All at once she started, and sprang to her feet, changed as by a spell. She stood for a moment, irresolute, between her seat and the window. Then, by degrees, her whole expression altered. Her lip melted into the ghost of a smile, light came back to her pretty eyes; after a pause of consideration, she sat down once more by the wall. ‘I couldna leave Margaret,’ she said to herself. And she took up her work again,and worked briskly for about thirty seconds. Then she paused--listened--smiled. Ah! there could be no doubt about it. That was the accidental pebble that had struck the window. That was the soft, faint whistle, the merest whisper of a call which breathed on the air. He had come back, after all. It changed the entire current of Isabel’s thoughts in a moment. She had no further desire to go out, no impatience of her loneliness. These sounds had reconciled her to life and to herself. He was there, that was enough. She had even a pleasure in thinking he would have his walk and his waiting for nothing. She reminded herself of her anger and of her duty. Nothing in the world could induce her to leave Margaret. Her closed lips took a demure expression, as she sat and listened with a certain mischievous content. The blank which had seemed so intolerable and so permanent a few minutes before, flushed now with a thousand rosy colours. It was easy to deny herself, it was rather a pleasure than a pain to remain alone, so long as she knew that he watched for her and that she had not been forsaken. Half an hour passed, and twice Isabel had heard, with a widening of the smile or half-smile round her mouth, the familiar pebble on the window, when Jean Campbell came suddenly into the room where she was sitting. It had once occurred to Isabel, with some anxiety, that Margaret alone, in her retirement, lying still in the unbroken silence, might hear these sounds and interpret them aright; but she thought of no one else, and cared for no one else, in her youthful pride. Her stepmother’s entrance disturbed her and moved her to impatience. It was seldom Jean came so far without special invitation, and never to join Isabel, who was less gentle, less patient, and had a much warmer, hastier temper than Margaret. She came in, however, on this occasion without so much, the girl angrily remarked, ‘as a knock at the door.’ Isabel stopped working and raised her astonished eyes to Jean with a demonstrative surprise. ‘Did you want anything?’ she asked, in her pretty, clear, but, so far as poor Jean was concerned, unsympathetic voice. ‘I wanted to see if you were here,’ said Jean, with a mixture of softness and resentment.