"Think of what I have proposed. I will not stint you in expenses. Give the girls and yourself a little pleasure--do."

"Your own expenses are going to be tremendous, Robert, furnishing, travelling and what not. I can't conscientiously increase them."

At these words Christina left the room. Robert did not answer his mother's remark, but he looked at Isabel, and she understood the look as entrusting the further prosecution of the subject to her.

Mrs. Campbell, however, refused to give up Campbelton. "I heard," she said, "that Mrs. Walter Galbraith was going to France and Italy.

Perhaps she will allow you to travel with her."

Isabel looked at her mother with something like reproach. "You know well, mother, that Mrs. Galbraith dresses and travels in the most extravagant fashion. She would not be seen with two old maids in plain brown merino suits. We should look like her servants. Even if we got stylish travelling gowns, we should want dinner dresses, and opera dresses, and cloaks and changes, and small necessities innumerable. It would cost a thousand pounds, if not more, to clothe us both for a three months' travel with Mrs. Galbraith."

"Then be sensible women and go to Campbelton. You can take your wheels and on the firm sands of Macrihanish Bay have a five miles' unbroken spin. There are boating and fishing and very interesting walks."

"And Christina will find company for her wheel and walks, mother. The last time we were in Campbelton, the schoolmaster, James Rathey, was constantly with her. He was in love, and Christina liked him. After we came home he wrote to her, and I had hard work to prevent her answering his letters."

"You ought to have told me this before."

"I was sorry for her. Poor girl, he was the only lover she ever had!"

"Such folly! I shall watch the schoolmaster myself this summer. I have influence enough to get him dismissed. He shall not teach in Campbelton another year."

"Oh, mother, how cruel and unjust that would be! I am sorry I told you."

And Isabel felt the case to be hopeless, and did not make another plea.

She went straight to her sister's room. "Mother is not to be moved, Christina," she said. "We shall have to go to Campbelton."

"So be it. Jamie Rathey will be having his vacation now, and he can play the fiddle and sing '_The Laird o' c.o.c.kpen_' worth listening to. He promised to buy a wheel before I came again, and then we will away to Macrihanish sands for a race. I won't be cheated out of that pleasure, Isabel, and you need not say a word about it."

"You cannot hide it. Every one but mother knew about you and James Rathey last year, and Aunt Laird would have told mother, but I begged her not. If you begin that foolishness again, I must attend to the matter."

"You mean you will tell mother?"

"Yes, decidedly."

"Then you will be an ill-natured sister."

A little later Mrs. Campbell appeared and told them to pack their trunks, and lock up the clothing they did not intend to take with them.

"The paperers and painters are coming into the house to-morrow morning,"

she said. "We shall take the boat for Campbelton directly after an early breakfast."

As neither Isabel nor Christina made any protest, she added: "You may go at once and buy yourselves a couple of suits, one for church, and a white one that will be easily laundered. I suppose hats, gloves, shoes, and some other things will be necessary. You can each of you spend forty pounds. This is a gift, I shall not take it from your allowance."

"I cannot see through mother," observed Christina as they were on their shopping expedition.

"Can you see through anything, Christina? I cannot."

"She had a great fit of the liberalities this morning. What for?"

"She was buying us. One way or another, she has us all under her feet."

"Poor Theodora!"

"Keep your pity for poor Christina. If Theodora has been a schoolmistress she knows fine how to hold her own."

"With schoolgirls--perhaps. Mother is different."

"The difference is not worth counting. Women, old and young, are very much alike."

"Do you believe the paperers and painters begin work to-morrow?"

"Mother said so. It is one of her virtues to tell the truth. You know how often she declares she would not lie even to the devil."

"Yes--but was that the truth?"

"It is not right to criticise and question what your mother says, Christina."

In the morning the arrival of a number of men with pails, and brushes, and paint-pots, justified Mrs. Campbell's a.s.sertion, and the three women were glad to escape the dirt, noise, and confusion in Traquair House, even for the _Argyle Arms_ in Campbelton. Robert went with them to the boat, and Isabel's pathetic acceptance of what she disliked, and the tears in Christina's eyes made him a little unhappy. He slipped some gold into their hands, as he bid them good-bye, and their silent looks of pleasure at his remembrance, soothed the uncertain sense of some unkindness or unfairness which had troubled him since Christina's rebellious outbreak. He was glad he had gone with them to the boat, and glad that he had given them a parting token of his brotherly care, and he felt that he could now turn cheerfully to his own pressing but delightful affairs.

He was singularly happy in them, and really glad to be rid of all advice and interference. Men who had known him for many years, wondered at his boyish joyfulness. He was a different Robert Campbell, but then it was generally known he was in love, and all the world loves a lover. No one was cruel or malicious enough to warn, or advise, or shadow the glory of his expectations by any doubt of their full accomplishment. The initiated gossiped among themselves, and some said: "Campbell is a fool to be making such a fuss about any woman;" and others spoke of Mrs.

Traquair Campbell, and "wondered how the English girl would manage her."

"The poor la.s.sie will be at her mercy," said one old man.

"She will," answered his companion, "for the Traquair Campbells' ways will be dark to a stranger. It takes a Scotchwoman to match a Scotchwoman."

"Yet I have heard that the old lady is a wonder o' good sense and prudence. Her husband was a useless body, but she managed him fine, and was one o' those women that are a crown to their husbands."

The first speaker laughed peculiarly. "Man, David!" he said, "little you ken, if you take King Solomon's ideas of a comfortable wife to live wi'.

The women who are a crown to a poor man are generally a crown o' thorns, I'm thinking."

But no doubts or fears troubled Robert Campbell. He thought only of his marvellous fortune in winning a woman so lovely and so good. He was not unmindful of either her intellect or her education, but he did not talk of these excellencies, even to his chief friend Archie St. Claire. He had a feeling that intellect and learning were masculine attributes, and he preferred to dwell entirely on the sweet feminine virtues of his beloved. But this, or that, there was no other woman in the world but Theodora to Robert Campbell, for lovers are selfish creatures, and Lord Beaconsfield says truly: "To a man in love, all other women are uninteresting, if not repulsive."

So the days and the weeks went happily past, in preparing a home for Theodora. He went over and over very frequently the last few words--"a home for Theodora!" and they sung, and swung, and shone in his heart, and made his life a fairy story. "I never knew what it was to be happy before," he said repeatedly; and it was the truth, for up to this time he had never felt the joy of that mystical blending of two souls, when self is lost and found again in the being of another.

Twice he took a trip to Campbelton, and found all to his satisfaction.

His mother was surrounded by her kindred, a situation a Scotch man or woman tolerates with an equanimity that is astonishing; and Isabel and Christina wore their usual air of placid indifference to everything.

They were all desirous to know what had been done in the house, but he refused to enter into explanations. "It is ill praising or banning half-done work," he said in excuse, "but I promise on my next visit to take you home with me, and then you will see the work finished."

"And then you will go and get married?" asked Christina, and he answered with a smile, "Then I shall go and get married."

"When you bring Theodora home she will give us a little pleasure, I hope."

"I am sure she will. Theodora is fond of company and entertainments, and she will wish you to share them with us, and that will add to my pleasure also."

"We shall see."

"Do you doubt what I say?"

"My dreams never come true, Robert."