‘What has your dying to do with it? No, my love. You’ll give in to me and do your duty, and we’ll be as happy as the day is long,’ he said, and with another kiss let her go free. ‘Now give me the paper, and I’ll read you the news. All sorts of things have been happening, and we have been too happy to mind; but now, you know, it is time to think of our duties, now we’ve come back to the world.’ CHAPTER XLIV A day or two passed in idleness, not unlike the honeymoon idleness of Ranza Bay. Stapylton lounged out and saw the steamer come and go, and lounged back again with nothing to occupy him, sometimes lavishing caresses upon his wife, sometimes sullen to her, complaining of the delay and the time he was losing, and of being buried alive in ‘such a hole as this.’ One morning, about a week after their establishment at Kilcranion, a message came to Isabel from Janet Macfarlane, begging her to go to Ailie. It was while they were seated at breakfast that the message arrived. ‘Eelin,’ the ‘lass’ who had been witness of the first meeting between Mrs. Lothian and her former lover, was Janet’s messenger. ‘Eh, mem, there’s word frae Ardnamore,’ said the young woman; ‘you’ll have heard of a’ that’s come and gone. Eh, I would have brought ye the paper if I had thought ye didna ken. He’s joined thae radicals that are ay plotting; and it was some awful plan to blow up the king. And Ardnamore he’s been blown up himself instead, and it’s no thought he’ll live. And there’s been letters. You wouldna have thought the mistress was that taken up with him, when he was here; but she’s ta’en her bed, and we dinna ken what to do. And auld Janet--I’m meaning Mrs. Macfarlane--has awfu’ confidence in you. If you were to come, she thinks maybe Ailie--eh, Gude forgive me, I’m meaning the mistress--would mind what you would say.’ ‘If you’ll wait a little, Helen,’ said Isabel, ‘I will see what I can do.’ She went back to her husband with a little excitement. ‘You never told me,’ she said, ‘that there was something in the papers about Mr. John. And now they say he is dying, and I am sent for to Ailie. Poor Ailie! she scarcely said good-bye to him when he went away; and she will feel it now. Horace, will you get the gig and drive me over the hill, or must I wait for the boat?’ ‘Neither the one nor the other!’ he said. ‘Why should you go to every Ailie in the country-side when they send for you? Nonsense! You have no official position now, Isabel. You are my wife, and I won’t have you go!’ ‘But, Horace, I must!’ said Isabel, quite unsuspicious that this was the voice of authority. ‘Poor Ailie! I had to do with her marriage, though I did not wish it--and I was there when he went away. And I am Margaret’s sister. There is nobody she will speak to like me. I will stay as short a time as possible, but I could not refuse to go.’