‘Oh, is it you, Ailie?’ she cried, and went up to her with something of her old impetuous manner. Yes, it was Ailie, and yet as unlike Ailie as fancy could have imagined. She was sitting against the wall with no appearance of any occupation--her listless hands lying in her lap. She was dressed in dead white, not light muslin, but opaque white stuff, loosely made, or else hanging loosely upon her worn figure. Her face was almost as white as her gown, her blue eyes were dilated and wandering, her fair hair, which once had so much pale gold in it, had lost its lustre. She was like marble, but yet she was not like death. Something of movement, a thrill of wavering agitation and life, was about her, although she sat as still as if, like the Lady in ‘Comus,’ she had been bound by enchantment into her chair. ‘I did not see you when I came in,’ said Isabel. ‘I only heard of it yesterday; and so you’ve come home?’ ‘Aye--I’ve come home.’ ‘And you’ve seen your own people again after all,’ said Isabel, trying to adopt a tone of congratulation. ‘Aye--I’ve seen my own folk.’ ‘And I am very glad you are back,’ said Isabel, ‘home is the best. But I never heard till yesterday, when I came back too. How glad they would all be! And I hope you were glad too--I hope you were pleased yourself?’ Ailie made no answer. She turned her head half away, and gazed again over the Loch. A little almost imperceptible nod of her head was the only indication she gave of having heard. And Isabel began to grow nervous in spite of herself. ‘Will you not speak to me, Ailie? are you not pleased to see me? I thought you would be pleased--and I would not lose a day. And you must have heard,’ said Isabel, a little affronted as well as amazed at the indifference shown her, and instinctively producing her highest claim to consideration, ‘what dreadful trouble I have had since you went away.’ The word seemed to catch Ailie’s ear without any that followed or preceded it. ‘Trouble!’ she said vaguely, ‘what can your trouble be in comparison with mine?’ ‘Oh, I beg your pardon,’ cried Isabel, with violent youthful compunction, ‘you know I have heard nothing. Oh, Ailie, don’t sit there and look so sad--tell me about it--was it your child?’ Ailie turned upon her her great wandering, dilated eyes: ‘My child?’ ‘I did not know,’ said Isabel, almost crying, ‘I thought you might have lost--a child--when you said your trouble was worse than mine.’ ‘My trouble is worse than any trouble on earth,’ said Ailie; ‘and oh to come back here to look on the same place night and day as I knew in my dreams. I think my heart will burst--it’s broken long, long ago,’ she added, turning away from Isabel, with a sudden pathos in her voice. It seemed a confession of unhappiness so open and undisguised, that Isabel was driven to her wits’ end, not knowing what to do or say. ‘Oh, Ailie!’ she said--‘oh, Ailie, you should not say that now--I told you, you should not marry him----’