“There is a thing Jean and I have often talked of telling you,” he said.  “We have not known what it was best to do.  Times we have been troubled because we could not make up our minds.  This Mr. Hector MacNairn is no common man.  He is one who is great and wise enough to decide things plain people could not be sure of.  Jean and I are glad indeed that he and his mother are coming.  Jean can talk to her and I can talk to him, being a man body.  They will tell us whether we have been right or wrong and what we must do.”

“They are wise enough to tell you anything,” I answered.  “It sounds as if you and Jean had known some big secret all my life.  But I am not frightened.  You two would go to your graves hiding it if it would hurt me.”

“Eh, bairn!” he said, suddenly, in a queer, moved way.  “Eh, bairn!” And he took hold of both my hands and kissed them, pressing them quite long and emotionally to his lips.  But he said nothing else, and when he dropped them I went out of the room.

CHAPTER IX

It was wonderful when Mr. MacNairn and his mother came.  It was even more beautiful than I had thought it would be.  They arrived late in the afternoon, and when I took them out upon the terrace the sun was reddening the moor, and even the rough, gray towers of the castle were stained rose-color.  There was that lovely evening sound of birds twittering before they went to sleep in the ivy.  The glimpses of gardens below seemed like glimpses of rich tapestries set with jewels.  And there was such stillness!  When we drew our three chairs in a little group together and looked out on it all, I felt as if we were almost in heaven.

“Yes! yes!” Hector said, looking slowly—­round; “it is all here.”

“Yes,” his mother added, in her lovely, lovely voice.  “It is what made you Ysobel.”

It was so angelic of them to feel it all in that deep, quiet way, and to think that it was part of me and I a part of it.  The climbing moon was trembling with beauty.  Tender evening airs quivered in the heather and fern, and the late birds called like spirits.

Ever since the night when Mrs. MacNairn had held me in her arms under the apple-tree while the nightingale sang I had felt toward her son as if he were an archangel walking on the earth.  Perhaps my thoughts were exaggerated, but it seemed so marvelous that he should be moving among us, doing his work, seeing and talking to his friends, and yet that he should know that at any moment the great change might come and he might awaken somewhere else, in quite another place.  If he had been like other men and I had been like other girls, I suppose that after that night when I heard the truth I should have been plunged into the darkest woe and have almost sobbed myself to death.  Why did I not?  I do not know except—­except that I felt that no darkness could come between us because no darkness could touch him.  He could never be anything but alive alive.  If I could not see him it would only be because my eyes were not clear and strong enough.  I seemed to be waiting for something.  I wanted to keep near him.