‘John Diarmid!’ she cried, with a voice half choked with wonder and curiosity; and then made a dead pause, looking at him with a surprise too great for speech. ‘You must beware how you speak of my wife,’ he said. ‘Yes, we have come home. I have brought her home--and she is no longer Ailie, but my wife. If you would be a friend to either of us, you might show an example to others, and not lead the way to trouble.’ ‘Trouble--what trouble?’ said Miss Catherine; ‘and why should I be a friend to you, John Diarmid, or set anybody an example to do you pleasure?’ ‘Why should you be a foe?’ he said. And then they both paused, and looked at each other. Mr. John’s appearance had changed. It was nearly three years since he had left Loch Diarmid with his wife; and the wild look of passion and excitement which had marked the prophet had died out of his face. But his appearance was more strange to homekeeping eyes than it had been even when his face was lighted up with that glance which was half-insanity. He had acquired the foreign air which in those days was given by a beard; and his dress, too, was foreign; and there was about him that indescribable look which is not English, which has come to be conventionally identified with the conspirator and revolutionary. He had a great cloak on his arm--a Spanish cloak capable of being thrown around him after a fashion not impossible in those days, though now identified with, at the least, a Byronic hero. His dark face, so much as could be seen of it in the forest of dark hair and darker beard, was more like that of an Italian than a Scotchman; his aspect was that of a man full of weighty cares and responsibilities. The wild inspiration of his supposed mission had gone from him; but it was not only that he had lost that: something also there was, which the keen-sighted spectators perceived without understanding, which he had acquired. He looked at Miss Catherine without flinching, but with no excitement, meeting her eye calmly, and repeating what he had already said. ‘Why should you be a foe? I am none to you. You might be a protection to my wife. Am I to understand that my sins have been such that you will not forget what is past, and give your countenance to her? It might be a comfort to her,’ he said with a suppressed sigh. ‘I cannot see what other protection your wife wants, John Diarmid, when you are here.’ ‘But I am not likely to be here,’ he said, quietly. ‘I have many things on my hands. I am here to-day, and gone to-morrow. Poor thing! she is alone; her own friends are unlike her now. You saw her standing there----’ ‘You have made a lady of her,’ said Miss Catherine, with a half-congratulation, half-reproach. ‘I have made her----’ he said, and paused. ‘No, I have made her nothing; nought of it is my doing. It is another than I that must bear the blame.’