‘Isabel!’ said Ailie, dreamily; she was sitting on the side of her bed, pondering over her little Bible. ‘Oh, aye, mother, I’m glad to see her; if she’ll come ben.’
‘Let me speak to her alone,’ Isabel had begged at the door; and the mother, half pleased yet half doubtful, withdrew with wistful looks. If perhaps the mission of the mourner might be to reconcile Ailie with the wonderful match she was making; and yet, again, a fanciful young girl might do her harm.
‘I’ve come to speak to you before it is all over,’ said Isabel. ‘O, Ailie, you mind what you said to me? You are not happy. You are not looking happy; and yet they say you’re to be married——’
‘The morn,’ said Ailie, mechanically.
‘To-morrow!’ repeated Isabel, carefully choosing her words, to be more impressive; ‘and yet you are not happy. Ailie, Ailie, it must not be!’
‘What’s God’s will must be,’ she said; ‘happy is neither here nor there;’ and began again to turn over the leaves of the small Bible she held in her hands.
‘He is going to take you away,’ said Isabel, ‘where none of your friends perhaps will ever see you more; where you will be all alone with none but him, and no love for him in your heart. Oh, Ailie, listen! you will hate him if ye cannot love him. I could not rest; I’ve been in no strange house till now since—but I could not rest. Oh, Ailie, God would not have you to be miserable; that can never be His will. You are wiser than me, but you have ay been thinking of other folk, and not of what was in your own heart.’
‘Little but deceitfulness and wickedness,’ said Ailie, musing, ‘well I know; and a root of bitterness in the best. But, Isabel, there’s no a word to say. It’s no in my own hands. It was settled and ordained before you or me were born.’
‘And nothing will make you change your mind?’
‘It’s no my mind I’m speaking of,’ she said, with a half-despairing smile; ‘if it was me to decide! But whisht! whisht! and say no more; my mother is coming. I’ve had ill thoughts and thankless thoughts, and you’ve seen them, Isabel; but I’m the handmaid o’ the Lord, and it’s no to His glory to betray my weakness—no even to my mother.’