‘Will you not speak to me, Ailie? are you not pleased to see me? I thought you would be pleased—and I would not lose a day. And you must have heard,’ said Isabel, a little affronted as well as amazed at the indifference shown her, and instinctively producing her highest claim to consideration, ‘what dreadful trouble I have had since you went away.’
The word seemed to catch Ailie’s ear without any that followed or preceded it. ‘Trouble!’ she said vaguely, ‘what can your trouble be in comparison with mine?’
‘Oh, I beg your pardon,’ cried Isabel, with violent youthful compunction, ‘you know I have heard nothing. Oh, Ailie, don’t sit there and look so sad—tell me about it—was it your child?’
Ailie turned upon her her great wandering, dilated eyes: ‘My child?’
‘I did not know,’ said Isabel, almost crying, ‘I thought you might have lost—a child—when you said your trouble was worse than mine.’
‘My trouble is worse than any trouble on earth,’ said Ailie; ‘and oh to come back here to look on the same place night and day as I knew in my dreams. I think my heart will burst—it’s broken long, long ago,’ she added, turning away from Isabel, with a sudden pathos in her voice. It seemed a confession of unhappiness so open and undisguised, that Isabel was driven to her wits’ end, not knowing what to do or say.
‘Oh, Ailie!’ she said—‘oh, Ailie, you should not say that now—I told you, you should not marry him——’
‘Marry him!’ said Ailie, with a faint wonder stealing over her face. ‘We are meaning different things, you and me. Aye—I thought I was wedded to the Lord; I thought He was sending me forth to do His will. Oh, woman! what is your bairn or your man to that? And it was not that I deceived myself,’ she continued, rising into vehemence; ‘I never deceived myself. There was His promise, clear as the sun in the skies. Could I no see all the wonders of the latter days? I saw them in myself; I spoke in power; I rose up off my bed that might have been my dying bed—and a’ to be betrayed, and casten down, and deceived!’
‘Oh, Ailie,’ cried Isabel, wringing her hands, ‘what are you speaking of—what do you mean?’
For the moment Ailie made no answer. She never turned her head to one side or the other—but gazed before her into the air, seeing nothing. ‘Your Margret was right,’ she said, after a pause. ‘It’s sweetest to die—oh, it’s fine to die. Christ died, Isabel. We say it’s for us you know, and so it is for us, but He had to do it. Nae miracle saved Him; that’s what your Margret said.’