Front matter (continued 4)

"I hope that you will not think I presume if I ask what is going to become of you in the immediate future," said Rosmead presently. "Will you go back to London with your uncle, as he seems to expect?"

"No, I shall simply go back to Creagh," she answered steadily.

Rosmead was silent for a moment, trying to picture the life she would lead there, alone and without occupation, in the company of her brother from whom her heart was estranged.

"To Creagh? It seems impossible! I can't bear to think of you there. It is unthinkable!"

"Oh, no--nothing is unthinkable, or even impossible. People can do anything in this world--anything," she answered. "I have proved it."

"Then, shall I find you at Creagh when I come back?" he asked with an odd persistence, his eyes cleaving to her face.

A tremor ran over it, and had he but known it the opportunity was his. Her heart turned--nay, cried out to him. Had he spoken the word then she would have gone away with him without a question or a doubt.

But he blundered on, longing for her mightily, yet wholly afraid, believing that he dared not begin to woo her until he had given her heart time to recover from its present shock.

Some one tapped lightly at the door.

"It is au revoir, then, not good-bye," he said with an effort, and held out his hand.

She gave hers to his warm, kindly clasp, and her eyes, over which the veil had already fallen, uplifted themselves to his.

"I hope it is, but six months is a long time in life. So many things can happen. I hope you will have a safe journey and a successful issue to all your affairs, and--and that the difficulties you spoke of will all be swept from your path."

"Some of them are big enough. But when I come back I will address myself to the biggest undertaking of my life, and the dearest."

The door was opened, and Malcolm's voice announced that the motor was waiting outside.

Rosmead raised her hand to his lips and turned away, scarcely master of himself.

Isla spoke no more. But, for once in his life, Peter Rosmead had erred on the side of caution. The incomparable chance had been his, and he had passed it by.

When the door had closed upon them Isla leaned her head against the black oak of the window shutters, and a little sobbing breath that was almost a cry, broke from her lips.

Her last prop had gone, but none knew--least of all the man whose one desire on earth was to take her to his heart.

CHAPTER XIV

FAMILY COUNSELS

"And now," said Sir Tom with a large and partially reproachful cheerfulness, "we had better address ourselves to the future of you two children and try to find out just where we are."

He was neither unfeeling nor unsympathetic, but his opinion was that grief and the lassitude which treads close upon it should in due season have an end. The affairs of life cannot stand still, even when death intervenes. They can only be held in abeyance for a little space.

Now that Mackinnon, full of years and honour and followed by the lamentations and the love of all his people, rich and poor, had been carried to his last rest, he must become a tender memory to those who were left.

They had dined together quite alone, and now they sat in the library, where pipe and tobacco and cigars were on the table, as yet, however, untouched.

Sir Tom was getting his pipe ready a trifle absently, his eyes fixed on his niece's face. He was troubled about her. Her white face and her deep, grief-haunted eyes, which no man could fathom, disconcerted and disturbed him. He loved her dearly, but he did not always understand her. Malcolm's apparently simpler nature was better within his grasp and ken.

It was assuredly Malcolm's place, as the head of the house, to make some suggestion or statement, but silence lay upon him heavily, and he seemed ill at ease.

"Has neither of you anything to say? I must be going back to London to-morrow, if I have to go alone. I'll wait till Wednesday, if I am to take Isla. What do you say, my dear?"

Isla, a slim, black figure with white, nervous hands interlaced upon her lap, lifted her eyes to his face from where she sat at the other side of the fireplace.

"No, thank you, Uncle Tom, I will not go to London just now."

"But, my dear, your aunt will scold me no end if I don't bring you. Her last words were that I was to bring you back with me. If she had been well enough nothing would have kept her from Achree just now--and you know it. But I left her in bed, and the doctor forbade the journey. It is nothing serious, only requiring a little care. Fact is, these monkeys have been running her off her feet lately. Three or four o'clock every morning before she got to her bed after their dancing and nonsense. The life of a chaperon in the London season is not a happy one."

"Give Aunt Jean my love, and tell her I can't come just now. Later, perhaps----"

"Later! Heaven only knows where we may be later. Your aunt talks of some seaside place on the Brittany or Normandy coast--some God-forsaken hole, where a man can't get a decent meal of meat. Gad, what it is to be hard-up! Well, and if you won't come to us may I ask without impertinence where you do propose to go?"

"Back to the Lodge at Creagh for a few days at least."

"And after the few days--eh, what?" asked Sir Tom, leaning forward a little, with serious concern in his big, kindly, rather innocent blue eyes.

She made no answer, though Malcolm from where he stood leaning against the fireplace seemed to wait a little eagerly for what she might say.

"Speak to her, Malcolm! She has aye been a high-handed miss, doing that which seemed right in her own eyes. You are the head of the house now. Can't you put your foot down and bid her come with me to your aunt and your cousins? It's where she ought to be in these days, among a lot of kindly, busy women-folk."

"It's what I think, Uncle Tom," said Malcolm in a low voice. "But, as you say, nobody can dictate to Isla. She will go her own way."

"Then, may I ask what you propose to do?" asked Uncle Tom, suddenly directing his attention to his nephew. "Of course, for a few days or weeks there will be things to see to. But, with Cattanach at your back, they should not take very long to wind up. And with the American folk coming back to Achree there's nothing for you to do here. I don't suppose you'll be long content, hanging about the Lodge and the Moor of Creagh."

Malcolm had no answer for a moment, and the silence seemed to grow.

"Why can't you speak--one of you?" asked Uncle Tom a trifle testily. "I like folks to show some common-sense, and you have both seen this coming for long enough. It's not to be thought that you haven't had plans for the future."

"I haven't any plans," Malcolm admitted.

This answer incensed the old man extremely. He looked at the strong, well-knit figure of his nephew in the full prime and strength of his young manhood with critical displeasure.

"Then the sooner you get some, my man, the better it will be for you. It is a thousand pities that you resigned your commission when you did, and since it is somebody to make a proposition that you seem to need, mine is that you apply to the proper authorities and get back to the army as soon as possible. It's undoubtedly the very best thing you can do."

The silence deepened. It was broken by the falling of a glowing log from the bars to the hearth, and, under pretence of restoring it to the grate, Isla moved and bent towards it.

"I never approved of what you did," went on Sir Tom, "and if anybody's advice had been asked it would never have been permitted. I don't like back-draughts, but I can't help saying now, as we're discussing family business, that I'm sure that your father would have been the very last man to have sanctioned your sending in your papers--that is to say, if he'd been in his full mind and faculties. And I think that the best tribute of respect you can show to his memory is to get back to the army as soon as possible and try to follow in the steps of the finest fellow and the bravest soldier that ever earned a sword."

It was a long speech for Sir Tom to make, and at the end he cleared his throat and dashed something from his eyes. He was glad to have got this off his chest--as he might have expressed it. It had lain heavily there for some time; in fact, ever since he had been able to grasp the full significance of his nephew's action. To him it seemed disastrous, unnecessary, and foolish in the extreme. For if a man cannot afford to live on his estate, or if it does not offer him sufficient occupation, surely it were infinitely better for him to take up some honourable calling in which he would have a chance to rise and to distinguish himself.

The Mackinnons, at least the handful that was left, had all been proud of the gallant old General, and, now that it was open to his son to carry on the fine traditions of the race, it seemed incredible and discreditable that he should not be willing and eager to do it.

"I can't do that, Uncle Tom," said Malcolm, shifting uneasily from one foot to another. "I've left the army for good."

"But that's no reason why you shouldn't go back. If representations to the proper quarter were made, I can't see any insuperable obstacles in the way. Can you, Isla?"

She made no answer, and he went on.

"I'll do what I can. I'll go to the Commander-in-Chief myself, if you're such a baby over it, Malcolm, and lay the whole facts of the case before him. No reasonable man would refuse to make an open door somewhere for you, and I don't believe he would--eh, Malcolm?"

"I can't go back, Uncle Tom. Please, say no more about it."

"I'd like to hear a word from Isla on the subject," said Uncle Tom. "I can't make you out, lassie. I have never thought of you as a person without opinions. You have an opinion about this, of course, and a pretty strong one, I could take my affidavit. Let us hear it. Now's the time, for if you won't travel with me to London, I must go south to-morrow."

"It is a matter for Malcolm entirely, Uncle Tom," she said, rising with a sudden sweep to her feet. "Do you mind if I say good-night? I am very tired, and last night I had no sleep. I'll be up bright and early for you to-morrow morning, though, of course, it will only be the two o'clock train you want to catch at Stirling. It will set you down in London before eleven."

"That will do. You're in a hurry, however--and my last night, too! But certainly you look tired, lass," said the old man, and he kissed her with a very real tenderness.

She nodded to Malcolm, said good-night briefly, and went to the door, which her uncle opened for her.

When he had closed it he turned full face to Malcolm.

"There's something the matter with the bairn, Malcolm. What is there between her and you? Have you quarrelled about anything?"

"Nothing special--only we don't hit it off, Uncle Tom," said Malcolm, turning round with evident relief and reaching for the cigars.

"Then the sooner you begin to hit it off the better," said Sir Tom severely. "It's not decent to behave as you are doing. How do you propose to live together in the Lodge of Creagh, even for a little while, if you feel like that?"

"Give it up!" said Malcolm.

And it was as if his whole body and spirit had relaxed now that some strain was removed.

"There was a dryness between us about the letting of Achree," resumed Malcolm, seeing that the old man was still staring intently at him, as if waiting to be enlightened. "Of course, I didn't like it. After all, it was my business, wasn't it, Uncle Tom? And Isla took it all upon herself. See how it has complicated things just now!"

"Yes, but the American money is very good," said Uncle Tom drily. "Barras would be a howling wilderness without it."

"I daresay that Isla and I would have pulled through without it, and I could have occupied myself in looking after the place. It wants a lot of pulling together, Uncle Tom. Everything is slack, and the tenants don't pay what they might--not one of them."

"You can't take the breeks off a Hielandman, lad," was the dry response. "But it's about Isla I'm chiefly concerned. You can very well fend for yourself. You'll have to make proper provision for her, Malcolm. Whoever suffers, she must have enough to live upon. She isn't one who requires much, but providing for her must be your first duty. I don't doubt that you will do it."

"I'll do the fair thing, of course. We'll have to have a talk, I suppose. I do wish she would go with you to London, if it were only for a few days. I could come to fetch her later. It would clear the air."

"She won't--you can see that in the eyes of her. There's something back of it all--God knows what--and I suppose you'll have to fight it out your two selves. But you'll be very gentle with her, Malcolm, for to-night she looks the most forlorn creature on the face of God's earth."

He blew his nose as he said this, and he begged Malcolm to bring him a peg of whisky. They waxed more confidential over their drink, of which, however, Malcolm partook very abstemiously. Drink had never been his besetting sin.

About eleven Sir Tom went off to bed, a little reassured concerning the affairs of the Achree Mackinnons and having no doubt whatever but that Malcolm would do his duty.

Malcolm certainly at this moment wished to do it, if only he knew how. He didn't want to leave Glenogle, still less did he want to live under one roof with his sister. If she refused to leave the Glen he would have no alternative but to go, and what would be the upshot of it all?

Near to midnight he was still pondering this mighty and seemingly insoluble problem when the library door was silently pushed open and Isla in a white dressing-gown, with her long hair tied lightly back and hanging loosely on her shoulders, came in. Her face looked ghastly pale against the whiteness of her wrap, and her eyes were shining like stars.

"I heard Uncle Tom go up to bed, Malcolm, and I thought I'd better come down."

"The fire has gone low," he said, as he sprang up to vacate the most comfortable chair. "Here's a log. We'll get a blaze in a minute. Sit down here."

She sat down on the extreme edge of the chair and watched him a little wistfully while he attended to the fire.

"I thought, perhaps, we had better have a little talk about what we are going to do," she said a trifle unsteadily. "There is nothing but Creagh. The question is--Can it hold us both?"

"Don't speak like that, Isla," he said almost pleadingly. "But really Uncle Tom's plan is the best, considering all things. Couldn't you make up your mind even yet to go to London with him, if it were only for a few days?"

Isla shook her head.

"I couldn't, Malcolm. Aunt Jean and the girls would drive me crazy just now. Don't even mention it again. I--I just want to ask you whether it wouldn't be better to tell Uncle Tom the truth about how you left the army before he goes to-morrow? You know how impulsive he is. He will think nothing of going straight to the War Office or to the Commander-in-Chief, if he can find him, the moment he gets back to London."

Malcolm's face fell.

"By Jove, so he might! I never thought of that. But, hang it all, Isla, I can't tell him."

"Let me do it, then. Don't you see anything would be better in the circumstances than that he should make a fuss? It would make you look such a fool, and it would certainly result in newspaper paragraphs which, through the great kindness of Colonel Martindale, have never appeared."

"I'll see in the morning. I'll be driving him to the station. Anyhow, I'll impress on him that the matter must on no account be opened up again--that nothing would induce me to go back to the army," said Malcolm, whose policy all through life had ever been to find the easiest way out.

Isla dropped the subject. For the first time since her father's death she had schooled herself to try to speak of it naturally.

"As you let Achree to the Rosmeads for the longer term, what are you going to do? It's impossible that you can live at Creagh for an indefinite time and without an object."

"I want a little while in which to look round, Isla. I must have at least six months to inquire into things. I'm going up to Glasgow on Monday to go over everything with Cattanach. I must see whether the profits of the place cannot be increased in some directions. I can be busy enough for the next six months at least in getting the whole thing into shape. After that I must try to get a berth of some kind. Rosmead was recommending the Argentine. By the time he comes back I shall be in a position to go thoroughly into the prospects there."

"And in the meantime, then, you will live at Creagh?"

"I thought of doing so. I am sorry for your sake that it isn't Achree. But I had no hand in that. You shut yourself out, so to speak."

She leaned her elbow on her knee, dropped her chin, which had become sadly sharpened of late, on her hand, and looked across the space of the fireplace at him with the same wistful expression in her eyes.

"Malcolm, you'll try and pay off that money? When father was able to understand things it worried him most frightfully whenever he thought about the mortgage. For his sake, promise me that you will try to pay it off."

"Why, of course I will--the whole of the Rosmead money will go to that," he answered lightly. "It won't take much to keep me at Creagh--or both of us, for the matter of that. But, of course, a bachelor establishment could be run more cheaply."

"There couldn't be anything much cheaper than Creagh with Margaret Maclaren and Diarmid to do the work," said Isla drily. "But I won't remain long there to be a burden on you, Malcolm. I must go out and find something to do for myself."

"Oh, nonsense," he said loftily. "The only condition on which I should let you leave Creagh would be that you go either to Barras or abroad with them. So don't let us talk any more about that. And, really, Isla, if only you'll be a bit reasonable and not too hard on a fellow, we might have a fairly good time even at Creagh. The Rosmeads are more than inclined to be kind, and there isn't any reason why we shouldn't avail ourselves of what they offer. Then, of course, there are the Drummonds. What ails Neil at Rosmead? He was positively savage about him this afternoon when you went out of the drawing-room with him."

Isla did not smile.

"Neil is rather silly about some things," she answered, and there was a vague regret in her eyes.

She did not forget that, in a moment of keen loneliness and desperation, she had told Neil Drummond the truth about Malcolm's home-coming, and it stood to reason that Neil would not forget it either.

Her one desire was that that shameful truth should never come to the ears of the Rosmeads. She thought of them in the plural number, but it was Rosmead himself she meant. She already knew that his standard was very high, and that he might harshly judge a man like Malcolm if he knew him as he really was.

Isla sat very still, looking rather intently at the open, ruddy face with the smiling eyes and the weak, mobile mouth, and she wondered whether there was any ultimate hope of his complete redemption. He had evidently been able to forget or to put behind him entirely the horror and the tragedy of that frightful day at Creagh and the word with which her accusing voice had smitten his ears. His volatile nature took things so easily and lightly that, in his estimation, practically nothing but the immediate moment mattered.

Well perhaps, after all, she told herself, his policy was best. She had borne the burden and heat of the day, had lain awake at nights, pondering the problem of existence, had worn herself to a shadow for the honour of Achree and of the name she bore, and where was she left?

Stranded, she told herself, and practically without a friend. She had proved to the hilt the truism that the world has neither time nor room for the long face or the tale of woe, and that he who smiles, even if his heart be shallow or false, will win through at least cost--ay, and will grasp most of the good things of life as he floats airily by.

Isla was fast becoming cynical and inclined to accept the creed of the fatalist who says "What is to be will be".

"Well, then, if Uncle Tom leaves to-morrow," she said as she rose to her feet, "we had better go back to Creagh on Wednesday. I'd rather be gone before the Rosmeads come back, and I said Thursday to him."

"Oh, do be sociable, Isla! It would only be the kind thing to stop to welcome them decently and thank them for what they've done. It's the very least thing we can do, if you ask me."

Isla, whom the Rosmeads had surprised out of her usual reserve, in the first overwhelming horror of her grief, felt inclined to creep back into her shell again, but she saw the reasonableness of her brother's words.

"Well, then, I must leave it to you to arrange, I suppose. I mustn't forget that you are the head of the house. I'll be ready to go up to Creagh when you like, and as long as I remain there I'll try to make you comfortable and happy."

She said good-night to him immediately and glided away. But long after her departure Malcolm sat pondering on the future, by no means elated at the prospect of a tête-à-tête existence with the sister who knew so much. He would have been a happier and a more easy-minded man had Isla been getting ready to accompany her Uncle Tom to London.

CHAPTER XV

SETTLING DOWN

Having, in pursuance of a partially concerted plan of existence, thus held out the olive branch to her brother, Isla found the rest easy.

Next morning the breakfast-table was unclouded, and Sir Tom departed to London, more comfortable in his mind about his kinsfolk than at any moment since he had arrived in the Glen.

"I'm glad that you have come to some sort of understanding with your brother, my dear," he said, as Isla helped him on with his big travelling-coat in the hall, while Rosmead's horses were waiting at the door. "Just one thing more. Malcolm can't loaf about here longer than is necessary. Your duty now, having been so faithfully ended where your dear father is concerned, is to put a bit of your own smeddum into your brother. What I'd like--what we'd all like--is to get him back to his regiment. It's the only honourable way out of a big difficulty."

Isla busied herself with smoothing the creases in the back of the coat and made no answer at all.

"What about his Colonel--Martindale, isn't it? Your aunt is intimate with his sister, Lady Chester. We can get at him in that way, though I still think that a straight application from Malcolm couldn't possibly fail of its purpose. Eh--what?"

"Don't do anything, Uncle Tom," pleaded Isla, "please, don't. There are reasons--other reasons--why it would be better not, and Malcolm is quite determined. Anyone can see that."

"Well, well. It doesn't seem the right thing, but I don't want to be officious, and you at least have shown yourself capable of managing your own affairs up to now. Take Malcolm in hand now. The best of us need the mothering that a good woman can give. But I hope, my dear, that my next visit to Achree will be a happier one--namely, to give you away perhaps to some gallant bridegroom. Eh--what?"

He smiled his big, enveloping smile as he lifted her chin in his hand and kissed her face.

"That isn't likely to happen. But thank you all the same, dear Uncle Tom," said Isla gratefully.

"And, if we really are to be buried in the sand dunes over there and have to subsist on anæmic omelettes and the everlasting poulet roti, mind you come to us. And Barras in the winter is a very good place. It had a Riviera temperature up to March this year. In November, thank God, we'll make tracks for Barras again."

Again Isla thanked him, and, Malcolm appearing on the scene, she said no more. But she was sensible of relief as she saw them drive away. So long as Uncle Tom remained at Achree anything might happen. His big, kindly, blundering feet would stray into all sorts of forbidden paths.

She spent the morning in the house, going slowly and with a sort of lingering tenderness over every bit of it. The smart servants of the Rosmeads had managed to efface themselves in a very wonderful way, and the magnificent simplicity of the funeral of Mackinnon had left its deep impression on their minds.

Isla thanked each one of them individually in that way of hers that could draw out all that was best in a human being. She offered nothing, because she had naught to give, and would not mock them with pretence. Malcolm, less delicately conscientious, scattered silver among them--the silver that had come out of Isla's hoard in the bureau at Creagh.

Malcolm returned to announce that he had engaged Jamie Forbes to come up from the hotel to drive them to Creagh at three o'clock of the afternoon.

"I want to go to Darrach first, Malcolm, to see Elspeth Maclure. Everything is ready to lift, and I shall get up by tea-time."

"But how will you get up?"

"Walk, of course--that is nothing."

"But I can make Jamie wait till you are ready. He can stop here till four, by which time surely you could be done with that wind-bag, Elspeth Maclure."

"No, I shall stop to tea with her and come when I'm ready, Malcolm. I've neglected her of late, and I have lots of things to tell her."

Malcolm gave his shoulders a shrug.

"I've never understood your fondness for Elspeth Maclure, Isla. Her tongue is a yard long and none too kindly. She was as nearly as possible impertinent to me one day when I stopped at Darrach."

Isla looked unbelieving and wholly unconvinced.

"I can't conceive of Elspeth being impertinent. You must have said something to offend her."

"I gave her the truth about Donald and the croft, if you like. Darrach is a bit of the best land on Achree, and if it were joined to Tully and let to a responsible and capable man it would bring in a good rent. Maclure's lazy, and greedy besides. I'd like to chuck him from Darrach, and I mean to tell Cattanach that when I go up to Glasgow to-morrow."

Isla said nothing, though she thought much. The Maclures had been in Darrach in direct descent for four generations, and Donald naturally regarded the place as his own. To turn him out and join up the crofts into bigger holdings would revolutionize the whole life of the glens and take the bread out of many mouths.

But this was not the time to argue that question. Above all things, she must try to live at peace with Malcolm, and find some quiet, persuasive method of getting him to let well alone.

Isla was a curious mixture. Her temperament was active, her judgment quick and shrewd, but she was bound by the immemorial traditions of her race and ought to have been born in feudal times. She looked upon all the tenants of Achree as the children of the estate, having as good a right to the land as the Mackinnons themselves. The fact that they paid small, in some cases inadequate, rents for their holdings, thereby keeping the coffers of Achree sadly empty, altered nothing. She would rather have starved herself--and that cheerfully--than ask them for more. Besides, she knew the hunger of the land, the late and scanty harvests, the long winters, and the difficulty of wresting a living from the bare hill-sides and the swampy breadths that lay to the Loch-side.

She knew it to the uttermost. She had seen the blackened stocks sodden with November rains and touched with December snows to such an extent that the corn was hardly worth the trouble of carrying to the barn. She had felt the dank smell of the potatoes rotting with disease in the furrows when the autumn was wet, and she knew the poverty of the homes where she was ever a welcome, and never an intruding, guest.

Malcolm knew none of these things. He had no practical acquaintance with the long fight between man and nature in these high latitudes, and he had exaggerated ideas of the profits of farming. Already he was full of ill-considered and half-digested plans for the entire regeneration of Achree. Now that all was over, he was making all the haste he could to let bygones be bygones. He was going to begin afresh a new life, which, he promised himself, might be as interesting and far less strenuous than the old.

His father's death had altered the whole situation, and, from his point of view, had occurred at the psychological moment. Now, as Laird of Achree and head of his clan, he occupied a very different niche in the scheme of things.

Isla left Achree for the second time without any bitter pang. Nay, it pleased and comforted her to think that Peter Rosmead and his folk had it for a home. That thought somehow seemed to bring him nearer to her. In the months to come it would lessen the breadth and depth of that vast dividing sea. Yet how she would have been startled had her own thoughts been mirrored before her, who had never before taken such interest in a man!

She thought of him as she walked down the dry, crisp road to Darrach, and she wondered where he would be at that moment and whether the telegram she had dispatched to them at the St. Enoch's Hotel, announcing their departure to Creagh, would bring him back to Glenogle before he finally set out on his long journey. She did not admit even to herself her secret hope that he would, but it was of him she thought as she approached Elspeth's hospitable gate, of his deep and encompassing tenderness, his continuous thought for her, his earnest eyes looking into hers and assuring her of his devotion to her cause.

She lingered on these thoughts, fully conscious of their comforting sweetness and wholly unaware that they heralded the dawn of love.

She found Elspeth working at her baking board with a downcast face. The baby was asleep in the box-bed by the side of the fire-place, and the rest of the children were at school, even little Colin, aged three and a half, having been admitted to the infant room.

"There you are at last, Miss Isla--a sicht for sair een. I said to Donald this morning that if it should be that you didna come the day, then I must go and seek for ye either at Achree or at Creagh. Where should I have found you?"

"We are leaving Achree to-day, and it is at Creagh that you will find me, Elspeth," said Isla as she took the chair that Elspeth set for her by the well-scrubbed table.

"I've come for my tea, Elspeth, and these scones smell as they ought. If the butter is newly churned, too, then I am in luck, and I will forget all about the rich meats that the American cook has been setting before us at Achree."

"But it wass the right thing for you to be there, Miss Isla, and it was fery, fery good of the folk. From end to end of the Glen you'll hear nothing but praise of them for it."

"It was good," said Isla with quiet conviction.

"And they'll be stoppin' on, at least for a while, at Achree, I hope?"

"Yes, they will be stopping on indefinitely at Achree."

"The little one--her they call Miss Sadie--comes here a lot, Miss Isla, and she hass the pairns quite crazy about her. The other day--it wass the day before the Laird died--she wass here drilling them in the yard. It was the funniest thing you ever saw in your life--and her so sweet and winsome wi' them! There be some that are all for the other one, but she seems high and proud-like and hass little to say to the folk."

"She has had a lot of trouble, Elspeth. Yes--I would like my tea now, and you to sit down and drink it with me."

"Yes, Miss Isla. And so you're to be at Creagh, and Mr. Malcolm--I beg hiss pardon, the Laird--is to pe there, too, and to pe fery busy in all the glens."

The dry note in Elspeth's voice did not escape Isla's ear.

"He iss not going back to the army, Donald says, but means to live on the place. And, oh, it will nefer pe the same again! He wass here wan day, and he said a lot of things that I'm not mindin' to say over again to you. But iss it true that he will take away most of the crofts and make big farms and let them to men from the west country and the Lowlands that haf money in their pockets and will pey what we canna?"

"My brother talks a good deal, but when he has been at home a little longer and gets to understand things better he will change his mind about a lot of them," said Isla, trying to comfort Elspeth.

"Look you, Miss Isla, if it should come that my man had to leave Darrach he will nefer lift up hiss head again. He was born in that bed, and his faither and his grandfaither pefore him, and he wants to dee in it, as they did. That is how Donald is feelin' about the place, Miss Isla, and it iss what the Laird will nefer understand. But I said that you would understand and would speak for us."

Isla was silent, for she could find no words.

"And Donald bein' a silent, quate man, things eat intil him, and he will pe wanderin' for efer and efer by hisself, thinkin' on nothing else. But how to pey more rent for the place is peyond him and me baith. We haf nefer a penny over--we just manage to live and to pey oor way. Mr. Malcolm, he talked a lot about breeding stock and such like, but where iss the money to come from to buy the stock at the beginnin'? They haf to be calves and lambs afore they grow to be bullocks and sheep. And that's how it iss wi' us here at Darrach, and we are feart for the day that will come."

She set the cups down on the table with a kind of mournful clatter and brought out the plate of oatcakes and the delicious scones and the cheese kebbuck and then the firm golden butter-pat from the little dairy.

"You will never leave Darrach while I live and can prevent it, Elspeth," said Isla.

And she meant what she said. As she walked up the road again and plunged into the bridle path that would bring her by the short cut to the Moor of Creagh she foresaw that her work was by no means done nor yet the fight ended. For if these were the lines Malcolm intended to pursue with Glenogle folks, then how could she live at peace with him? There was bound to be strife in the Lodge of Creagh.

She felt a little glow of home-like feeling when the small, ugly, square house, with its smoke curling up, straight and lazy, to the summer sky, came within range of her vision.

Margaret Maclaren, with temper considerably ruffled by certain happenings that day, was busy clearing up what she called a "clamjamphrey" in one of the upper rooms when she saw her mistress coming slantwise across the Moor. It was now five o'clock, and she immediately ran down to see whether the kettle was boiling, in case Miss Isla wanted tea.

Margaret had not been down the Glen at all during these last days and had not so much as seen the funeral of the Laird--in itself a serious omission. Then that day she had had a quarrel with Diarmid anent certain household arrangements which they had not been able to adjust to her satisfaction and which were waiting the judgment of Miss Isla.

Diarmid, a little puffed up perhaps with the attention he had received at Achree and the deference the American servants had paid him, had been a little high-handed with Margaret on his return. Hence the explosion on her part.

The truth was that both were too strong-minded and quick tempered, and that both wished to assert their authority, and it was hopeless to think that they would ever get on together at Achree, where most of the servants had been younger than Diarmid, who had lorded it over them all.

But Margaret held him again, as she expressed it, and they had been almost continuously at loggerheads since he had come to Creagh.

When Margaret saw him waiting at the door to receive his mistress she cast her head in the air and went by him with a small snort that spoke volumes. Isla just saw her disappear through the little doorway at the end of the short passage, and, in answer to Diarmid's anxious query whether she wanted any tea, she simply said "No," and asked where her brother was. But Diarmid could not tell her more than the brief fact that he had gone out after tea without saying where he was going.

Isla, with an odd sense of strangeness and detachment from the interior of the house, climbed the stairs and, as she reached the door of her own room, she heard a heavier foot behind her and beheld Margaret, who was of a substantial build, puffing on the uppermost steps of the stairs.

"Well, Margaret?" she said kindly. "We've come back you see, and have to begin again."

"Yes. Miss Isla. Please, can I speak to you for a minute or so? There's things in this house that must be sorted."

"Sorted" was a great word with Margaret. She sorted everything from the fire to the hens that she chased out of the little garden or the keeper's boys whom she hounded back to the Moor. Her temper was quick and her tongue not very reserved, but her heart was of gold towards the house she served.

"Why, surely. Come into my room. What's the matter with you? You look angry."

"I hope it's a righteous anger, Miss Isla. All I want to ken iss--What are the duties of Diarmid an' what are mine in this hoose?"

"Dear me, Margaret, what a fuss! Whatever do you mean? Your duties are just what they have always been. I've never been asked the question before. How has it arisen now?"

"It's that Diarmid. He thinks himsel' as fine as the Laird himsel'. Just come here a minute, Miss Isla, will you?"

Isla followed her wonderingly across the narrow landing to the door of the room in which her father had slept in his lifetime. It was the best room in the house, and Margaret, in no doubt that the new Laird would occupy it on his return, had swept and garnished it. But he had refused point-blank, and all his things lay scattered now upon the floor and on the bed, and the drawers were open, giving the room a most untidy aspect.

"Here haf I toiled an' slaved to get the place ready, an' then Maister Malcolm, he will not sleep in it, he says."

"Well, Mr. Malcolm must please himself, Margaret," said Isla rather quickly. "It does not in the least concern you."

"I'm not sayin' that it does. But what I do want to know, Miss Isla, iss if I'm to wait on him as well as to do the cookin' an' look after the whole house. I brought down all Maister Malcolm's things from the attic an' put them in the drawers; an' all the General's things are in the big kists up the stairs. Then, when Maister Malcolm came in he fell into the most fearful rage an' swore like anything an' turned the drawers out on the floor an' roared to me to put them all back up the stairs again. An' what I want to know iss whether it iss my duty or Diarmid's to do that. I haf nefer been in a hoose where the man-servant did not wait upon the master; forby, I haf not time, and, unless you pid me, I will not lift the things up the stairs again. It is Diarmid that should pe doin' it."

"Surely Diarmid will do it. Where is he? Tell him to come up."

"In a minute, Miss Isla. But what I do want to know iss how it iss to be in Creagh now? For if Diarmid iss to stop, then I canna. I'm not fit to stand his impidence."

The idea of Diarmid's impudence so tickled Isla that she burst out laughing, which did not please Margaret.

"If it's me you're laughin' at, Miss Isla," she began in a highly-offended tone----

Then Isla turned about on her with a quick glance of disapproval.

"Is that a way, Margaret Maclaren, to speak to me this day of all days? If you and Diarmid cannot live peaceably together, then you had better both go. You are a silly woman. What does it matter who puts away Mr. Malcolm's things? Go away to your kitchen, and I'll do it myself. You ought to be ashamed of yourself at your age, behaving like a great baby."

Margaret did not take the rebuke in very good part. Old and faithful, she was likewise privileged; and undoubtedly all the Mackinnon servants had been more or less spoiled.

"It's the swearin', Miss Isla. I haf not been used to it, an' I will not stand it--not even from Maister Malcolm, an' Diarmid laughin' in the back, like, when I wass ordered to put away the things. Please to tell me who iss to wait on the Laird--iss it to be me or iss it to be Diarmid?"

"And, supposing it should be you, eh, Margaret?" asked Isla, and the smile did not leave her lips. "Go away down and see what there is in the larder, for we shall need something to eat a little later. And then come up and help me to clear this room. If Mr. Malcolm does not want it I'll take it myself, for it would be a shame to let it stand empty."

Margaret, a little ashamed perhaps and glad of the offered opportunity to recover herself, went out of the room.

The smile still lingering on her lips, Isla began to look over the things which had been brought down from the attic room. The squabble between Margaret and Diarmid was quite a timely diversion, for it had taken the edge off what might otherwise have been a painful moment, and she thought how like children the two were in their slight knowledge of real care.

Pondering thus, she pulled open the upper drawers of the tallboys that stood between the windows, and she saw that they were full of small stuff belonging to Malcolm--papers and photographs and books and toilet articles mingled in inextricable confusion.

Margaret had certainly carried the things down, but she had not made the smallest attempt at putting them in order. Isla took out an armful and carried them to the bed, thinking that when Margaret returned the simplest way would be to get her to bring a couple of trays, on which the small things could be laid, ready for carrying up the attic stair.

As she let a little heap fall loosely on the white coverlet a bundle of photographs fell apart, and one looked up at her with an insolent, half-defiant stare. She grew hot all over and then cold, recognizing in the bold, handsome face that of the woman whom she had seen Malcolm with in the street off the Edgeware Road. He had said she was a friend of George Larmer's; if so, why was her photograph here among Malcolm's most treasured possessions?

CHAPTER XVI

THE PURPLE LADY

The little menage on the Moor of Creagh was a mistake from the beginning, and was bound, in the very nature of things, to have a quick and disastrous end.

This, it must be at once said, was not altogether the fault of Malcolm, though Isla thought it was. Her fine nature had been soured by her experiences, and the hard side of her developed by the responsibilities which she had had to shoulder in her young girlhood, when her heart ought to have been at play.

She had acquired the habit of legislating for everybody, and up to a certain point of setting the standard of conduct. Her conscience she would make the universal conscience, forgetting that there were degrees and differences of temperament. By an effort of will she had held out a sort of grudging olive branch to Malcolm. But she had done this simply and solely because she wished to remain in Glenogle and because there was no place for her except under his roof. The injustice of it all ate into her heart. Malcolm, who had done nothing for the Glen, and who, in her estimation, was totally unfitted to have the destinies of so many in his keeping, had the whole power in his hands, and none could say him nay.

The sudden change in his position had made a great difference to Malcolm.

From being a guest on sufferance, disapproved of by Isla, who was mistress of the situation, he had stepped into power, which simply reversed their positions. Isla, so to speak, was now his guest, and, because there had been no will and there was nothing except the land to divide, a pensioner on his bounty.

Love would have laughed at the difficulties with which the situation bristled. But the difficulty of existence in these circumstances became more acute, and, to Isla, every day more unbearable. It was not that Malcolm was rude or actively unkind. Nay, his gay good humour never failed. But he had no use for her advice and he absolutely ignored anything she said as to his conduct of affairs.

Take the case of the Maclures, for instance.

"You'll never put Donald Maclure out of Darrach, Malcolm," she said one day in the autumn, when Martinmas was looming in sight. "I met him yesterday, and he looked like a man under sentence of death. He had heard that you have been in communication with a man in Fife about the croft. Is that true?"

"It might be, and, again, it might not be," he answered, though there was not a word of truth in the report yet.

He had thought of it, but it was characteristic of Malcolm's nature to postpone most of the serious things of life till a more convenient season. And just then his energies and his hopes were elsewhere engaged.

"But, Malcolm," she said, with a touch of passion, "it isn't right to treat the folk like that--to torment them without sense or purpose. They haven't been used to it."

"No--they've been used to nothing but having their own way, to paying when they liked and what they liked," he answered, with a touch of grimness. "But I'm going to alter all that."

They were at breakfast at the moment, and she looked down the narrow table at him with a feeling of strong disgust. There is no bitterness like the bitterness between those of one blood who persistently misunderstand and misjudge each other.

Malcolm Mackinnon was not wholly bad. Nay, at that very time he was honestly striving to do his duty and to establish himself in the esteem of those whose esteem he valued. But among these he did not include his dependants. Towards them he was a bit of a martinet, as his mother--a creature from the nether world dressed in a little brief authority--had been before him.

Isla knew nothing about her mother except that she had been very pretty and that she had died young. Had she known more she would have understood that alien and lawless blood run in Malcolm's veins. But the old General had never spoken of the one irretrievable mistake of his life--a mistake which had left his heart seared and made his life desolate in the summer of his days. Happily perhaps for Isla the brief tragedy had been enacted in India, and General Mackinnon's wife had never beheld the place of her husband's birth and true affection.

"I am sure Mr. Cattanach can't approve of your turning out the folk like that. And what will a few shillings or pounds a year more do for you? It will make so little difference that, looking at it even from the sordid standpoint, it isn't worth while."

Isla spoke thus because she was intensely of opinion that Malcolm had no feelings, and that this was the only appeal that would strike home. He, knowing perfectly well how she regarded him, was pleased to play upon her erroneous conceptions.

"It's worth while, my dear," he said, with his ready and, to her, most aggravating smile, "because these Highland folk want waking up. They are like the Irish--lazy, easy-going, and without independence. You should hear George Larmer on the state of things on his Wicklow place. He says it is due partly to the rain and partly to the whisky, but there is not a man of them who will do a decent day's work."

"We get rain enough here," said Isla with a sigh, for it had been a very wet summer, and the poor harvest was to be very late. "But our people don't drink whisky. Even Donald is a teetotaller and wears a blue ribbon in his buttonhole."

"Which that shrew of his pinned on, doubtless. Poor devil!--I'm sorry for Donald if that's the set of it, and I'll stand him a drink next time I meet him at a handy place."

"Then, what are you going to do about the Maclures? I wish you would be serious for just a minute, Malcolm. I really want to know what's in store for them. I am almost afraid to go past the door of Darrach now or to meet Eppie. She's wearing herself to a shadow over it all."

"There you are, Isla--you've ruined them, neck and crop, by listening to their grumblings and pandering to their lack of independence! Nobody knows just how much money there is in Glenogle--or in any of the glens, for that matter. It strikes me there are a good many fat stocking-feet hidden among the thatch."

"Oh, nonsense, Malcolm! Nobody does that now. They all use the bank when they have anything to put away, but I don't think that is often the case."

He cut the top neatly off his third egg and proceeded to enjoy it. Malcolm had a healthy appetite, and Margaret Maclaren, still more or less in a state of grumbling rebellion, said that he was hard to fill.

"Look here, Isla, I wish you would take a sensible view of things and leave me to manage my own business. You won't deny that the management is mine now, I suppose? Unfortunately for me, you've been Laird of Achree for the last five or six years, and you're difficult to follow. It's just like what happens in a regiment when an easy Colonel is followed by a smart one. Every unit in it jibs, but they all come into line a little later. And that's what the tenants--my tenants--are going to do if you'll let them alone. But you must let them alone, do you understand? I am sick of all this wrangling, and I won't listen to you any more. It isn't decent for you to act as go-between among the tenants. If they have a grievance let them come to me. Next time you see the Maclures you can tell them it will pay them to address themselves to me instead of putting up a poor face to you."

Isla's colour rose, for both the words and the manner of them were offensive.

"It would be better for yourself, too," he added in a gentler tone. "I don't suppose you ever look at yourself in the glass. You've gone off most frightfully of late. It's the worry and the bearing of loads for other folk that they are perfectly able to bear themselves that are to blame for that. Take me, for instance. You'd like to melt me down and drop me into your own mould. But, my dear, it can't be done. Leave me to go my own way. Maybe it's a blundering bad way, but at least give me credit for trying to make the best of things. Once for all, I won't be dictated to or legislated for. There isn't in the whole world a more difficult or impossible person to live with than the woman who wants to run a universal conscience."

There was just sufficient truth in the words to make their sting doubly telling.

"If that is how you feel about me, Malcolm," she said, rising stiffly, "then the sooner I leave Creagh the better."

"A visit to the Barras Mackinnons would do you a power of good, I admit, and would give me time to look round and get my bearings," he said frankly. "The quarters are a bit close here, you know, for us in our present state. Why not go to Wimereaux to them? The sea air would do you good, and they've asked you often enough, in all conscience."

She rolled up her napkin and pushed it all awry into the ring with the Mackinnon crest on it, and her downcast eyes were full of strange fires.

"I don't want to be unjust or hard. Heaven knows I don't, but you won't do anything," continued Malcolm. "At Achree they're always asking why you don't come down, and I must say I think that, after all their kindness, you've treated them shabbily."

"You go so much," she said sullenly. "We can't both live on the American bounty."

It was a speech wholly unworthy of Isla and unjust to the Rosmeads. But it was prompted by jealousy alone and by the distorted view of things prevailing in the mind of the lonely girl whom nobody now seemed to want.

Her only faithful henchman was Neil Drummond, but on the last occasion on which he had come with words of healing and sympathy on his lips she had sent him away, telling him she would not see him again unless he promised to talk of ordinary things.

"You've got into a beastly habit of nagging when you're not curled right up in a hard shell which nobody can open," said Malcolm, enjoying his opportunity now that candour was the order of the day. "You've choked off nearly everybody, and it's your own fault. I find folk very pleasant because I let them alone. I'm not for ever telling them to do this or that. I've enough to do to look after myself. I know you think me a rotter--and all that. But you might do worse than take a leaf out of my book. I've been out in the world, and I've learned two things--that it's ready to laugh with you, but that the moment you show the other side of your face it is bored to extinction. Your long face bores folk, Isla. Nobody has ever told you the truth about yourself before. You've arrogated the rôle of truth-teller to yourself, but that's it----"

Isla walked out of the room with her head held high in air and fire burning fiercely in her eyes. She was so angry that she dared not trust her voice. Now she knew exactly what position she occupied at Creagh--that Malcolm regarded her as an encumbrance and a nuisance, and that she dwelt there merely on sufferance and during his good pleasure. Well, such a situation being intolerable to a woman of spirit, it must be ended, and that without delay.

She ascended the stairs to her own room, and when she was intercepted by Margaret Maclaren with some inquiry about the meals for the day, she simply told her to get what she liked, and passed on.

Margaret, no stranger to wrangling, having had a bout of it that very morning with her arch-enemy Diarmid, understood that there had been a small storm raging in the dining-room, and discreetly retired.

New, strange, dreadful elements had crept into the quiet life on Creagh Moor, and all its sweet harmony was destroyed.

Isla shut the door of her own room, and dropped for a moment into her chair, wringing her hands the while with a sense of utter helplessness. She was at the end of her tether. Nobody wanted her, and the time had come for her to go away. Not a soul in the Glen, she told herself bitterly, would lament her going. She had dropped into obscurity, and even if she were never to come back any more to Glenogle, how many would mourn her absence or long for her return?

The impulse to go there and then was strong upon her. She even opened the door of her wardrobe and her drawers to take a brief inventory of her belongings and consider what she would take away.

If only she could walk out as she was! But travel, even of the simplest sort, is hampered by the multitude of our needs, by the things which complicate life. Then she looked at her little store of money, counting it out with careful fingers. Eighteen pounds in gold and two handfuls of silver--well, that would keep her until she could earn more for herself.

She was a forlorn creature, without plan or compass, proposing to let herself drift upon an unknown sea. She had not the smallest intention of going to the Barras Mackinnons at Wimereaux. She must get away quite alone, where she could realize herself, and arrive at some conclusion regarding her ultimate fate.

Through the open window she heard Malcolm go off with the dogs, whistling as if he had not a care in the world. The things which daunted her and lay like a nightmare on her white, sensitive soul, had no power over him. Frankly selfish, he lived from day to day, extracting the honey from the hours, and stoically enduring what he could not evade. Perhaps, she said to herself, his was no bad philosophy. She wished somebody had taught it to her sooner; now it was a difficult lesson, baffling her intelligence at every point.

By and by she grew calmer, and her distracted thoughts began to collect themselves. It was not possible to run away in a hurry without telling any one, and her orderly mind shrank from taking such a foolish and unnecessary step. No--whatever she did, she would not forget herself or the dignity of the Mackinnons. She would put no occasion for talk into people's mouths.

In an hour's time she had decided what to do, and, after making a sort of preliminary division of her possessions, she dressed herself and went out. Margaret, having the feeling that Miss Isla wished to be alone, did not intercept her this time.

It was a fine, clear, hard morning in September, with a touch of frost in the air after a night's rain. But the clouds on the far horizon were still watery, and Isla's keen eyes decided that the deluge had not spent itself. She would, however, get fair weather as far as Lochearnhead, which was her present destination, seeing that she had to give a certain order to Jamie Forbes concerning the morrow.

Of a set purpose, she kept to the sheep tracks on the hills, thus avoiding the vicinity of Achree. She had been there very few times since her father's death, and as Mrs. Rosmead had had a somewhat serious illness in the interval, her daughters had been too much engaged in looking after her to pay distant calls. But Isla knew that Malcolm was constantly there--if not every day, at least several times a week.

About half a mile beyond Achree gates, on the Lochearn side of the Glen, she had to come out on the road again, because the sheep track ended suddenly with Donald Maclure's pasture. The heavy rains had washed every superfluous particle of earth from the roads, and left the gravelled bottom bare, while there were delicious runnels of water here and there, all making swiftly for the burn, which was swollen far beyond its ordinary limits. There had been very little fair weather in Glenogle or in the valley of the Earn since the Lammas floods.

Isla paused for a moment on the Darrach Brig to watch the brown swirl of the water below, which fascinated her. Her eyes and ears were ever quick and keen to note every change in the aspect of the landscape, and she was more weather-wise than most. She had fallen into a kind of brown study, from which she was awakened very suddenly by the sound of a voice speaking a few yards away.

It was a woman's voice, and when Isla swung round upon her with quickly-uplifted head she saw a lady on the road dressed in garments such as were not often seen in Glenogle. She wore a gown which, Isla decided, was more fitted for an afternoon function than a quiet country road. It was of a somewhat vivid purple hue, trimmed profusely about the bodice with string-coloured lace. The skirt was long, but she had it gathered in her hand, and held high enough to show the froth of white, lace-trimmed petticoats and a mauve stocking against the clear, patent leather of the high-heeled shoes. A large black hat, surmounted with feathers and swathed in a veil like a spider's web, through which the vivid colour of the face appeared somewhat softened, completed the costume, which was certainly a startling one in that remote place, though such a common sight in London streets as to excite no remark.

Isla grew hot and cold, and started back with a little gesture of aversion, for she recognized the woman whose face she had seen once in the flesh, and once again in a photograph in her brother's room.

"Good day," said the stranger quite pleasantly. "Could you tell me whether there is a place close by here called Achree?"

She pronounced the last word without the guttural, so that it sounded like Akree.

"I asked about it at the hotel," the lady continued. "and they directed me along this road. But it seems a good bit away. Is it much farther off?"

"The Lodge gates are half a mile farther on," Isla answered. "Then there is the avenue to the house and that is rather long."

"I may as well go on, now I have come so far, but if I'd known how far off it was I would have hired a trap of some kind."

She leaned against the parapet of the bridge in a quite friendly fashion, as if ready to talk; and Isla hating herself intensely for lingering, yet felt impelled to do so, and even to put a question to the stranger concerning her business at Achree.

"I suppose that it is the American tenants you have come to see? They have been in Achree for about six months now."

The lady shook her head.

"No. I don't know that I've come to see anybody in particular, but I'm interested in the place through a friend of mine. I didn't know there were Americans in it. I thought it belonged to a family called Mackinnon."

"They are the owners, but it is let, as most of the big places are in these days."

"I see. And where are the Mackinnons? Mr. Mackinnon chiefly? He is what you call the laird now, isn't he? I read about his father's death in the newspapers, and what a fuss they made about it! Is he here just now?"

"He is not at Achree."

"But he lives in this neighbourhood, surely? He has not left Scotland?" said the stranger with a quick, apprehensive note in her voice.

"No, he lives farther up the Glen--oh, a long way. You could not possibly walk it," said Isla hastily. "Good morning. I must go on."

She was ashamed of herself for having lingered to parley even a moment with this woman, who, she felt sure, by her coming presaged more dool and woe to Achree. How she longed to get clean away from the Glen before the name of Mackinnon was dragged in the mire! This impossible woman must have a hold of some kind on Malcolm, else she never would have dared to come seeking him in his own glen.

As she turned away her soul felt sick within her.

"I'm sorry you are not walking my way," said the stranger easily. "I'll walk on a bit farther and take a look at the place, now I have come so far. What a country! Such hills! And how dull you must all find it! I'm stopping at Strathyre, and when there are not the hills, there's the water to get on your nerves. I don't wonder the Scotch are a melancholy people. Ta-ta!"

She waved her plump, gloved hand in quite friendly fashion, and showed her dazzling teeth in a pleasant smile as she sauntered off.

Isla, with her limbs positively trembling beneath her, hurried over the bridge, and so on to the hotel, where she merely left a message, ordering the trap to fetch her and her luggage from Creagh in the morning.

She had had various plans when she started out. She had thought she might possibly hire Jamie Forbes to take her through Balquhidder to Garrion, or that she might even on the way home pay a call at Achree.

But after what had just happened, she had only one desire--to get away out of Glenogle as fast as the fastest train could take her.

CHAPTER XVII

HER TRUE FRIENDS

Fortune did not favour Isla that day. At any rate her desire for complete isolation was not gratified.

As she came out of the hotel, after having made her arrangement for Jamie Forbes to fetch her from Creagh to Lochearnhead Station in the morning, she encountered Mrs. Rodney Payne, who hailed her with undisguised delight.

"Dear Miss Mackinnon, we really thought we should never, never see you any more! Why is it that you have quite deserted Achree?"

"I don't know," answered Isla rather humbly. "It is a long way, and--and the days go by."

"But it was not kind. And the messages we have sent by your brother!--has he ever delivered them, I wonder?"

"He has often said to me that you would like me to come oftener to Achree."

"Well, and so we would. And what have you to say for yourself?"

Isla looked at her and smiled. It was impossible not to smile at the beautiful creature whose charm could disarm any hostility. Isla was not hostile to Achree. Only there she must be all or nothing. That was the truth, scarcely yet admitted to herself. A very woman, she could brook no rival, and had stayed high and dry upon the Moor of Creagh, because she would not share Achree and the Rosmeads with Malcolm.

"I am a pig," she said with humility, yet with conviction--a speech which made Vivien laugh.

"Since you know yourself best, I will not presume to contradict you, my dear," she said as she thrust a small and confidential hand through Isla's arm. "Now I have you fast I will lead you to confession. What have we done to offend?"

"Oh, nothing to offend!" said Isla quickly. "I am not silly in that way, I hope. But--but----"

"But what? I thought that I had you hard and fast, that day at Creagh and that, hard to win, Isla Mackinnon, once won, could be kept. Why have I made such a disastrous mistake? I ask everybody, I even write to Peter and ask him, but he answers not. It is all a part of this mysterious life of the glens and of the Scottish character, which no man or woman from the outside can ever hope to get to the bottom of."

"Oh, come!" said Isla a little shamefacedly, "we are not so black as all that."

"Black, but comely! But back to Achree I march you to-day, at whatever cost. Do you know that my mother has been five weeks ill in bed and that you have never once called to ask for her?"

"But I have sent messages by Malcolm, and even written myself once----"

"It is not the same," broke in Vivien. "To-day you shall be taken in sackcloth and ashes to beg forgiveness."

"But you have already had too much of the Mackinnons. I would not have you sicken of the name."

"We should never sicken of you, Isla. It is an ungracious thing to say, and the words come most ungraciously from your lips."

"But Malcolm does come every day, doesn't he?"

Isla turned her quick, penetrating eyes full on Vivien's glowing face, and she wondered whether the colour deepened at the question or whether she merely imagined that it did.

"He has been most kind. He does all sorts of 'cute things for us. We have scarcely missed Peter since he went away. You should hear my mother! Your brother has quite won her heart."

"Yes?" said Isla, but her tone was dry.

In the near distance she saw the figure of the stranger lady in the purple frock coming towards them, and she wondered what would happen. Vivien, too, saw it, and the smile deepened in her eyes.

"Who can this extraordinary female be? I met her as I came down, and she put me through a sort of catechism about the Glen, with special reference to Achree and the Mackinnons."

"I also met her," said Isla, "and she likewise catechized me. Some chance tourist staying at the Strathyre Hotel and hard up for something to occupy her time, I suppose."

"It struck me as more than that. And besides, the season for tourists is past," said Vivien shrewdly. "What garments! And what lack of fitness! I wonder now whether she thinks that we are badly dressed and that she could give us points? She has a complacent air, which is at once my despair and my envy."

Isla made no response. Again the chill premonition of coming evil crept about her heart--she felt that the purple-clad stranger was a menace to Achree.

"Now I wonder whether your brother saw her? I am sure she would stop him if she met him!"

"Malcolm!--but he is not down the Glen? I thought he was going to shoot over the Moor this morning. He certainly said something about it at breakfast."

"He was certainly down the Glen, my dear, for I met him on his grey cob. But where he is now I don't know," said Vivien. "It would have interested her, I am sure, to have had speech with the actual Laird of Achree."

"What did she ask you?" asked Isla quickly.

Vivien's colour rose this time without doubt, but she evaded the question.

"She is greatly concerned about the future of Achree, anyhow, so let us give her a civil good morning as we pass."

"We needn't stop--we mustn't stop," said Isla a little nervously.

And as the purple figure approached Vivien felt the arm she touched tremble a little. But the stranger, who now looked tired and bored, passed them with a languid bow and then seemed to hasten her steps towards the hotel.

"I am very glad of this chance of going to Achree to say good-bye," said Isla, "as to-morrow I am going away."

Vivien nodded, as if she had heard a bit of news she fully expected.

"To Wimereaux--to your aunt and uncle? Your brother told us about your going."

In spite of herself, Isla's face hardened. Malcolm, then, discussed her with the Rosmeads, had even planned her going and spoken of her transfer to the Barras Mackinnons as a settled thing. Yet she had not once so much as said that she would like to go!

"Did Malcolm tell you that I was going to-morrow?" she asked in a low voice.

"He said it might happen any day," answered Vivien. "And, though we would have liked to see more of you. we all understand that a change would be the very best thing in the world for you. I've even had it in my mind to propose that you and I should take a little trip to Paris together next month, and that afterwards you might have gone back to Wimereaux. I have not been in Paris since I was a girl at school."

"You were educated in Paris?"

Vivien laughed rather sadly.

"No--I was what they call finished there," she answered drearily. "A woman's education is in the school of life. Mine has been hard enough, heaven knows! I have always hated Paris since, but still I should like to go there with you. I still have an apartment there. If you could let me know about what time you wish to come back I could join you or we could meet on the way, or even in Paris itself."

The idea pleased Isla. If only there had been no obstacles in the way!

"I've never been to Paris. I've seen nothing but Glenogle except--once in a great while--Barras and London."

"Barras is lonely, isn't it? But the Ogden Dresslers liked it."

"It is an island in the Atlantic. But loneliness belongs not so much to places as to persons. I am never lonely--in the sense that you mean. But I think I could be so in a big city."

"How long are you likely to be at Wimereaux?"

"I don't know. I have to get there first."

"Will Sir Thomas and Lady Mackinnon stop there all winter?"

"No. They will go back to Barras at the end of next month, I expect. My uncle is counting the days."

"Ah, I don't wonder at that from what your brother tells me about him! We expected Peter home in November, but his last letter to mother is not very reassuring. They are finding the Delaware Bridge more difficult than they expected. There is something puzzling about the river-bed. Peter seems to be working night and day."

"But he will like that. He is never happier than when fighting obstacles," said Isla with a faint smile of remembrance.

"That is so--at least it used to be so. But we thought from the letter yesterday that he was getting what we call plumb-tired of it. He wants to come back to Scotland--anyone can see that--and, of course, my mother's illness has made us all anxious. But he doesn't say a definite word about coming home."

Isla was interested in these items of information concerning Peter Rosmead and his family. She was naturally sociable. It was only the habit of life forced upon her by circumstances that had fostered her reserve. With Vivien Rosmead, as with Peter, she always felt her heart expand.

There was no reproach in Mrs. Rosmead's eyes as, from her bed, she extended two warm hands of welcome to the desolate girl and drew her down towards her for a kiss.

"My dear, why is it that you have been so long in coming. Your dear brother has made every excuse for you, but we wanted you--we wanted you very much."

Isla's eyes filled with tears. She told herself that she had been wise to stop away, seeing that the sight of this sweet mother of the gentle eyes and heart who, from her invalid couch, ruled her family with an absolute rule, was bad for her and filled her with acute unrest, with a feeling of rebellion against her own motherless state.

"I forgot to tell you," said Vivien cheerfully, "that Sadie has gone to Garrion for the day. She and Kitty are inseparable. What a dear, bright creature Kitty is! And Aunt Betty!--oh, Aunt Betty is a type! I live for the meeting I hope to arrange between her and my mother, though they will need an interpreter. Her Scotch is lovely, but unintelligible."

Again the swift pang of jealousy tore at Isla's heart. While she had been alone at Creagh nobody had been lonely for her sake. Her point of view was wholly unreasonable, and it but serves to show how long brooding on one particular line of thought can distort the mental vision of the healthiest and sanest person in the world. It was more than time that Isla left Glenogle--it would have been disastrous for her to stay much longer.

She remained to luncheon, and thereafter she sat for another half hour with Mrs. Rosmead, who, while she tried to get Isla to talk about herself, incidentally talked a good deal about her children, especially about Peter, for whom her heart was crying out. Isla learned more about Peter Rosmead from that hour's conversation with his mother than she had yet known, and all that she learned was to his credit.

"I hope, my dear," said Mrs. Rosmead, "that you will be back at Christmas at least, for it is our hope that my son may join us then, and we shall keep it as a family here. Your brother has promised to come to us, and if you are here, too, then we shall be happy indeed. It is where you ought to be at Christmas--under your father's roof-tree."

"It is Malcolm's now," said Isla with an effort. "I don't know whether I shall have returned by then. I have no plans. I am a bit of drift-wood on the shore now, liable to be floated away by the tide, dear Mrs. Rosmead. But whether I come or whether I don't I shall think of you, and I shall be glad that you are here in Achree."

"There is something the matter with that child, Vivien," the old lady said to her daughter after Isla had gone--"something that has taken the heart clean out of her. It is something more than her father's death. Let us hope that the change will do her good."

Meanwhile, Isla was nearing home, having been convoyed on her walk part of the way by Vivien, who, on parting, had bidden her a most affectionate farewell.

Vivien was distinctly disappointed in Isla Mackinnon--her persistent coldness had chilled her. She had proved that Highland hearts can be very warm and kindly, and she thought that Isla had not met their advances with corresponding cordiality. But, having herself suffered, she did not judge any man--much less any woman. She knew she must leave Isla to realize herself and to work out her own destiny.

It was tea-time when Isla got back, and Malcolm was about the house.

His face was serene and undisturbed. Isla therefore surmised that he had not encountered the lady of the purple gown. Should she enlighten him? Was it her duty to warn him that the woman, with whom he undoubtedly had some slight acquaintance--even if nothing more--was in the vicinity making inquiries about him? Though he had happened to miss her that day, she was haunting the neighbourhood, and Strathyre was, so to speak, but a stone's throw from Glenogle.

"I've been trysting Jamie Forbes for the morning, Malcolm," she said quietly. "I'm going with the nine-thirty."

"Going where?" he asked with a start.

"To Glasgow, first. I will have just a word with Mr. Cattanach. Then I will take the two o'clock train."

"For London?"

She nodded. There was no reason why she should hide the first step of her journey from him--no reason at all.

"And will you go on to Dieppe by the night boat, then?"

She shook her head.

"There is no need for such haste," she answered. "And I am not a stranger in London. I can find my way about. I'll stop the night at the Euston Hotel."

"Have you money?" he asked, trying hard to hide his relief.

"I have twenty pounds."

"Oh, you are in clover. It is not a dear fare to Wimereaux, even if you travel first class. And, of course, it will cost you nothing while you are there. They seem to be living at heck and manger for next to nothing, but how Uncle Tom does loathe it! I suppose you'll come back with them as far as Glasgow when they come north next month?"

"I suppose so," she answered listlessly.

There was no reason why she should either affirm or deny, because she herself did not know what she might do. Everything would depend. It might even be on the knees of the gods that she would drift to Wimereaux in the end.

"I've been to lunch at Achree," she said suddenly. "I met Miss Rosmead on the road, and she made me go in. Mrs. Rosmead looks very ill, I think."

"Nothing to what she did look. And they are so accustomed to snatching her back from the jaws of death," said Malcolm grimly, "that they are quite satisfied about her."

"Oh!" said Isla. "You go there a great deal, Malcolm. They seem to think you a splendid sort of fellow."

It was a curious speech and did not sound quite kindly. Malcolm, however, took it well, though there was a touch of bitterness in his reply.

"It's the people's way of looking at it, Isla--they are lovely people. They bring out all that is best in a chap and make him hate the worst. I'll tell you what. If I had been thrown with that sort at one time of my life I should have been a different man."

"We did our best," she answered with a wounded air. "Father and I were as good as we knew how, though, of course, we could not hope to reach the Rosmead standard."

"I don't mean that, Isla. Gad, how quick and hard you are on a fellow! Your tongue's like a two-edged sword. I only mean that there's a time in a chap's life--don't you know?--when, if he gets into a good woman's hands, she shapes him for good. If he gets into the hands of the other sort, then God help him!--he hasn't much chance else."

A fleeting pity crossed Isla's face. It was a passionate human appeal. She began dimly to glimpse the fact of the frightful war between good and evil which ravages the souls of some, making life a battle-ground from the cradle to the grave.

She put out a timid hand and touched his arm.

"I'm sorry if I have been hard, Malcolm. I--I didn't understand. But now----"

"Now I mean to win Vivien Rosmead when I'm clean enough to ask her," he answered in a voice that gripped.

Isla remembered the heightened colour in Vivien's cheek, the tones and terms in which Malcolm was spoken of at Achree, and she had no doubt of the issue. But the woman in the purple frock! Something gripped her by the throat. She did not know what she wished or hoped for. She did passionately feel, however, that if Vivien made another venture upon the sea of matrimony she ought to be very sure of the seaworthiness of her barque.

"I suppose she divorced her husband. Have you ever heard anything about the story, Malcolm?"

"Nothing. They never speak of it. Why should they? That sort of thing is best forgotten."

"She will never forget it. I can't forget how she spoke that day she came to me--the day when father died. Her eyes are very wide open, Malcolm. She will take no risks next time."

"But she isn't hard," he said eagerly. "And a woman who has lived--who has seen life--can make allowances for a man. It's that I'm building on."

Isla shook her head and rose to her feet with a heavy sigh.

"Life is a most frightful tangle, Malcolm. Sometimes I get so tired of it!"

"We all do, but we've got to make the best of it. You don't want any money, then," he added cheerfully. "It's just as well, because I have hardly a red cent to bless myself with, and I'm counting the days till the Martinmas audit and till Rosmead sends his cheque. When I get that I'll send you along something to Wimereaux."

"I'll write if I need it or want it," she said quickly.

Then, as if in spite of herself, the other matter would out.

"Malcolm, did you meet anybody on the road this morning, either in going or in coming home?"

"I met different folks--Donald Maclure and Long Sandy and Drummond seeking you. Only he didn't come up when I told him that I thought you were about Lochearn. Did you see him?"

"No. I suppose I was in Achree at the time. This was a lady--an extraordinary person in a purple frock. She spoke to me at the Darrach Bridge, and she had stopped Vivien Rosmead, too, and asked her questions about Achree."

She saw Malcolm's colour change and his eyes shift.

"What did she say to you, Isla? I suppose she was one of these stray visitors at the hotel. Miss Macdougall has had some queer specimens this summer."

"She said she was living at Strathyre, and she asked questions about the Mackinnons and Achree, as if she knew about them."

"And did she say where she came from or what she wanted here?" asked Malcolm, and by this time he had walked away beyond the range of Isla's eyes.

"No. But I knew, Malcolm," said Isla clearly. "I don't know whether I ought to tell you, but perhaps it will be better that you should know. She was the woman I met you with that day in the Edgeware Road--the woman you said you were seeking for Captain Larmer."

CHAPTER XVIII

GOODBYE TO GLENOGLE

Half an hour later, from the window of the room where she was doing her packing, Isla saw Malcolm ride out to the road upon his bicycle. She did not need to watch the turn he took. She knew just as well as if she had been told that he was bound for Strathyre. It was beginning to grow dusk, but the September evenings are long in Glenogle, and it would be a night of full moon.

Isla's thoughts were rather bitter as she made busy with her scanty wardrobe, laying aside every superfluous article, because she did not wish her movements to be hampered with too much baggage.

Busy with purely mechanical things as she was, her thoughts were free to tarry with the affairs of Achree. Had Malcolm been as other men--had there been no shadow on his past, no complications in his present, she could have wished for no better issue out of the tangle of their troubles than to see him win Vivien Rosmead. She was a sweet, gracious woman, a true gentlewoman, beautiful and rich--a combination not easily found in a wife. How Isla would have rejoiced to see her mistress of Achree, rearing bonnie children who would have loved her and called her Auntie Isla.

It was what ought to have been, she said with a little passionate stamp of her foot upon the floor. And now that Malcolm was in deadly earnest she did not doubt for a moment that he desired to be worthy for Vivien's sake, but spectres blocked the way. The most imminent and the most terrifying was the woman in the purple frock.

Could anything on earth ever explain her away?

She contrasted the woman and Vivien as she had seen them together on the Glenogle road, and she conjured up the supreme contempt that would gather in Vivien's eyes were she pitted against her. She would absolutely disdain such humiliation. Isla felt sure that the man who would win Vivien Rosmead from her disillusionment, who aspired to heal her hurts, must have a clean record. How dared Malcolm, with what was behind and before him, aspire to her?

Isla wondered at the audacity of men. Yet her heart was also stirred with pity for him in that he must reap the bitter harvest of his folly and his sin. Her heart was passing weary, the burden had not been lightened with her father's death, but seemed to have waxed heavier. And she must get away. She felt herself a coward in view of what might come. She could not breast anew scandal in the Glen and she must get away. Such weakness and weariness crept over her that she could have laid her head down and slept for ever. She held on bravely with her preparations, however, and when they were finished she rang the bell for Margaret Maclaren.

"The dinner iss ready, Miss Isla. Am I to send it in?" asked that competent domestic with just a touch of aggressiveness in her mien and manner.

"I don't know where Mr. Malcolm is or when he will come back. But, yes--send it in if it will make you any happier, Margaret, and lift that dour cloud from your face," she added hastily. "I know I can trust you to keep something hot for Mr. Malcolm."

"Oh, as to that, it can be done. But I'm gettin' tired of it, Miss Isla. I nefer saw such a man, or such a hoose--beggin' your pardin for my plain speech. He takes less account of times and seasons than anybody I have ever seen or heard tell of. I don't know what he thinks happens in a kitchen, or whether he knows how food is made, but he expects it to be ready when he iss, whatefer the hour of the day. It iss not in my power, Miss Isla. I'm gettin' to be an old woman and not fit for my job."

"Nonsense, Margaret. You never were fitter, and you must warstle through with it a little longer anyhow, because I am going away to-morrow for some weeks, and you must simply look after Creagh till I come back."

"Where are you goin', Miss Isla? To her Ladyship, iss it? Well, it will do you good, and it iss there you ought to haf gone long since. I will stop, then, till you come back. And I hope the change will do you good, for it iss fery thin and white-like you are gettin', my dear, and it iss time something wass done. I will do my best for Maister Malcolm, and if it should pe that we fall out peyond making up while you are away I'll write and let ye know."

Isla had not expected sympathy from Margaret, who, between Diarmid and his master, was now kept in a state of continual agitation which had a very bad effect on a temper that was not placid at the best of times.

Isla thanked her, and, with a mind considerably eased, went down to eat her solitary meal. After dinner she busied herself writing a few notes of farewell--one of them to Kitty Drummond and one to Elspeth Maclure, regarding whom her conscience was troubling her not a little. But she afterwards tore up Elspeth's, deciding that if Jamie Forbes came to Creagh in good time she would make him stop at Darrach on the way down so that she might say good-bye in a proper manner.

The evening wore on--eight, nine, ten o'clock--and still no word of Malcolm. Isla looked out again and again, and once she even walked out to the gate to see whether the twinkling light of the bicycle lamp was visible down the long vista of the road. When it was half-past ten she went to bed, for she had walked many miles that day, and her packing exertions--to say nothing of the strain of things on her mind--had left her very tired.

She was awakened long after by the banging of a door, she thought; but, listening intently, she heard nothing further, and so she fell asleep and did not wake till morning.

Breakfast had been ordered half an hour earlier than usual to give her time to catch the train, and she had nearly finished before Malcolm made his appearance. She looked at him rather keenly as he entered, and was immediately struck by his haggard looks. He appeared like one who had either not slept or had spent the night in some doubtful place.

"Good morning, dear. I owe you an apology, of course. I had a burst tyre other side of Lochearn last night, and it was near midnight when I got home. I hardly expected that you would sit up. At what time do you start?"

"Jamie ought to be here any moment. I trysted him for half-past eight, and it's twenty past now. I hear the wheel, I think. Yes--there he is. Aren't you going to eat anything, Malcolm?"