When Isabel had exhausted herself with enjoyment, she sat down at length, having ordered the daintiest dinner she could contrive for his comfort when he should return, and began to her wifely work, sewing on buttons and putting her husband’s ‘things’ in order. It was pleasant to be engaged about his ‘things’ at such a moment. She said to herself that she had done him injustice, and her heart in the revulsion went back to him with a warmth beyond the fervency even of her first love. The cloud had blown past--surely for ever. She had misconceived him altogether. While she had supposed him to be so harsh and unsympathetic, was it not evident that all the time he had been overcoming his own prepossessions, bringing himself to acquiescence in her desires? Her heart uttered confessions of her sin against him, and praises of his goodness, while she put the buttons on his shirts. And little Margaret played at her feet, and the sunshine came in and lighted on the baby’s golden head, and for almost the first time since her marriage Isabel’s heart was light, and her happiness was unclouded as the day. It was about two o’clock in the afternoon when the messenger whom Stapylton had sent from Maryburgh reached the house. It was one of the men upon the pier, whom Isabel knew. He brought her a little note, written in pencil, from her husband, sending the key of a desk of his which he always kept locked. ‘_I want some money_,’ Stapylton wrote. ‘_I see something here I can buy with advantage, but I have not money enough. Open the right-hand drawer above the pigeon-hole; be sure you don’t touch anything else--and send me a pocket-book you will find in it. Remember not to touch anything else, for there are things in it which belong to other people, and I can’t have my papers interfered with. Lock it up again as soon as you have taken out the pocket-book, and send me back the key._’