‘He is going to take you away,’ said Isabel, ‘where none of your friends perhaps will ever see you more; where you will be all alone with none but him, and no love for him in your heart. Oh, Ailie, listen! you will hate him if ye cannot love him. I could not rest; I’ve been in no strange house till now _since_--but I could not rest. Oh, Ailie, God would not have you to be miserable; that can never be His will. You are wiser than me, but you have ay been thinking of other folk, and not of what was in your own heart.’
‘Little but deceitfulness and wickedness,’ said Ailie, musing, ‘well I know; and a root of bitterness in the best. But, Isabel, there’s no a word to say. It’s no in my own hands. It was settled and ordained before you or me were born.’
‘And nothing will make you change your mind?’
‘It’s no my mind I’m speaking of,’ she said, with a half-despairing smile; ‘if it was me to decide! But whisht! whisht! and say no more; my mother is coming. I’ve had ill thoughts and thankless thoughts, and you’ve seen them, Isabel; but I’m the handmaid o’ the Lord, and it’s no to His glory to betray my weakness--no even to my mother.’
‘I’ll not betray you,’ cried Isabel, with a little natural heat. Ailie turned wearily away, with a sigh of languor and heaviness; and just then her mother came bustling in, carrying a white muslin dress on her extended arms.
‘It’s no to call grand,’ said Janet, ‘but I thought you would like to see it. As for Ailie, she takes nae mair notice than if a wedding was a thing that happened every day.’
‘She’s so full of her own thoughts,’ said Isabel, instinctively attempting an excuse.
‘Thoughts are grand things,’ said Mrs. Macfarlane, ‘and our Ailie, as is weel kent, is a lass far out of the ordinar. But her wedding-gown! A woman made out of stone would take an interest in that! I would be real thankful if you would put some real feeling in her mind.’
‘She has done her best,’ said Ailie, still bending absorbed over her book; ‘but I’m thinking of the Lord’s will, and no of men’s pleasure. My black gown that I wear every day is good enough for me.’
‘Hear to her!’ said the mother; ‘but eh, Isabel, you that’s young yoursel, ye might tell her this earth is nearer than Heaven, and that we maun take some thought for the things of the flesh.’