‘Are you looking for somebody?’ she said. ‘Oh, Isabel, if you would but tell me! There’s something wrong, but what it is I canna tell.’
‘There is nothing wrong,’ said Isabel; and for a moment her needle flew through her work, while Jean stood looking at her. Then she roused to impatience again. ‘I said I had a headache; if you would leave me quiet, just for a little while——!’
‘I’ll do that, my bonnie woman,’ said Jean; and withdrew regretfully with her broth. But before she resumed her place at the table another thought struck her. This time it was a glass of wine she carried into the parlour. ‘No to disturb you, Isabel,’ she said; ‘but a young thing like you shouldna fast so lang. I’ve brought you a glass of sherry-wine; it’s no ill to take and it will keep your heart——’
‘I want nothing, thank you,’ said Isabel.
‘But you’ll take it to please me,’ said Jean. Just then a knock at the door made both of them start. Isabel, without speaking, raised her eyes with a dumb, wistful appeal to the only comforter within her reach. And Jean, in her agitation, spilled the wine as she placed it on the table. ‘It’s maybe naebody,’ she said, with sudden comprehension, and with a yearning of her heart over the child about to be exposed to danger and trial.
‘What will I do?’ cried Isabel, clasping her hands.
‘Oh, Isabel, think of the bairn, and the Lord will be a guide to you,’ said Jean, with tears in her eyes. Not a word of explanation had passed between them, but the elder woman came and kissed the younger one with a sudden understanding of the conflict and struggle such as no words could have conveyed to her. Then the knock was repeated, and Jean hurried away to open the door, wiping her hands with her apron. Her own anxieties and jealousies were all quenched in a moment in that rush of genuine sympathy. ‘For she ay likit the lad!’ Jean said to herself, feeling by instinct that poor Isabel had traitors within as well as temptations without.
It was, however, not Stapylton, but the Dominie who stood waiting at the door; and the revulsion of feeling was such that Jean could scarcely be civil to Mr. Galbraith. ‘Oh, aye, she’s ben the house; but she’s no weel the day, and I canna have her vexed,’ said Isabel’s anxious guardian, looking jealously at this new disturber of her repose.
‘I’m sorry she’s not well; but I have not come to vex her,’ said the Dominie. His reception was so strange a one that it was not wonderful if it startled him. When he went into the parlour he met the wistful gaze of Isabel’s dilated, excited eyes; but when she saw it was him, and not another, her look changed in a moment, and she fell into a sudden outburst of tears. Disappointment, relief, a strain of feeling which he could not understand, was in the sudden change which came over her face—and the Dominie, being but a man, was not so quick of apprehension as Jean.
‘I have startled you, my dear,’ he said.