A loud rap came to the knocker of the front door, and Nan’s hands went flying to her hair in soft inquiries; back to her face came its colour.
It was Young Islay. He came into the room with two strides from the stair-head and a very genteel obeisance to the lady, a conceit of fashion altogether foreign to glens, but that sent her back in one dart of fancy to the parlour of Edinburgh, back to the warm town, back to places of gaiety, and youth, and enterprise, back to soft manners, the lip gossiping at the ear, shoes gliding upon waxen floors, music, dance, and mirth. Her heart throbbed as to a revelation, and she could have taken him in her arms for the sake of that brave life he indicated.
His eyes met hers whenever he entered, and he could not draw them away till hers, wavering before him, showed him he was daring. He turned and shook hands with the General, and muttered some commonplace, then back again he came to that pleasant face so like and yet so unlike the face he had known when a boy.
“You’ll hardly know each other,” said the father, amused at this common interest. “Isn’t she a most elderly person to be the daughter of so young and capable a man?”
Young Islay ranged his mind for a proper compliment, but for once he was dumb; in all the oft-repeated phrases of his gallant experiences there was no sentiment to do justice to a moment like this. “I am delighted to meet you again,” he said slowly, his mind confused with a sense of the inadequacy of the thing and the inexplicable feelings that crowded into him in the presence of a girl who, three years ago, would have no more disturbed him than would his sister. She was the first to recover from the awkwardness of the moment.
“I was just wishing I had on another gown,” she said more frankly than she felt, but bound to give utterance to the last clear thought in her mind. “I had an idea we might have callers.”
“You could have none that became you better,” said the lad boldly, feasting upon her charms of lip and eye. And now he was the soldier—free, bold, assured.
“What? In the way of visitors,” laughed her father, and she flushed again.
“I spoke of the gown,” said Young Islay (and he had not yet seen it, it might have been red or blue for all he could tell). “I spoke of the gown; if it depends on that for you to charm your company, you should wear no other.”
“A touch of the garrison, but honest enough to be said before the father!” thought General Turner.