‘Cheerful!’ echoed the minister.
‘Eh aye real cheerful,’ said Jean, in whose mind perpetual use and wont had subdued the force of melancholy associations. ‘When I’ve put the sofa she can see the road, and the Loch, and the steamboat, which is real diverting—and I’m aye coming and going to keep her cheery myself. She’s no to call ill. It’s but the sorrow and the weakness and a’ her trouble. We’ve no need to be alarmed about her health, he says.’
Mr. Lothian, silenced by this matter of fact treatment of the subject, went into the parlour, feeling even his own apprehensions a little calmed down.
‘I am very glad to hear you are better,’ he said.
‘Oh, yes. I never was ill to speak of. I know I never was ill,’ said Isabel, turning away her head.
‘Then perhaps the rest and quiet is all you want?’ said the minister, not knowing in his agitation what to say. And then there was a pause. There were a hundred things which he had longed to say to her, but could not when the moment thus came. He felt as if some cruel necessity was upon him to think of Margaret—to remind her that Margaret had died just where she was lying—to beg her to change her attitude, and look, which made his heart sick with terror. He had to restrain himself with an effort from suggesting to her this strange topic. And perhaps the other things he was tempted to say would have been less palatable still. At last, after a perplexed and painful pause, he brought out of his pocket the letter of which he was the unwilling bearer.
‘I have a letter for you,’ he said, ‘it was left with me last night.’
‘A letter!’ said Isabel, growing pale, and then she turned it about in her hands, and looked at it. ‘It has no address.’
‘It was put up in such haste,’ said Mr. Lothian. ‘Isabel, will you read it now, in case I can give you any explanation?—or shall I go away?’
‘It is from——’