Isabel made no answer. She treated Jean’s artful address as a mere remark, and no question. Her face would be a shade sadder; her eye more languid all the evening after—but that was all.
Perhaps, of all the eager, curious people about her, the one most difficult to silence was the Dominie, who had taken to coming across the braes every evening while Isabel was so ill, and now found it difficult to give up the habit. He would sit opposite to her in the little parlour while the spring evening lengthened, and watch her words and her looks with an inquisition which he could not restrain. ‘It’s like old times to have ye back,’ the Dominie would say: and a faint smile would be Isabel’s answer. She was always at work now—reading much—trying to teach herself a variety of new accomplishments, labouring at a dozen different pursuits with a pathetic earnestness that went to her visitor’s heart.
‘What do you want with all these books?’ he said, as he sat at the parlour window looking out upon the darkling Loch.
‘To learn,’ she said. They were some of the minister’s old Italian books, of which he had been so fond.
‘To learn!—what for? It’s an accomplishment will be of little use to you,’ said the Dominie; ‘unless it is there you are going when you leave here.’
‘It is for Margaret,’ said Isabel, with a quivering lip—‘I would like her to learn when she is old enough what her father knew.’
‘Ah, that’s a good thought,’ said the Dominie, taken by surprise; and then he added, ‘But you cannot give your life to little Margaret—nor carry such things about with you through the world.’
‘I will have time enough here,’ she said, under her breath.
‘But, my dear!—we cannot expect you will be here all your life—that would be good for us, but ill for you.’
‘And why should it be ill for me?’