‘I am going away,’ he said, half-indicating with his hand a little pile of luggage. Miss Catherine ventured to take breath. If that were all, things might not turn out so badly; and she felt able to note his looks, and the changes that time had wrought in him. The first thing she observed was, that he was intensely pale, and that he looked at Isabel, in her mourning-dress, with a trembling about the muscles of his mouth, and nervous movement of his hands, which betrayed some very strong feeling. Why should he be moved like that to see her, after abandoning her, leaving her to be wooed by the minister, showing no sign of recollection for all these years? And yet the indications of feeling about him were too marked to be unreal; and Miss Catherine, hard as she felt it her duty to be, could not but feel a certain womanish compassion for him in her heart. ‘You can have made but a short stay, since we have heard nothing of you,’ she said; ‘you were at Archie Smeaton’s, I suppose, over the hill.’ ‘For some little time,’ he said, ‘and I heard from him,’ lowering his voice, with a glance at Isabel, who had betrayed her recollection of him only by a slight movement of her head--‘of many things which grieved me much.’ Was this the old flippant, arrogant, unsympathetic ‘English lad?’ He had grown much thinner Miss Catherine decided, looking at him. His voice was subdued; the very lines of his face refined and altered. His aspect, long ago, had been that of a somewhat surly, self-sufficient youth, careless of what anybody thought of him, ready to meet reproval half way; now everything seemed softened, toned down, and improved. Yes, improved. She could not deny it to herself. ‘Yes,’ she said, hastily, ‘there have been changes; but no doubt you would hear of the chief of them at the time they happened. We will not go over an old story. You have been in distress yourself, if I am to judge by your dress.’ ‘Yes,’ he said; ‘my father is dead; but he lingered long after the time I left the Loch so hurriedly. I was kept in close attendance upon him for nearly a year. He had a tedious illness. But for that I should have returned sooner; and, I am sorry to say,’ he added, ‘my position is not quite so good as I had hoped.’ When he paused, inviting sympathy, Miss Catherine found herself obliged to show some sign of interest. Isabel had not spoken. She was busy with the baby, whispering to it, encouraging its play with old Marion, the maid, who had come to her other side, with a perfect understanding of the position, ‘to take off her attention.’ But yet Isabel had betrayed that his affairs were not indifferent to her. At this point she raised her brown eyes to him with a questioning look, much more significant than words. It asked, more plainly than her lips could have done, what it was, and all about it? And then the eyes sank confused--becoming conscious. All this pantomime Miss Catherine saw and noted with an ache in her heart.