And then a great quietness came over the Loch. The marriage of Mr. John and Ailie Macfarlane was a nine days’ wonder, but that died out by degrees; and even among his relatives or hers, little, after a while, was said of the pair. They had gone out ‘into the world,’ like Adam and Eve, seeking the unknown region in which their Tongue would be intelligible, and themselves received as the bringers in of a new dispensation. But in the meantime they disappeared from Loch Diarmid, and the lesser prophets they had left behind soon failed to interest the crowd which was used to excitement. Things fell into their former quietness: worldly amusements began again to be heard of. All was very quiet at the Glebe. Day after day, week after week--nay, month after month, Isabel had sat silent, expecting, looking for the letter which never came, for the familiar step and voice which she had made so sure would come back to her. And neither letter nor visitor had come to break the wistful silence; no one knew the longing looks she cast from her window, as the winter twilight darkened night by night, over the gleaming surface of the Loch. She felt sure he must write, until the time was past for writing; and then a strange confidence that he would come seized upon her. And she had no one to whom she could say a word of her expectations, to whom she could even whisper his name. If Jean perceived her eager watch for the postman, her shivering start and thrill when any footstep was audible by night, or knock came to the door, she mentioned it to no one. Three months and not a word--then six months, the year turning again unawares, the snow melting from the hills, the snowdrops beginning to peep above the surface of the soil-- It would be impossible to describe all the alternations between fear and hope which moved her as the months went on. Spring came, stretching day by day, more green, more warm, more cheery and sunny on the hills. The poor girl, in her loneliness, sat watching, holding on, as it were, to the darker season which melted away under her grasp, taking comfort in every gloomy day, saying to herself, ‘It is winter still!’ The birds warbling in all the trees about was a trouble to her. No; not spring again--not so far on as everybody thought; only a little lightening of the cold, or gleam of exceptional weather. She kept this thought steadily before her mind, through March and April, refusing to understand what months they were. But in May she could no longer refuse to perceive. The trees had shaken out all their new leaves from the folds. The hill-side was sweet with wild flowers, the primroses were over. ‘Everything is so early this year,’ Isabel said to herself with a sick heart. ‘No so early either,’ said Jean, with profound unconsciousness of her stepdaughter’s sentiments; ‘no that early. I’ve seen the lilac-tree in flower a fortnight sooner than now.’