"And now," said Sir Tom with a large and partially reproachful cheerfulness, "we had better address ourselves to the future of you two children and try to find out just where we are." He was neither unfeeling nor unsympathetic, but his opinion was that grief and the lassitude which treads close upon it should in due season have an end. The affairs of life cannot stand still, even when death intervenes. They can only be held in abeyance for a little space. Now that Mackinnon, full of years and honour and followed by the lamentations and the love of all his people, rich and poor, had been carried to his last rest, he must become a tender memory to those who were left. They had dined together quite alone, and now they sat in the library, where pipe and tobacco and cigars were on the table, as yet, however, untouched. Sir Tom was getting his pipe ready a trifle absently, his eyes fixed on his niece’s face. He was troubled about her. Her white face and her deep, grief-haunted eyes, which no man could fathom, disconcerted and disturbed him. He loved her dearly, but he did not always understand her. Malcolm’s apparently simpler nature was better within his grasp and ken. It was assuredly Malcolm’s place, as the head of the house, to make some suggestion or statement, but silence lay upon him heavily, and he seemed ill at ease. "Has neither of you anything to say? I must be going back to London to-morrow, if I have to go alone. I’ll wait till Wednesday, if I am to take Isla. What do you say, my dear?" Isla, a slim, black figure with white, nervous hands interlaced upon her lap, lifted her eyes to his face from where she sat at the other side of the fireplace. "No, thank you, Uncle Tom, I will not go to London just now." "But, my dear, your aunt will scold me no end if I don’t bring you. Her last words were that I was to bring you back with me. If she had been well enough nothing would have kept her from Achree just now--and you know it. But I left her in bed, and the doctor forbade the journey. It is nothing serious, only requiring a little care. Fact is, these monkeys have been running her off her feet lately. Three or four o’clock every morning before she got to her bed after their dancing and nonsense. The life of a chaperon in the London season is not a happy one." "Give Aunt Jean my love, and tell her I can’t come just now. Later, perhaps----" "Later! Heaven only knows where we may be later. Your aunt talks of some seaside place on the Brittany or Normandy coast--some God-forsaken hole, where a man can’t get a decent meal of meat. Gad, what it is to be hard-up! Well, and if you won’t come to us may I ask without impertinence where you do propose to go?" "Back to the Lodge at Creagh for a few days at least." "And after the few days--eh, what?" asked Sir Tom, leaning forward a little, with serious concern in his big, kindly, rather innocent blue eyes.