‘We were not quarrelling,’ said Isabel, turning her back upon her stepmother.
‘Na,’ added Jean, in explanation; ‘it was nae quarrel. It was me that was speaking. I’m no a lady born like you; but I’m the Captain’s widow, and a woman of experience, and I will not hold my tongue and see a young lass fall into trouble. Margaret, it’s no meaning to vex you; but she’s aye keeping on a troke and a kindness with that English lad.’
Isabel turned round with hasty wrath and flushed cheeks; but her resentment was useless. She caught her sister’s eye, to whom she could never make any false pretences; and suddenly bent down her head, and hid her face. To Margaret she had no defence to make, even though at this moment she was without blame.
‘Then it is him I hear on the hill,’ said Margaret. ‘Isabel, go and bring him in to speak to me.’
‘Bring him in—here?’ asked both the bystanders in a breath, aghast at the command. The amazement of their tone, and the glance they cast round the little room, brought a slight additional colour to Margaret’s cheek.
‘Bring him here,’ she repeated; ‘I’ve gone so far on my way that I’m free to do what I please. I cannot seek him out or stop him on the road. Isabel, go and bring him in to me.’
Isabel, who had grown suddenly pale and begun to tremble, hesitated to obey. ‘O my Maggie!’ she said, clasping her hands; and in her desperation she turned to her stepmother with an appealing glance. Jean was at her wits’ end, divided between lively dislike and repugnance to ‘the English lad,’ and that absolute reverence for Margaret which made it difficult to resist any of her wishes.
‘He’s no worthy,’ she said, with trembling eagerness; ‘he’s no fit to come into this chamber and speak face to face with the like of you. Let me gang and speak to him. We mustna be ower anxious; he’s but coortin’ like the other lads. It’s no as if him and Isabel had given each other their troth. It’s but a diversion, like a’ the rest. I’ll speak to him canny, and send him away.’
‘It’s no diversion,’ said Isabel, hotly, under her breath. Margaret sat in the abstraction of her weakness between the two who were so warm with life and all its emotions, clasping her little Bible in her hands.
‘No,’ she said, softly; ‘you mistake Bell. She is not like one of the lasses at Lochhead, to meet him and speak to him for diversion, as you say. It’s different. And there’s none to guard her but me. You’re very good—you’ve always been good to us both. Don’t be angry if she’s impatient. She’s but young,’ Margaret went on, with a pathetic smile and her eyes fixed on Jean, who by this time was crying without restraint; ‘when she knows more of the world, she’ll see that you’re a good woman and have ever been a help and comfort to her and me. But I am mother and sister and all to Isabel as long as I live; and I’ll no live long, and I would like to speak a word to him. Bell, you must dry your eyes and bring the young man to me.’