The next day Isabel was too much occupied with her project of visiting Ailie at Ardnamore to be open to any argument or dissuasion. She put aside her stepmother’s attempts to move her, with soft obstinacy. ‘She was never a friend of yours that you should be so keen about her now,’ said Jean.
‘She was more to me than you think,’ said Isabel; and her stepmother’s amazement was great.
‘She was liker Margret than you; but far, far different from Margret,’ Jean resumed, after a pause; ‘and you but a gay heedless lassie, no thinking of such things.’
‘But I tell you she was more to me than you thought,’ said Isabel.
This was all that Jean could extract from her; and it gave rise to many marvels in the good woman’s mind and serious anxiety, which she could not express. ‘Eh, if Ailie had anything to do with that English lad,’ was the thought that passed through her mind; ‘eh, if she should be in league with him now!’ But she could not surmount her hesitation about mentioning Stapylton’s name.
Isabel had to leave her child behind, which was a novel thing to her, and very strange it felt to walk away alone through the village and down the other side of the Loch towards the steep lane that led to Ardnamore. When she got to the gate, it was the height of the warm languorous afternoon, and the air and the weariness had soothed her, and brought a languorous feeling into her heart. She was not excited about Ailie, poor girl! Isabel, in her own heart, had made out a story for Ailie, setting her down as a neglected, melancholy wife, with a strange past behind her and a mysterious future before, no doubt; and yet not so much lifted beyond the range of ordinary humanity as she had been in the old days. She expected to be shown into the old-fashioned drawing-room, with its bright windows looking out on the Loch, and to be joined by the mistress of the house, when she had waited a while, and to see Ailie’s attempt to look contented, and to bear herself like the other ladies. As she approached the house, the garden and everything around looked so everyday and ordinary, that all that was extraordinary in Ailie’s story gradually died out of her visitor’s mind. She would be awkward, perhaps, in her new position; she might not even know how to receive Isabel’s visit; but, still, no doubt three years of absence and travel had improved her. And Isabel felt more and more as if she were paying an ordinary visit, when the maid, who was just like other maids, let her into the house, which was precisely like other houses. The deerskin mats at the door, the antlers in the hall, the hats and plaids hanging about, each took something from her interest. She began to forget Ailie, and think only of Mrs. Diarmid of Ardnamore.