Jean was looking out in the opposite direction, somewhat anxious for her stepdaughter’s return. She was standing at the cottage-door with Baby Margaret in her arms, straining her eyes along the vacant road, and full of anxiety. She gave a suppressed scream when Isabel came noiselessly up behind her, and, without saying a word, clutched at the child and took it out of her arm.
‘God bless us, I thought it was a ghost!’ she cried. ‘Oh, Isabel, you’re like death. It’s been more than you can bear.’
‘I am tired,’ said Isabel, holding her child close with a vehemence which terrified the little creature; and as she looked at her stepmother, the pallor gave way to a{244} sudden, overpowering flush. Her eyes fell before the good woman’s anxious, searching look. She turned away, still holding her child strained to her heart. She could not trust herself to meet Jean’s eyes, or even her baby’s. Could she ever venture to look anyone in the face again?
‘It’s a long walk,’ said Jean, anxiously, following her in, ‘and you’ve come the long way round by the braes; and it’s been too much for you. Oh, Isabel, my bonnie woman! it’s brought everything back to your mind.’
‘It did not need the sight of Ailie to do that,’ said Isabel, scarcely knowing what she said. ‘Do things ever go out of one’s mind?’
And she held her child closer than ever, and hid her face in Margaret’s frock. It did not occur to her that she was betraying herself even by the passionate strain of that embrace. Jean gazed at her alarmed, noting every change in her face, the sudden flush and pallor, the inward-looking eyes, the reluctance to meet her own affectionate, anxious gaze.
‘Was she awfu’ changed?’ she asked.
‘Changed—whom?’ said Isabel, with a little start. She had scarcely uttered the words when she recollected herself. Ailie had been driven entirely out of her mind by the after event; the scene which had made so deep an impression on her before she met Stapylton was half effaced from her very recollection. It rose upon her dimly as she tried to remember. ‘Oh, yes, very much changed,’ she said, and stopped short, unable to revive her own interest in a matter so faint and far away.
‘Do you think she’s happy?’ asked Jean.
Strange to think anyone could be so inquisitive! Why should she be forced to pause and recall an experience so distant? ‘I don’t know,’ said Isabel; ‘how can anybody tell? People are happy sometimes when they ought not to be happy, and miserable when they have no reason to be miserable. Am I the judge?—or how can I tell?’
‘But dear me, Isabel, you were awfu’ anxious about her,’ cried Jean, affronted; ‘and would give nobody any peace till ye had been to see her. And now it seems ye dinna care.’
‘Oh, yes, I care; if you would let me rest and be quiet, and not ask me anything now!’
Half offended, wondering, and disturbed, Jean looked at the speaker. It was very clear that Ailie had but little to do with Isabel’s excitement. This sudden irritation and impatience reminded her of the old times before her stepdaughter had been subdued by the events of life, or had learned to control herself. Mrs. Lothian had not been guilty of those movements of temper and impetuous{245} feeling which were so lively in Isabel Diarmid. Was it that some other subtle change had come, setting at nought the work of experience, and bringing back the original natural condition of the girl’s restless, vivacious soul? Jean did not ask herself so elaborate a question, but the substance of it was in her mind. She said no more, but went softly about the room, putting in order things which needed no arrangement, and watching secretly her stepdaughter’s looks. Isabel took no notice of what she was doing. As soon as she was left to herself she relieved Baby Margaret from the close strain against her breast which had terrified the child, and began to kiss her passionately and pour forth over her inarticulate murmurs of tenderness. Such an outburst of compunctious caresses was as significant as the other strange appearances in her. ‘As if she had done the innocent bairn some harm,’ Jean said to herself. And what could it mean? Isabel would not let no hand but her own touch her child during the remainder of the day. She made no further comment upon her visit to Ardnamore, but occupied herself wholly with little Margaret, talking to her, caressing her, controlling her baby will—having even, for the first time in her life, a little struggle and contest with the child, who perhaps felt by instinct the state of excitement in which its mother was. Jean looked on without interfering, with curious, grave scrutiny and alarm. When the infant was naughty, and cried, and struggled, she kept behind not to put herself in the way. But many speculations were in her mind, and some of them not far from the truth.
Jean had taken fright, though she could not herself have told why. For one thing, she was aware of Stapylton’s presence in the parish, and thought of him as of a prowling enemy. But it was difficult for her to associate Isabel’s strange abstractions, her passionate devotion to her child, and all the signs of suppressed agitation about her, with the reappearance of her former lover. Jean had passed the period at which people realise vividly such conflicts of the heart. It seemed to her more likely that Isabel’s calm had been disturbed by all the recollections which the sight of Ailie must have brought to her, than that Mr. Lothian’s widow could have been agitated or excited by the appearance of any man under the sun. ‘Yon English lad’ had never been good enough for ‘our Isabel’ in her stepmother’s eyes; and that she could think of him now seemed well-nigh impossible. But yet something was wrong; and as soon as Isabel had left the house, Jean sent her son on an errand across the braes to the Dominie to beg his help and counsel. Jamie was too late to find ‘the Maister.{246}’ He had gone out on one of the long walks with which, now summer had come, he endeavoured to make up to himself for the want of his friend and companion. But, notwithstanding the failure of this messenger, Mr. Galbraith heard the news more distinctly than Jean could have informed him, or than she herself knew. The smithy was still open when he returned home in the twilight, and had as usual a little band collected in it of men, observers upon humanity and critics of its wondrous ways. John Macwhirter himself, with his shirt-sleeves rolled up, was in front of the group, doing nothing, for it was warm, and it was near even his time for closing. He was rubbing his great hands together, looking meditatively into the summer air; but the observation that fell from his lips was not an original one. ‘Women are queer beings,’ was all that he said.
‘I see nothing que............