The visit to the Bridge of Allan was anything but a successful expedition on the whole. Little Margaret took cold, and had a trifling illness, which filled her three slaves with trembling terror; and Isabel was so much disposed, with unconscious superstition, to regard this as ‘a judgment’ on her own distracted thoughts and wavering mind, that she was not a pleasant companion to Miss Catherine, who, on the other hand, blamed herself for her over-confidence in her own opinion, for exposing the child to bodily risk and the mother to temptation. Marion made no small amount of critical observations to herself behind their backs, thinking the child’s illness also ‘a judgment.’ ‘Them that flees from the Lord, the Lord’s hand will find them out,’ said Marion to herself. And the little party was not a happy one. They remained until after the anniversary of Mr. Lothian’s murder, of which Miss Catherine was rather disposed to make a solemnity. Poor Isabel, with her heart still trembling for her child, and still suffering from the sharp assault of the new life which had taken her at unawares, found it difficult enough to force back her thoughts into the channel of the past, and feel all the grief, the heavy weight of recollection that was expected of her. After the anniversary was over they went home. It was on a brilliant June day--a warm, languid, breathless afternoon, when the steamer once more carried them up Loch Diarmid. Miss Catherine herself looked round her with an anxious air when she first stepped on board, involuntarily feeling that _he_ might be there again way-laying them. Isabel did not look for him, but an excitement which she could not conquer took possession of her. It seemed to herself that she was coming home to wait for him, and that, sooner or later, he must come to the place he knew so well to disturb her life. The Lady of the Manor recognised group after group, and speculated with Marion, as there was no satisfaction to be got from Isabel, upon their different errands. ‘There’s John Campbell has been settling his son in Glasgow,’ she said. ‘I hope it will not turn the lad’s head. They’re a very pushing family. But I can’t tell what the smith’s wife should have to do so often in Maryburgh, wasting her time and spending her siller. Marion, is that Archibald Smeaton I see there at the other end of the boat? Go and ask him if the queys are all sold, and what price they brought; and here!--listen--ye can ask him,’ said Miss Catherine, aside into Marion’s ear, ‘if yon Englishman is still about the Loch.’