“ There are two staircases, but you can get out by either," said Isla, and they stood just a moment on the narrow landing till Rosmead had found his way out.
He passed out into the mellow sunshine of the afternoon with a sense of relief. The old house saddened him. It seemed to be peopled with dead hopes and with old memories and to have no kinship with the warm and happy life of men.
As he stepped on the gravel the sound of wheels broke the stillness, and a dogcart, in which was a beautiful, high-stepping chestnut horse, was rapidly driven up to the door. ”

“ The open casement windows commanded a splendid and uninterrupted view of the whole moor which, even in its bareness and in the wildness of the winter, had a certain rugged beauty of its own. A low hill rose immediately behind the house, from which a glorious prospect of the whole valley of the Earn could be seen, with Ben Voirlich rising like a buttress behind all the lesser hills in the valley below.
The air was like wine, and Isla's spirits rose as she grasped the possibilities of the simpler life there, in that remote lodge in a wilderness. ”

“ Thus did Neil Drummond, a commonplace, everyday man such as we meet so often upon the highway, rise to the height of renunciation and prove himself a hero.
Isla's eyes swam in a strange tenderness as she turned to him, trying to thank him. But even while she would have spoken he had left her, and soon she heard the rumble of the wheels on the road--the wheels which took him back to Garrion--never more, in obedience to a lover's quest, to speed across the rough road to the Moor of Creagh. ”

“ Vivien Rosmead, made for love, uniting in her sweet nature all that is best in womanhood, all that makes for the precious things of life, had been cheated on its very threshold. But why had she been so blind, you ask? Why had not her finer sense warned her of the risk she ran? The answer is the one which has come from the lips of a vast army of sad women who have believed that their love could win and keep a man from his evil ways. In this some few have succeeded but a multitude have failed. Vivien had failed, and the irony and the misery of it had embittered Peter Rosmead beyond all telling. ”

“ Many times that day when Rosmead looked at her dear face he registered a mighty vow that the man did not live who would be able to keep her from him. Drummond must take his defeat like a man. He was young, and there were others to choose from. In all his life Rosmead had not, until now, met a woman who could stir his pulses or make him long to lay his freedom at her feet as a thing for which he had no further use.
The train glided out of the station, and the sunshine was upon their faces and in their hearts. ”

“ I sometimes wish I could fall asleep at night and never waken any more."
"Yes, Miss Isla, but then the sun would go down upon the glen for efer and efer," said the old man with twitching lips.
He had carried her as a baby in his arms, he had set her almost before she could toddle upon the back of the old sheltie that now lived, a fat pensioner, in the paddock behind the house; he had watched her grow from sweet girlhood to womanhood, and his heart had rebelled against the hardness of her destiny. ”

“ If you could have done it better, dear woman, life might perhaps have been a little less hard for you."
"But after a while," she said in a low voice, "it might be possible. I should try very hard. And, after all, it is not happiness we are here for. One has only to look around to see how very little of it there is in this world."
"By heaven, Isla, I can't accept that--no, I can't! God means us to be happy. It is what He has created us for. Only we do wrong things. It is we who make the shipwreck, and I believe that if you go on with this marriage you will ruin three lives." ”

“ The dogs, gambolling in front, knew their destination--the Earn village; that is, if they did not meet David Bain with the post-gig on the road.
For more than a year now it had been Isla's custom to meet the postman for the purpose of intercepting any letters which it might not be wise to let her father see. In this simple act a great part of the tragedy of Achree may be apprehended. For even such innocent deception was foreign to the soul and heart of Isla Mackinnon, which was as clear and true as the waters of her own loch. ”

“ She was pleased to see him, but her colour did not rise, nor were there about her any of the signs the impatient lover can interpret to his own joy.
That was the lure of Vivien. She was so still, like the waters of Loch Earn on the quiet autumn days or in the hush of the early morning when the dawn was waking upon its breast.
"It is not a day for you to be out in. We are going to have a great storm. At Creagh, Diarmid predicts the drift of the year. You must be more careful of yourself." ”

“ It isn't much I ask, Isla. I promise not to molest you or to beg for your love, though I'll do my best to win it. Why is it that you won't believe in me?"
"Oh, I do, Neil. It is because I like you so much that I won't marry you," she answered frankly, but a little wearily. "You deserve something so much better than a half-hearted wife." ”

“ Isla got away with a considerable sense of relief, and when she mounted to the side of Jamie Forbes in the hotel dogcart her eyes even sparkled. There was now no horse of any kind, nor was there any carriage in the stableyard of Achree, though the old people, even Diarmid himself, could sadly recall the time when it had been full.
Isla was glad to be doing something. She had all the restlessness of an active nature that could not endure a policy of drift. They had been drifting so long with the ebb tide at Achree that she welcomed the crisis which made it necessary to take an immediate step. ”

“ The fire is the place for it--the very heart of it, where it will be consumed quickly, now that it has done its deadly work," she said drearily "Do you understand what has happened, Malcolm? Our father is dead, and it is you who have killed him, just as surely as if you had put a bullet into him."
"For God's sake, hold your tongue, Isla! You would drive a man to the edge of despair." ”

“ Isla was quite conscious of a vivid and growing resentment. As she watched his strong, well-knit figure busy among the few traps which he was instructing one of the porters to collect, she wondered how he dared to be so regardless as he was. A grown man with a man's strength and ability of a kind--yet nothing but a burden and a care to other folks, to frail folks like an old man and a young woman. The inequality and injustice of it imparted a most unusual hardness to her face. ”

“ This also Isla knew, and Malcolm would have to answer to his sister, to his own conscience, and to his Maker for his sin.
Rosmead's heart was heavy as he took his horse from the queer little stable of Creagh, and, mounting, rode slowly down Glenogle. The mystery of life, its awful suffering--so much of it preventible--oppressed his healthy mind like a nightmare. And always it was the innocent and the good who had to bear the full brunt. ”

“ He had none of those finer shades of feeling which had rendered Isla immediately conscious of any rift in the domestic lute.
Drummond stretched himself in the lounge-chair before the blazing peat with a sigh of content. He was in the mood to be at peace with the whole world and to give every man more than his due. It occurred to him as he looked at Malcolm, on whose face the full light from the window fell where he sat, that he had improved in looks of late. ”

“ Now, as Laird of Achree and head of his clan, he occupied a very different niche in the scheme of things.
Isla left Achree for the second time without any bitter pang. Nay, it pleased and comforted her to think that Peter Rosmead and his folk had it for a home. That thought somehow seemed to bring him nearer to her. In the months to come it would lessen the breadth and depth of that vast dividing sea. Yet how she would have been startled had her own thoughts been mirrored before her, who had never before taken such interest in a man! ”

“ Even I say that," said Vivien softly. "I don't want to belittle your suffering, dear, but it is of an impersonal kind. The woman who cannot be blamed if she loses faith is the one who has been cheated in her own self, whose womanhood has been flouted and scorned, whose love has been trampled on and despised. That is where the silent deeps are. May I say just what I will?"
"Surely," answered Isla, lifted clean out of herself by something tragic and mysterious in that other woman's face. ”

“ Isla then remembered the tragedy of Vivien Rosmead's life, and her own pity and sympathy which in times past had never failed any in need, awoke to newness of life. The frozen springs of her being leaped again with life, and, with an almost unconscious desire to help, she slipped her hand through Vivien's arm.
"Why is it that life is so full of hideous suffering for women?" ”

“ I have risen up each new day, thinking it brought me a day nearer to it and to you. I know all you have suffered. Let me try to make you forget. Give your precious life into my keeping, Isla. You are the only woman I have ever cared for. The knowledge that you were waiting somewhere for me has kept me a boy in heart for your sake. Will you give yourself to me?"
There was terror, anguish, hopelessness in her eyes. ”

“ I understand that it is a sacrifice for you to let us have the house at all. I wish I did not realize that so keenly."
She looked at him again, and the expression in her eyes wholly changed. The child-look came back--the look of trust, of ingenuousness, of innocent sweetness, and it moved Rosmead profoundly. A very reticent, self-contained, observant man, he was interested and drawn by the tragedy, the unfathomable sadness of this girl's life. To possess Achree, and thus to come within sight and possible touch of Isla Mackinnon, had suddenly become to him a matter of personal moment. ”

“ Will you go with me to-morrow to the south of France? I've not been there for eleven years. We'll go to Monty, my dear, and have a fling with the bravest of them. It stands to reason that I can't go alone. Will ye go?"
Isla sat very still, and from the expression of her face her thoughts could not have been gathered. Perhaps the old lady partly guessed them. The gift of second-sight brings in its train a sort of sixth sense that enables its possessor to be sure about things that other people only wonder about.
"But I have no money, Lady Betty, and it is Kitty that you ought to take." ”

“ Busy with purely mechanical things as she was, her thoughts were free to tarry with the affairs of Achree. Had Malcolm been as other men--had there been no shadow on his past, no complications in his present, she could have wished for no better issue out of the tangle of their troubles than to see him win Vivien Rosmead. She was a sweet, gracious woman, a true gentlewoman, beautiful and rich--a combination not easily found in a wife. How Isla would have rejoiced to see her mistress of Achree, rearing bonnie children who would have loved her and called her Auntie Isla. ”

“ All this would not have mattered if only you had been good and brave and a little like what you ought to have been. We could have borne poverty with a smile. But it was your misdeeds, your squandering of Achree that poisoned existence for him until slowly his mind gave way. And I had to stand by and see it and be glad of it, because in that way he suffered less. But I suffered more. If there is a God in heaven He must judge this day between you and me, Malcolm Mackinnon."
"For God's sake Isla, hold your tongue!" ”

“ She was like a creature transformed, and while the sight touched Vivien Rosmead inexpressibly it also filled her with a great sadness. For, if this was how Isla Mackinnon regarded the house of her fathers, what must it be to her to see strangers in it and to have before her eyes the prospect of losing it altogether?
"Come, then," said Vivien with alacrity. "The evenings are so long and golden now that we can easily bring you back before dark. My brother will drive you himself." ”

“ Isla looked at her and smiled. It was impossible not to smile at the beautiful creature whose charm could disarm any hostility. Isla was not hostile to Achree. Only there she must be all or nothing. That was the truth, scarcely yet admitted to herself. A very woman, she could brook no rival, and had stayed high and dry upon the Moor of Creagh, because she would not share Achree and the Rosmeads with Malcolm. ”

“ Isla shook her head and then pointed suggestively to the illustrated papers, even making a remark about one of the pictures on the cover.
But the lady did not accept the hint.
"I don't read much," she confessed. "And men and women are much more interesting than books. When you've seen a bit of life, as I have, what's written in a book doesn't count for much. It's like a stuffed sawdust man beside a real flesh-and-blood one. Yes, they're a slippery crew, but they makes life--don't they, my dear?" ”

“ Haven't you any other friends in London to whom she could have gone?"
"None--except an old servant of Achree who lives somewhere about the Edgeware Road," said Malcolm with a sudden flash of remembrance. "Don't wear such a worried look, old chap, and don't forget that Isla is twenty-six years of age and more capable than either of us of looking after herself."
"But, hang it all, she's a woman, Malcolm, and--and your sister ought not to be adrift like that!"
"She isn't adrift," said Malcolm cheerily. "And, anyway, what can we do? ”

“ Vivien approached quickly, laid a tender hand on her shrinking shoulder and spoke.
"My dear, my dear! I am Vivien Rosmead, I too have suffered. Come out into the sunshine and let us talk. If even we do not talk we can cry together, and that will help us both."
Isla was powerless to be angry. Her brief indignation at the intrusion of a stranger upon her most sacred privacy passed as a tale that is told. ”