When Jacopo had settled things with Father Tiernay and had gone on his last trip before he should come to make Mary his wife, the girl walked the Island like one transfigured. The light burned steadily in her deep eyes, her cheeks flamed scarlet, her lips were red as coral. She went about her household duties with her head in the air and her eyes far away. The brothers when they came home of an evening sat silent in a ring, for the grief was on them: but if the girl knew she did not seem to know. Of the five brothers not one had thought of marrying. What any one might do as soon as the golden thread that held them together was snapped no one could say; but they were grizzled or grizzling men, and had long ago been put down by the Island folk as confirmed bachelors. Father Tiernay had talked with Jacopo about his religion, and had declared him an excellent son of Mother Church, so there was nothing against him on that ground. The captain of his ship gave him a good character, and Jacopo had been with him three seasons. He had a tidy little house near Greenock, and a bit of money saved. Yet the brothers were not satisfied. 'Why couldn't she have fancied a lad of the kindly neighbours?' grumbled William, the eldest. And the youngest, Patrick, answered in the same strain, 'Wasn't the Island good enough for her but she must go to foreign lands?' And then five melancholy heads shook in the twilight. They had a cold, awkward, insular distrust and shyness of the Spaniard. They made no response to his professions of goodwill and brotherhood, poured out fluently in his yet difficult Scots-English. They noticed and commented afterwards upon his contemptuous shrug, when one feast night he was invited to join the family at its Rosary,--for they are devout people, the Islanders. Yet, distrust or no distrust, the girl must go to him. He came back one summer day with a fine rig-out for his wedding, and a bonnet and cloak for the bride such as were never dreamt of in the Island. She was an impassioned bride, and as she came down the church with her husband, her eyes uplifted and shining like stars, she seemed rather to float like a tall flame than to walk like a mortal woman. Five men watched her then with melancholy and patient faces. The five went with her to the boat on which she was to cross to the mainland to take the Glasgow steamer. As the little ferry plied away from the pier it was at her husband she looked, not at them and the Island, though it stood up purple and black, and she had well loved the rocks and glades of it, and though they had fostered her.