There was a little consolation in the changed aspect of the little parlour, the engravings on the walls, the little bookshelves, the volumes the minister had chosen. It would not be _his_ fault that he had so left her. And for the first time a sense of pleasure and pride in the watchful, anxious tenderness of her elderly lover came into Isabel’s mind. At that particular moment she was so forlorn that these marks of his thought for her came sweet to her heart. It could not be his fault. As soon as she had taken off her bonnet, she who had come up the road with such languor, feeling a weariness altogether out of proportion with the fatigue she had undergone, came eager to look at her new treasures. He had consulted her about them all, though she had not known why. She it was who had unwittingly chosen the half-dozen prints which so changed the aspect of the grey walls. He had remembered exactly what she liked, what she had said, shy as her opinions on such subjects always were. Her countenance smoothed out under this influence. Jean, who had been rather contemptuous of the ‘nonsense,’ followed her about while she examined everything with anxious eyes. ‘She’s real weel in her health; but oh, I’m feared she’s changed,’ had been Jean’s first thought as Isabel’s abstracted looks and indifferent answers to all her news chilled her warm delight in her stepdaughter’s return. ‘After a’ your grandeur, you’ll no think much of your ain little house,’ she had even said, with a perceptible taunt as they entered it. And Isabel’s first step, which had been to sit down on Margaret’s sofa, and cry her heart out, had, natural as it was, been a blow to Jean. She had herself become callous to the associations of the place; and she had taken so much trouble to set out the tea there, and brighten it for the home-coming. But when Isabel perceived the change about her, and began to brighten, Jean brightened too. ‘Eh! if I had but thought you would have cared,’ she said. ‘There’s the history o’ the Prodigal up in the garret, a’ painted and grand, no like thae black-and-white things. But I never thought ye would care. Oh, aye, it was just the minister! and a foolish thing it was for a man of his years, climbing up on chairs and hammering away like a working man. But so long as you’re pleased----’ ‘Did he do everything himself?’ said Isabel. ‘Oh, ‘deed did he--everything; and would have jumpit into the Loch at the end, if that would have pleased ye. The man’s just infatuate. I think shame to see it--at his time of life.’ ‘He is not so old,’ said Isabel.