The Loch was in full beauty when the minister and his wife returned home. It was a clear, lovely summer night, with stretches of daffodil sky over the blue hills towards the west, and a pale young moon glimpsing at herself in the water. The flowers were all bright in the Manse garden, the villagers nodding pleasant recognition, the Loch all cheerful with boats skimming like seabirds over the water. ‘This is worth London twenty times over,’ Mr. Lothian said. ‘Are you glad or sorry, Isabel, to come home?’

‘Glad,’ she said, standing by his side, looking out well pleased on the scene she knew so well. ‘But I am glad we went, too. Seeing things makes people experienced; it is like growing old. But you should not laugh at everything I say.’

‘It is not at you, my dear,’ said the minister; ‘but do not get old on my account, my darling. I like my bonnie Isabel to be young.’

‘I should like to be thirty,’ she said, with a soft laugh; ‘then I would be nearer you.’

‘You could be no nearer me,’ he said, drawing her close to him, ‘my bonnie darling! Remember always that I could not be happier, Isabel. I have the desire of my heart.{191}’

Why this little scene should have taken so solemn a tone, neither could tell. One moment they had laughed, and the very next moment he was making this little confession of supreme happiness as if for her comfort when he should be away from her. But he was not going away from her; neither was there any possibility of estrangement in their future. There was no passion in Isabel’s mind to make her exacting or difficult. She held up her soft cheek to him, and he kissed her as if she had been his daughter.

‘If we were behaving as the people do in your favourite opera,’ said the minister, ‘we would sing a duet of felicity. My dear, you’ve got a pretty, sweet little voice. I think you must learn to sing.’

‘Oh, don’t speak of that opera,’ said Isabel; ‘I hated it. The men singing about everything—even their dinner! And Lucy Ashton——’

‘My dear, it was not Lucy Ashton; it was Lucia di Lammermoor.’

‘I know; but it was meant to be all one,’ said Isabel. ‘Lucy sing like yon! Oh, they cannot tell what it is to be in despair.’

‘My darling, and how should you know?’ said the minister, looking at her with his admiring smile.

‘I don’t think I know; but I can divine,’ said Isabel; and her eyes seemed to deepen so, that her husband gazing into them could not make out their meaning. But he saw a little shudder, quite slight and momentary, pass over her. And his first thought was that she must be ill.

‘Come in,’ he said; ‘it is growing cold. How is it we have twice become so serious this pleasant night, after coming home?’

‘It is that opera; I never like to think of it,’ said Isabel, and shivered again, and went in, her husband following. It was very childish of her; and yet somehow she felt just as she had felt at the opera, as if someone were watching them—looking at their tranquil life with unkindly eyes.

Next day, Mr. Lothian stayed at home, going no further than the village to see the wives and ask after the men; and in the evening came Mr. Galbraith to resume with delight his long-interrupted ‘cracks.’ Instead of the fire they sat at the open window, Isabel gliding out and in cutting flowers, and looking after her garden. ‘There is some comfort in this—now we have got our pleasant nights back again,’ said the Dominie. ‘You saw many fine things in London, but I’ll be bound you saw nothing so bonnie as the Loch, and that young moon.{192}’

‘No,’ said Isabel; ‘nothing but streets, and churches, and ladies riding. Yet I am glad to have gone; now I will never feel ignorant when you speak. It was as good as jumping ten years.’

‘All her thought is to make herself thirty,’ said the minister, with a laugh of happiness; ‘but I tell her, Galbraith, I like her best as she is. Sometimes I think I am too happy,’ he went on as she flitted out into the garden; ‘I have everything I can desire.’

‘I never knew the feeling myself,’ said the Dominie; ‘but they say it is of kin to melancholy. No more to wish for. I cannot say I wish for much myself; but that’s no out of satisfaction, but out of despair.’

‘Despair is a hard word,’ said the minister.

‘Oh, aye; far too hard a word. I’ve not vigour enough left to nourish a passion. It’s more a sense of the impossibility of any change, and a kind of content; and, minister, I’m free to acknowledge it—I thought you were but an old fool, setting your heart on a young thing; but I see now you were a wise man.’

‘A happy one at least,’ said Mr. Lothian; ‘but it would be harder now to leave this life than ever it was before.’

‘Well, well, there’s little likelihood,’ said the Dominie, with some impatience; ‘let us be thankful—you are as likely to live till a hundred as any man I know.’

But just then Isabel came hastily up and brushed past them almost running, as if in fear.

‘I thought I saw a man in the garden,’ she said, shedding, for the first time for ever so long, a few hasty tears.

‘My darling,’ cried the minister, starting up, ‘where?’

‘Oh, down among the trees,’ she said, ‘down there—outside the garden wall. I saw the branches stir—and I thought——’

‘But, my dear, any man that likes may be on the other side of the wall,’ said her husband: ‘why should that frighten you?’

And then Isabel dried her tears. ‘It was very foolish,’ she said, ‘I know it might be anybody; but it gave me a fright—as if he were going to jump over the wall and come in to us here.’

‘And if he had?’ said the minister, smiling—till Isabel smiled too, seeing the absurdity of her alarm. But she watched anxiously when Mr. Lothian and the Dominie made the round of the garden. Of course, there was no man to be seen, and they went in and closed the windows, and talked very comfortably for an hour before they separated, with no more interest or solemnity. Mr. Lothian had to attend a meeting of Presbytery next day. This pleasant evening was the end of his holiday: and such a holiday as it had been—a poem in his life.{193}

Next morning he rode away from the Manse door, looking, his wife thought, a very picture of what a man of ‘his years’ ought to be. She had smoothed down the cambric ruffles in which she took so much interest with her own hand, and put the gold pin carefully into the clean, well-starched, daintily-crimped folds. There was not a spot upon him, nor upon the glossy hide of the horse, which was a recent acquisition, and, in the opinion of the neighbourhood, ‘too spirity a beast’ for the minister. ‘I shall be back as soon as I can,’ he said, as he turned from the door; ‘but I may be obliged to stop and dine somewhere, so don’t be alarmed, my dear, if I am late.’ And he took off his hat to his darling, and rode away saluting her as if she had been the Queen. All this adoration and tender respect had their effect upon Isabel, though she was not conscious of it. She went in and put away some of the things from the breakfast-table, the little silver tea-caddy, the pretty crystal dishes for the butter and jam, things too dainty to be touched by the hands of the servants, and put the room into more delicate order, moving about in her summer morning-dress, like a bit of light in the solid mahogany-furnished dining-room. And then she went and gave her orders for the dinner, which for that day was to be something which would not spoil by waiting, and which could be eaten cold on the morrow, if Mr. Lothian was not back in time. ‘The minister may stop to dine with the Presbytery,’ his wife said; and lingered a little in the clean, bright kitchen, hearing some scraps of news from Kirstin, and arranging about various things that had to be done. ‘If Janet gets her work finished soon, we might put up the curtains in the spare room, not to lose the day,’ said the mistress of the Manse, ‘as the minister is away.’ It was a day of leisure, with no special point in it, a day for odd little pieces of business, and the sweet silent leisure which breaks so pleasantly into the routine of a settled life.

It was about dusk in the long summer evening, when, listening for her husband’s return, and growing a little weary of her solitude, Isabel heard someone ride past the Manse gate, and a few minutes after the Dominie came in to tell her that Mr. Lothian had just passed—that he had been sent for by someone who was sick up towards Kilcranion, but did not expect to be long. ‘He dined at Maryburgh,’ the Dominie said, ‘and here’s some parcels he threw to me as he passed. If you’ll put on your hat, Mrs. Lothian, it’s a bonnie night—we might take a stroll among the heather, and meet him as he comes home?’

He had called her Mrs. Lothian scrupulously ever since{194} her marriage. Isabel went out with him, well pleased, into the soft night, which was musical with the rustle of the trees, and the splash of the water on the shore, and the voices from the village.

‘But I think it will rain,’ she said, looking up to the sky.

‘And that’s true,’ said the Dominie, turning sharp round, as a sudden blast, for which he was unprepared, came in his face. Clouds had been gathering overhead during all the evening, but now it came down all at once, with an evident intention of continuing for the rest of the night. They stood for a moment uncertain, hearing, as Isabel long remembered, the sound of the horse’s hoofs carrying her husband over the hill in the stillness of the night.

‘And nobody could run after him now with a plaid or a cloak,’ she said, throwing her gown over her head, as was the fashion of the country, to shield her from the rain.

‘He would be a clever runner that would make up to them,’ said Mr. Galbraith; ‘but after sixteen years at Loch Diarmid, a drop or two, more or less, will do him no harm.’

And then they went back into the dining-room where the lamp was lighted. The lamp did not give a very brilliant light when there was no fire to help it, and the room had a dusky look, as rooms will have of summer evenings after all the light and gladness of the day.

‘I think I will light the fire,’ said Isabel. ‘He’ll be cold, and he likes to see it. Here,’ she added, with a little pride in her London experience, ‘it is never too warm for a fire.’

‘All the better,’ said the Dominie, stretching his hands over the cheerful, crackling blaze, when Isabel had lifted away the ornaments on the hearth, and set light to the fire, which, in conformity with the necessities of the climate, was laid ready below. ‘A fire is a kind of Christian creature, and keeps a lonely man company; but, if I were you, Mrs. Lothian, considering the long day he’s had, and a wetting at the end of it, I would have ben the kettle too.’

‘And so I will,’ said Isabel, who was nowise shocked by the suggestion. The kettle was brought accordingly, and placed on the hob, where the old man contemplated it with much satisfaction; and she opened her press, and brought out the silver liqueur-stand which had been Mr. Galbraith’s present to her on her marriage, and the silver sugar-basin, and the toddy ladles, and all that was necessary. She was so pleased with her pretty silver things that it was a pleasure to her to have to take them{195} out, and see them reflecting the light on the table; and the fire began to brighten up all the dark corners of the room, and to glance upon her pretty hair, which reflected it, and her ornaments, which made little gleams about her as she went and came.

‘And a lucky man he is to have such a home-coming,’ the Dominie said, half to himself, with a growl which he intended for a sigh. And Isabel smiled without taking any further notice, seeing herself pass in the glass on the mantelpiece with all the reflections about her, and all the ruddy light dancing about the room; better tha............