Meanwhile, Isabel sat sunk in a quiet which was almost stupor; the past days had been very agitating days. And now the stillness and the soft sleep of the child, and the embracing of the old kindly house which seemed to stretch its arms round her with a forgiving calm, and Jean’s kindly accustomed ministrations lulled her very soul within her. The good things she had lost came back and floated round her, bringing something of their own peace into her heart; and all that was disturbing and novel had passed away for a moment like a dream. She felt as if she could have slept like the baby. ‘Sleep, my darling, if ye can,’ said Jean, compassionately, ‘you’ve been doing more than you were able--it’s the cold air, and then the fire---- ’ ‘No, no,’ said Isabel, rousing up. ‘Instead of that, if you will pack up her things, I’ll take little Margaret out for a walk, while the sun is so warm on the braes.’ ‘Weel, weel,’ said Jean, ‘ye’ll come to nae harm there _now_.’ Not now, all the harm was over and done. ‘And that she’s no happy is written in her face,’ Jean continued, as she watched her straying out into the sunshine, with a spark of natural wonder that she should take that way of spending the short day. But she was mollified when she saw that Isabel crossed the road to the spot on the hill where it had been Margaret’s custom to pray. ‘And she’ll maybe get good there, poor thing, so ill as she has done for herself,’ the sympathetic woman said to herself, looking out from the door. She had watched wilful Isabel so often taking her wayward course from that door; sometimes to meet her ‘lad,’ as in the old times upon the braes; sometimes demure and stately to join Miss Catherine in some long longed-for pleasure; then leaning on her husband’s arm, the serene minister’s wife; then mournful in her widow’s weeds. ‘I understood a’ but this,’ Jean said, meditatively, to herself. ‘But that she’s no happy is written in her face.’