CHAPTER XXIV
When Isabel found herself once more in the drawing-room at Lochhead, it wrought the most curious change upon her. She sat almost silent, while Miss Catherine and the minister talked, but with a mind awaking to all the influences about her—the grace, the superior softness, the refinement of the place. Life here must, it seemed to Isabel, be a different thing from the life she had always known. There were books of all kinds about, and her appetite for books was great, though as yet it had been but scantily supplied. The ample window gave an amount of atmosphere and breadth to the room, which Isabel perceived by instinct, without knowing how it was. It was very nearly the same view as that from the parlour window at the Glebe, and she could not tell what made the difference; unless indeed it was the superior grandeur, splendour, amplitude of the life. There were a hundred resources within, which were impossible at her lower level of existence, and a much widened perception of the world without. She had no notion that it was the old furniture and the great windows which impressed this so strangely upon her. It was something in the atmosphere, the expanded breathing, and hearing, and seeing of a larger life.
And as the minister accompanied her home, Isabel, unawares, fell into a little self-revelation. ‘You can see the same view out of the village windows,’ she said, ‘and from the Glebe; but the Loch is grander and the braes are higher, and away down to Clyde is like a picture—I don’t know how it is.’
‘You like it better than the Glebe?’
‘I cannot tell,’ said Isabel; ‘it is so different; and so many things to fill your life. I think I would never tire reading; but then I know my books off by heart, and reading them is little good. And there’s always a seam. I know a seam is right,’ said Isabel, with decision; ‘I did not mean that.’
‘But sometimes you would like something else,’ he said, growing foolish as he looked at her; and finding something half-divine in her girlish simplicity.
‘I don’t know,’ she said; ‘I have made up my mind to be content. But still one has eyes, and one can see it is different. I never thought—of such things—before.’ And a rush of tears came to her pensive eyes.
Mr. Lothian left her finally at the door of the Glebe, and found himself in such a state of attendrissement that he rushed in once more upon Miss Catherine as he passed the house. ‘Life is beginning to stir within her,’ he said with excitement; ‘she is feeling that all is not over and past. The sight of you has done her good.’
‘The sight of me is not difficult to be had,’ said Miss Catherine, ‘though it’s early yet, after a death, to get good from the like of that.’
‘She is so young,’ said the minister, ‘her mind goes quicker than yours and mine. Not that she grieves less; but everything goes quicker—the days, and the events, and the beats of the heart.’