And they sauntered down, arm in arm, towards their lodging, feeling, after all, as if it had been only a ‘tiff.’ Only a lovers’ quarrel! was that all? and no harm in the heart of the fond young husband, nor fear in that of the wife? ‘Shouldn’t you like to go to the old place?’ he said, ‘first? You can go if you like while I settle some other affairs. I’ll take you to-morrow if you like, and bring a gig for you to take you to Kilcranion in the evening. Will that please you? You see I am not so bad as you thought.’ ‘Oh, Horace, as if I ever thought you were bad; as if you ever were anything but good to me, and full of love and kindness!’ said Isabel, like a slave, trembling and glowing with happiness and with tears in her eyes. ‘You may be sure that is what I always mean,’ he said, in his lordly, condescending way; ‘and now you know how to make me do anything you like. Look as lovely as you are looking now and be sweet to me, and you can’t think how much I’ll do to please you, my pretty darling!’ He looked down upon her with such glowing eyes that Isabel was confused with the sudden revulsion. Could she doubt him after this? She clasped her hands on his arm and lifted her face to his, full of beseeching, flattering, appealing tenderness. If that was how to win him, then it should be that way; and if there was a little vague pang of she knew not what mingled with the sweetness, why then it must be herself who was to blame? Thus the transition from the old minister’s princess to the young husband’s ‘pretty darling’ was made in a confusing, bewildering sort of way. Una changed into Scheherazade or Zuleika all at once, without any preparation, no doubt would have felt the change bewildering. And so did Isabel. But he was very tender to her and full of caressing fondness, and she was to be taken to her baby to-morrow. Was not that happiness enough to obliterate all lesser evils? CHAPTER XLII The morning came so much wished for, in a blaze of wintry sunshine befitting such a joyful day. Kilcranion was a village on the other side of the hills from Loch Diarmid, which lived upon the summer visitors to ‘the saut-water,’ and shut up its houses all the winter through, so that Stapylton had been hailed as an angel of light, when he offered to take one of them, and had every difficulty smoothed out of his way. He was to go there when he had taken Isabel to the Glebe, and complete the necessary arrangements about the house, and would come for her, he said, in the evening to take her home.