When Stapylton returned that evening his mood was changed. Perhaps he was ashamed, and felt that he had gone too far. Perhaps it was a natural revulsion towards the wife he was still so fond of, that he was determined to have her all to himself. He never mentioned little Margaret or made any reference to her, but he was very tender to Isabel. ‘I am an ill-tempered fellow,’ he went so far as to say; ‘and if I make myself disagreeable sometimes, my Isabel must forgive me.’ And Isabel, for her part, was worn out; much emotion had worn her as great fatigue might have done. She yielded her soul to the sweetness when it came. She laid her head on his shoulder when he drew her to him, and cried, and despaired, and yet was consoled. ‘I am going to Maryburgh fair,’ he said to her next morning. ‘Smeaton has written to me to fetch away the cattle I bought. But I don’t want them now; so I must sell them if I can. I shall be back by the last steamer at dusk.’ ‘Then that is farewell to all your thoughts of settling here?’ ‘Farewell was said long ago,’ he said, ‘unless, indeed, there was something very tempting. No, no, don’t look at me so eagerly; I don’t mean to raise any hopes--America is the place for you and me. But, of course, if there was any great temptation----’ ‘Oh, Horace, if I might hope it would be so’--cried Isabel, with her heart leaping to her mouth. ‘Well, well, wait and see what will happen,’ he said cheerfully; and in that sudden gleam of comfort she hung about him, feeling all her fears and sorrows melt away like mists in the sunshine. She kissed him with her very heart on her lips before he left her. Isabel had been bred in all the reticence of a grave Scottish maiden; her kisses were few, and very rarely bestowed, but in this moment of revulsion, her heart smote her for all the hard things she had been thinking. ‘Dear Horace!’ she said, hanging about him, ‘I am always so hasty; but every day I will know you better.’ ‘And every day you grow sweeter,’ he said with a lover’s looks--and thus they parted; he to the boat which should carry him to Maryburgh, she to little Margaret’s room to dance her baby, and sing all manner of joyful ditties to the child. ‘Oh, my bonnie darling, shall I keep you after all?’ was the burden of Isabel’s gladness. She sang the words over and over in her joy, as if they had been the _refrain_ of a song; and little Margaret crowed and clapped her baby hands in reply, and the whole was like the blessed awaking from a bad dream.