‘And neither was there at home,’ said Marion. ‘Oh, mem, it’s no for me to be the judge--but it’s like flying in the very face of Providence and tempting God.’
‘I was not asking your advice on the subject,’ said Miss Catherine, sharply. She was not, indeed, in the way of asking anyone’s advice. But anger towards her old maid was impossible, and the next moment she had again begun to discuss the troublesome matter, talking not so much with Marion as aloud with herself.
‘It’s near a year now,’ she said; ‘poor thing! it would have been hard for her to have been at that quiet Glebe with nothing to take off her thoughts the very time it happened. The change will make it pass easier; the measles and the rest was but an excuse to get her away.’
‘And do you think, mem, she was that fond of the minister?’ said Marion, with respectful scepticism.
‘She was his wife, woman.’ said her mistress, indignantly; what would you have more?’
‘But, ah, far more like his daughter,’ said Marion. ‘Nae doubt it was an awfu’ end; but when it’s no just heart’s love---- Do ye think there could be onything in the meeting with yon young English lad to-day?’
‘What do you mean by anything?’ said Miss Catherine, sharply.
‘Eh, I wasna setting up my ain puir judgment; but I thought you looked a wee anxious yourself. And as for Mrs. Lothian, poor lassie, she was shaking like an aspen leaf----’
‘Marion, I request you’ll speak no more such nonsense to me,’ said Miss Catherine, with indignation. ‘What is he to her, think ye?--a stranger that has not been seen in the parish for three or four years?’
‘And that’s true, Miss Catherine,’ said Marion, with a cough expressive of much doubt and general uncertainty. Her mistress lost her temper, and immediately fell upon Marion, not on this subject, but on some other totally unconnected with it; but the experienced handmaiden was in little doubt as to the real occasion of her wrath. ‘As if I didna ken the Captain’s Isabel cared more for that lad’s little finger than for the minister and a’ he could do for her!’ she said to herself, as she retired to her rest.
The visit to the Bridge of Allan was anything but a successful expedition on the whole. Little Margaret took cold, and had a trifling illness, which filled her three slaves with trembling terror; and Isabel was so much disposed, with unconscious superstition, to regard this as ‘a judgment’ on her own distracted thoughts and wavering mind, that she was not a pleasant companion to Miss Catherine, who, on the other hand, blamed herself for her over-confidence in her own opinion, for exposing the child to bodily risk and the mother to temptation. Marion made no small amount of critical observations to herself behind their backs, thinking the child’s illness also ‘a judgment.’ ‘Them that flees from the Lord, the Lord’s hand will find them out,’ said Marion to herself. And the little party was not a happy one. They remained until after the anniversary of Mr. Lothian’s murder, of which Miss Catherine was rather disposed to make a solemnity. Poor Isabel, with her heart still trembling for her child, and still suffering from the sharp assault of the new life which had taken her at unawares, found it difficult enough to force back her thoughts into the channel of the past, and feel all the grief, the heavy weight of recollection that was expected of her.