This state of things could not go on for ever. Miss Catherine, who had made a hundred vain exertions to draw her young kinswoman to her house, and out of all the melancholy associations of her own, at last became seriously alarmed about Isabel. And the minister, who all the winter through had been indulging himself in such hopes, slowly woke to a perception of the absorbed looks, the languor, the wandering of her eye, and the paleness of her cheeks. She was very soft to him and gentle, accepting his kindness as she had never done before, looking up to him in a way which filled him with a thousand fond dreams. She had done this with unconscious selfishness, because she wanted the support of affection and kindness, not with any thought of him.{155} She was struggling along her solitary way with so much expenditure of strength and life that it would have seemed hard to Isabel to deny herself that comfort on the road, the anxious devotion that surrounded her like a soft atmosphere. And yet she did not mean to be selfish; but by and by they all found out that her strength and heart were failing her. ‘I canna tell what it is,’ Jean said, with her apron to her eyes; ‘she’ll sit for hours on the hill, and syne she’ll come home that worn, she hasna a word for one of us; and her eyes ay wandering miles away, as if she were looking for somebody. I canna tell what it is.’

‘It cannot be any of their wild notions,’ said Miss Catherine, anxiously, ‘of Margaret coming back from the grave.’

‘Na, na, she has a’ her senses,’ said Jean; ‘she’ll look as pleased now and then when she sees the minister coming up the brae.’

Mr. Lothian’s cheek flushed, but he shook his head. ‘Alas! it is not for me,’ he said; and yet a little secret hope that perhaps it pleased her to watch his approach crept into his heart.

‘It canna be that English lad she’s thinking of,’ said Miss Catherine; and Mr. Lothian, struck as with a sudden chill, raised his head and fixed his eyes anxiously on Jean’s face.

‘She never mentions his name,’ said Jean. ‘I’ve reason to think she was awfu’ angry at him. The time she fainted she let fall words in her sleep—Na, it canna be that.’

‘Provided it is not her health,’ said Miss Catherine; and Jean again raised her apron to her eyes.

‘I darena say it even to mysel,’ she cried. ‘I will not say it: but, O Miss Catherine, that’s my dread night and day. I try to shut my eyes, but I canna forget that our Margaret was much the same. You ken weel she was a perfect saint, and it was prayer and the Book that filled her mind. But at first, when her illness was coming on, she would sit like that—and look and look! It makes me that sick when I think o’t, that I canna sit and look at the other one going the same gait. I canna do it. I think it will break my heart.’

‘The same gait!’ said the minister, raising a blanched face of woe, ‘the same road as—Margaret? No, no—don’t say so. It cannot be!’

But both the women shook their heads.

‘I canna be mistaken, that hae watched them baith,’ said Jean, with her apron to her eyes.

‘And we all know it’s in the family,’ said Miss Catherine, sinking her voice to solemnity.{156}

There came a sudden groan out of the minister’s breast. He turned away from them to the other end of the room, with a pang to which he could give no expression. No, no—God could not do it: it was impossible. Margaret—yes—whose visionary soul was fixed on heaven from her cradle; but Isabel, impetuous, faulty, sweet human creature, whose presence made the whole world bright. No, no; after all, God had some regard for the hopes and wishes of His creatures: He would not thwart and trample upon their hearts like this.

‘It’s in the family,’ repeated Miss Catherine. ‘Her mother, my kinswoman, Margaret Diarmid, was not five-and-twenty—and her sister younger still; and that branch of the family is extinct, you may say, barring Isabel. But so far as flesh and blood can strive, I’ll fight for the lassie’s life.’

Mr. Lothian had no power of speech left; but he came to her and took her hands in his, and pressed them with a look of gratitude such as no words could express.

‘She shall not be lost if I can help it,’ repeated Miss Catherine. ‘It may be a kind of brag to say, but there are many things that can be done when you take it in time. Leave her to me, Mr. Lothian, and do not break your heart.’

This conversation took place while Isabel was absent on one of her usual visits to the hill. When the minister had left them, Miss Catherine turned to Jean and began to inquire into the girl’s symptoms.

‘She has no cough,’ she said; ‘I have noticed that. But now that man is gone, tell me, Jean Campbell, are ye sure it’s not a pining for yon English lad?’

‘I canna tell,’ said Jean doubtfully, shaking her head. ‘Whiles I hae my doubts. She had ay a craving about the post at first. That’s past. But if she hears a footstep sudden in the road, or maybe a neighbour, coming in for a crack, lifting the latch at the outer door, she gives a start that drives me wild; but she never names him. And there were some words she let drop——’

‘Don’t tell me of words,’ said Miss Catherine. ‘It was her first love, and there’s nothing in this world she’ll not forgive him. That’s it. And now I see what I must do.’

But nothing was done that day, nor for several weeks after. It was, as so often happens, the very crisis of Isabel’s affairs on which they first discussed the question. When she came home that evening she was ill. The spring winds were cold, and she had taken a chill on the wet braes; and for some weeks every symptom which could most afflict her friends made its appearance. It was whispered in the Loch, with much shaking of heads, that the Captain’s Isabel was soon to{157} follow her sister: that she had fallen into ‘a decline;’ that she had never recovered Margaret’s death; and even that the twin sisters had but one life between them according to the common superstition, and that the one could not long outlive the other. These prognostications reached the minister’s ears, moving him to a misery of which the people who caused it had not the remotest conception. On the whole the parish, though deeply grieved, enjoyed talking this matter over; and even Jean Campbell, though her heart, as she said, was breaking, had long consultations with Miss Catherine, and with Jenny Spence, and many other anxious visitors, touching the resemblance between Isabel’s illness and the beginning of Margaret’s. She was rather bent, indeed, on making this out to be the case, although her tears flowed at every suggestion of danger to her remaining charge.

‘Her cough has taken no hold of her; she’ll shake it off,’ said Miss Catherine.

‘I mind when Margaret’s was no more than that,’ Jean would answer, shaking her head. And notwithstanding the profound pain which the thought of any approaching misfortune to Isabel gave them, there was almost a degree of mournful enjoyment in the comparing of notes and exchanges of confidences which took place among the nurses. But the effect was very different upon the minister. The mere thought of danger to her acted upon him like a temptation to blasphemy. In such a case what would remain to him but to curse God and die? Wherever he went, people met him with questions. ‘Have you heard how the Captain’s Isabel is the day?’ ‘Eh, I thought she would gang like her sister.’ ‘Ye see twins, ye never can separate them in life or death.’ Such were the comments he was in the daily habit of hearing; and they stung him so that every day was full of torture—pain which, after the bright dreams he had been indulging in, was doubly hard to bear.

But as it turned out the pain was unnecessary. Isabel had caught cold, her body being susceptible at all points, and her mind unhinged—just such a cold as might, had her constitution been weaker, have ended as Margaret’s had done. Jean was right in her diagnosis—just as Isabel’s illness began Margaret’s had begun: there had been, even to some extent, the same cause. The shock which Mr. John’s love, and the painful interruption of it had given her, had unstrung Margaret’s strength just as Stapylton’s absence had done her sister. But there the resemblance stopped. The elder sister’s constitution was feeble and Isabel’s was strong, and other influences besides that of disappointed love had come in, in{158} Margaret’s case. The shock had struck at all the delicacies of her nature, and made her sick of the life in which such thoughts could be. And her contemplative nature, her visionary heart had taken refuge in heaven; but with Isabel it was not so. Her illness, though it lasted only for a few weeks, looked like an interval of months or years. It put Stapylton at a distance from her. So long a............