‘I could not eat!’ said Isabel, wrapping round her with a shiver the soft warm shawl. Tick, tick, tick! Would nothing arrest these inexorable moments? As they went on her thoughts seemed to rise round her like a whirlwind sweeping about and about her bewildered soul; every beat brought nearer to her the last moment when her fate should still be in her own power. And yet she was like one paralysed, and could not move. The minutes pressed and trod upon each other’s heels, and yet were so slow in their confused procession, that it might have been an age instead of an hour. At last, while Isabel sat striving to break the spell which bound her, the door flew open and then closed violently after Jamie rushing in wet and muddy from school. ‘It’s no raining now!’ cried the boy as he dashed forward to the side of the fire. Isabel started as if a shot had struck her. Just then the clock gave its little whirr of warning that it was about to strike the hour. She sprang up to her feet with a sudden cry--then sank down again--her pale head falling back against the chair, her hands falling listless on its arms. Jean, rushing to her, believed for the first moment that Isabel was dead. She was as one dead, her eyes half-closed and ghastly; her colour completely gone; her very lips deserted of all colour. The struggle had been too much for her. She lay insensible in a dead faint before her stepmother’s affrighted eyes. CHAPTER XIX Stapylton sought the trysting-place on the hill on the decisive day with all the excitement natural to the crisis, but with little fear of the result. He had taken none of the precautions of which he had spoken to Isabel. What need was there of precautions? she would wear a veil of course, and a cloak. The road to Kilcranion was little frequented, especially on such a day; and by the time Kilcranion was reached, they would be, to some extent, among strangers, not liable to recognition at every step as here. He made up for himself a small bag of necessaries, put the money he had just received to carry him home in his pocket, buttoned his greatcoat, and took his way through the drizzling rain to the hill-side.