Isabel’s recovery was slow and tedious. The strain, both of body and mind, had been so great, and her spirit was so broken, that it was often in doubt whether the uncertain balance would be for death or life.

The parish had waited, after the first flash of wonder was over, with patience scarcely to be looked for, for the explanation which might be expected on her recovery. And the little circle round her had specially cherished this hope, as was natural. Miss Catherine, in her higher degree, and Jean Campbell and her friends, waited with{312} calm, knowing that the revelation must first be made to them. ‘Don’t weary yourself, my dear,’ said the former. ‘I will wait your own time.’ But Isabel made no reply to this insinuated question. She ignored their wonder with a silent resolution which it was difficult to make any head against. ‘When you have anything to say to me, you know I am always at your service, Isabel,’ Miss Catherine added, a week after she had first signified her readiness to listen. ‘Thank you,’ Isabel had said, faintly; but she said nothing more. Then Jean made an attempt in her own way.

‘My bonnie woman,’ said Jean, ‘eh, it’s pleasant to see ye in your ain house again, as I never thought to see you! But you’ll no bide? I canna expect it, I ken that. And, oh! how we’ll miss you, the bairns and me.’

‘I mean to stay if you will let me,’ said Isabel, whose pale cheek always flushed when this subject was propounded. ‘Margaret and me.’

‘Let you!’ cried Jean: ‘and dearly welcome. As if it wasna your own house and hers, the bonnie lamb! But it’s mair than I could expect that you should stay.’

Isabel made no answer. She treated Jean’s artful address as a mere remark, and no question. Her face would be a shade sadder; her eye more languid all the evening after—but that was all.

Perhaps, of all the eager, curious people about her, the one most difficult to silence was the Dominie, who had taken to coming across the braes every evening while Isabel was so ill, and now found it difficult to give up the habit. He would sit opposite to her in the little parlour while the spring evening lengthened, and watch her words and her looks with an inquisition which he could not restrain. ‘It’s like old times to have ye back,’ the Dominie would say: and a faint smile would be Isabel’s answer. She was always at work now—reading much—trying to teach herself a variety of new accomplishments, labouring at a dozen different pursuits with a pathetic earnestness that went to her visitor’s heart.

‘What do you want with all these books?’ he said, as he sat at the parlour window looking out upon the darkling Loch.

‘To learn,’ she said. They were some of the minister’s old Italian books, of which he had been so fond.

‘To learn!—what for? It’s an accomplishment will be of little use to you,’ said the Dominie; ‘unless it is there you are going when you leave here.’

‘It is for Margaret,’ said Isabel, with a quivering lip—‘I would like her to learn when she is old enough what her father knew.{313}’

‘Ah, that’s a good thought,’ said the Dominie, taken by surprise; and then he added, ‘But you cannot give your life to little Margaret—nor carry such things about with you through the world.’

‘I will have time enough here,’ she said, under her breath.

‘But, my dear!—we cannot expect you will be here all your life—that would be good for us, but ill for you.’

‘And why should it be ill for me?’

‘Isabel! I must go back to your old name,’ said the Dominie; ‘I cannot call you by that lad’s name. Are you another man’s wife, or are ye no?’

And then the self-sustained creature, who had resisted so many attempts to penetrate her secret, fell into a passion of sudden tears.

‘I am his wife,’ she cried, ‘but I will never see him again. Call me Isabel, or call me by my good man’s name; and ask me no more.’

Strong as the Dominie’s curiosity was, he could not persist in face of this appeal and of the tears which accompanied it; but he carried the news to Miss Catherine, who day by day became more perplexed and more anxious to know the real state of affairs. His partial success inspired the old lady. Next day she went up to the Gleb............