person of importance, and she was very well aware of the fact; consequently she started, and turned round, not well pleased, to ask the intruder what he meant by thrusting himself into private conversation; but was struck dumb, and all the strength taken out of her for the moment, to find Mr. John himself standing by her side. Isabel was roused and startled too. It was, indeed, her little cry of recognition which persuaded Miss Catherine that the apparition was real and undeniable.
‘John Diarmid!’ she cried, with a voice half choked with wonder and curiosity; and then made a dead pause, looking at him with a surprise too great for speech.
‘You must beware how you speak of my wife,’ he said. ‘Yes, we have come home. I have brought her home—and she is no longer Ailie, but my wife. If you would be a friend to either of us, you might show an example to others, and not lead the way to trouble.’
‘Trouble—what trouble?’ said Miss Catherine; ‘and why should I be a friend to you, John Diarmid, or set anybody an example to do you pleasure?’
‘Why should you be a foe?’ he said.
And then they both paused, and looked at each other. Mr. John’s appearance had changed. It was nearly three years since he had left Loch Diarmid with his wife; and the wild look of passion and excitement which had marked the prophet had died out of his face. But his appearance was more strange to homekeeping eyes than it had been even when his face was lighted up with that glance which was half-insanity. He had acquired the foreign air which in those days was given by a beard; and his dress, too, was foreign; and there was about him that indescribable look which is not English, which has come to be conventionally identified with the conspirator and revolutionary. He had a great cloak on his arm—a Spanish cloak capable of being thrown around him after a fashion not impossible in those days, though now identified with, at the least, a Byronic hero. His dark face, so much as could be seen of it in the forest of dark hair and darker beard, was more like that of an Italian than a Scotchman; his aspect was that of a man full of weighty cares and responsibilities. The wild inspiration of his supposed mission had gone from him; but it was not only that he had lost that: something also there was, which the keen-sighted spectators perceived without understanding, which he had acquired. He looked at Miss Catherine without flinching, but with no excitement, meeting her eye calmly, and repeating what he had already said.
‘Why should you be a foe? I am none to you. You might be a protection to my wife. Am I to understand that my sins have been such that you will not forget what is past, and give your countenance to her? It might be a comfort to her,’ he said with a suppressed sigh.
‘I cannot see what other protection your wife wants, John Diarmid, when you are here.’