She left her heavy coat on the seat, and in her neat, plain suit of blue serge walked up the short approach to the open door, where Diarmid, who had heard the rumble of wheels, stood waiting to receive her. "Not at home," were the words ready on his lips, but something in Vivien’s face arrested his attention. "I am Mrs. Rodney Payne, Mr. Rosmead’s sister, and I have come at my brother’s request to see Miss Mackinnon. Do you think she would see me for a few minutes?" Diarmid hesitated for a moment. Then he was wholly vanquished by the light in the strange lady’s eyes. "Ma’am, if you’ll step inside, I’ll see," he said respectfully. "She’s sittin’ up there in the room with him, and we can do naught with her. Maype, if she would see you, it might be better for her." "Where is her brother?" Diarmid shook his head. "He hass been out of the house for ’oors, ma’am, and we are all to pieces here in Creagh, and there’s nothing but dool and woe upon my folk." Vivien’s eyes became moist at this expressive phrase which, falling pathetically from the old servant’s lips, adequately summed up the whole affairs of the Mackinnons. "I am afraid," she said very gently, "that if you take my name to Miss Mackinnon she will not see me. I am going to take a great deal upon myself. If you will just show me the way I will go to her without announcement. She can only send me away." "Yes, sure, an’ that is so, but I do not think, seeing you, ma’am, that she will do that," said Diarmid earnestly, and he held open the door for her to pass in as if she had been a queen. They trod the narrow stairs very softly. On the half-landing Diarmid paused and stood aside while he pointed with finger that trembled slightly to the closed door of the room where Mackinnon slept his last sleep. Vivien braced herself, for the thing she was about to do was not only unusual, but might very easily be misconstrued. She took a little quick breath as her fingers closed upon the handle of the door. The next moment she turned it, slipped in, and closed it behind her again. The blinds of the front window only were down, but the sun, now veering westward, shone in at the window in the gable-end and lay in a soft yellow flood upon the quiet room. A shaft of sunshine even lay athwart the bed, touching as it passed Isla’s motionless figure, where she sat upon a chair by the bed-side, her hands lightly clasped on her lap, her eyes staring straight in front of her, unseeing, uncomprehending, a look of almost hopeless misery upon her face. At sight of a strange woman in the doorway, however, she sprang up, quivering with indignation. She would have pointed to the door, to which she tried to hasten, but something in Vivien’s beautiful face--some unimagined quality of rarest sympathy deterred her. She stopped with the very words of dismissal frozen on her lips. Vivien approached quickly, laid a tender hand on her shrinking shoulder and spoke.