‘You’ll come and see me, my dear, whenever you have time,’ she said; ‘but you’ve a good long walk to the Glebe, and I will not hinder you now.’ And Isabel, standing still by her stepmother’s side, waiting till Jean had arranged to have someone sent after them with the boxes, watched her friend drive away with an undescribable sinking at her heart. Miss Catherine compelled the minister to enter the carriage with her. She pulled him by the sleeve, and whispered in his ear, and resorted to violent measures to bring him, as she called it, to himself. ‘Go with her now, and you show her her own power, and you’ll spoil all,’ she said; and the bewildered man yielded. The carriage flashed away, while Isabel stood, not able to believe her eyes, on the little pier. The summer evening light was sweet upon the Loch, glancing down aslant on the braes, which were golden with the setting sun; and the labourers were going home, and all the soft sounds of repose and domestic reunion were in the air. Jean was busy with the man on the pier about the luggage. Since Isabel had left that same spot nearly three months before, nobody of Jean’s appearance or manners had come near her, except as an attendant; and it would be difficult to explain the sudden sense of desertion, the cruel solitude, and mortification and falling back upon herself, with which the girl looked after her friend. Her friend! Had it been love for her at all which had moved Miss Catherine, or only pity, and a disagreeable duty, from which she was glad to be relieved. Was there anyone in the world who cared for Isabel--for herself? They had been sorry when she was ill; they had pitied her. Even the minister--he was gone too, with Miss Catherine, leaving her in the first moment of her return all by herself. Tears flooded to Isabel’s eyes, and these were driven back by pride, and rushed to her heart again, filling it with a silent bitterness beyond all expression. It was a kind of public affront to her, leaving her there on the pier to make her way home as she could. Even Jean opened her eyes when she returned to the spot where her stepdaughter stood forlorn. ‘They might have taken you with them as far as Lochhead,’ said Jean. ‘Is that the way your grand friends part with you? And the minister, too! I canna understand it. They might have taken you with them as far as Lochhead.’ ‘I would rather walk,’ said Isabel, though she had a struggle to enunciate the words; and then the two took the familiar road and went on together, as if it were all a dream.