‘If we were behaving as the people do in your favourite opera,’ said the minister, ‘we would sing a duet of felicity. My dear, you’ve got a pretty, sweet little voice. I think you must learn to sing.’ ‘Oh, don’t speak of that opera,’ said Isabel; ‘I hated it. The men singing about everything--even their dinner! And Lucy Ashton----’ ‘My dear, it was not Lucy Ashton; it was Lucia di Lammermoor.’ ‘I know; but it was meant to be all one,’ said Isabel. ‘Lucy sing like yon! Oh, they cannot tell what it is to be in despair.’ ‘My darling, and how should you know?’ said the minister, looking at her with his admiring smile. ‘I don’t think I know; but I can divine,’ said Isabel; and her eyes seemed to deepen so, that her husband gazing into them could not make out their meaning. But he saw a little shudder, quite slight and momentary, pass over her. And his first thought was that she must be ill. ‘Come in,’ he said; ‘it is growing cold. How is it we have twice become so serious this pleasant night, after coming home?’ ‘It is that opera; I never like to think of it,’ said Isabel, and shivered again, and went in, her husband following. It was very childish of her; and yet somehow she felt just as she had felt at the opera, as if someone were watching them--looking at their tranquil life with unkindly eyes. Next day, Mr. Lothian stayed at home, going no further than the village to see the wives and ask after the men; and in the evening came Mr. Galbraith to resume with delight his long-interrupted ‘cracks.’ Instead of the fire they sat at the open window, Isabel gliding out and in cutting flowers, and looking after her garden. ‘There is some comfort in this--now we have got our pleasant nights back again,’ said the Dominie. ‘You saw many fine things in London, but I’ll be bound you saw nothing so bonnie as the Loch, and that young moon.’ ‘No,’ said Isabel; ‘nothing but streets, and churches, and ladies riding. Yet I am glad to have gone; now I will never feel ignorant when you speak. It was as good as jumping ten years.’ ‘All her thought is to make herself thirty,’ said the minister, with a laugh of happiness; ‘but I tell her, Galbraith, I like her best as she is. Sometimes I think I am too happy,’ he went on as she flitted out into the garden; ‘I have everything I can desire.’ ‘I never knew the feeling myself,’ said the Dominie; ‘but they say it is of kin to melancholy. No more to wish for. I cannot say I wish for much myself; but that’s no out of satisfaction, but out of despair.’ ‘Despair is a hard word,’ said the minister. ‘Oh, aye; far too hard a word. I’ve not vigour enough left to nourish a passion. It’s more a sense of the impossibility of any change, and a kind of content; and, minister, I’m free to acknowledge it--I thought you were but an old fool, setting your heart on a young thing; but I see now you were a wise man.’