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“Pity. He’d be a wonderfully devoted husband to you, dear. Mairi was convinced that she could ‘thaw’ him, as she put it, but you’ve turned out to be the one. If you chose, you could make a great success of him.”

“Please, Barbara! Must you be so powerful an advocate for the man? What are you getting out of it?” she asked, laughing.

“I don’t want to see you throw away a good chance, that’s all. Neil’s convinced, too, that you’re attracted to Stuart, but I told him that you wouldn’t be as foolish as that. We all know how these old Scottish families like to keep their clans to themselves.”

Now, this morning, on her way to an interview, Judith hoped that her sister would not succeed in ferreting out that further secret.

Judith had applied to the main department store in Cruban for any suitable vacancy and an assistant manager told her of the opening in the knitwear department.

“I see you’ve had sales experience,” he said. “But I’m afraid the post must be regarded as temporary until we see how you get on.”

Judith agreed to take the offer. In her present state of indecision, it was impossible to look ahead for any length of time.

Judith met her sister, though reluctantly, at the Roxburgh Hotel for tea. She had no liking for Graham Mundon, the proprietor, and felt, even perhaps unfairly, that he had been partly responsible for Barbara’s discontent that had led ultimately to her running away from responsibilities.

Barbara eagerly asked if Judith had accepted the job. “Accepted? I had to wait until the man offered it to me. You seem pretty sure.”

“Oh, I knew they’d jump at you,” Barbara replied carelessly. “Did you tell them you were a promising designer?”

“No. I’m in the knitwear department and I shan’t have much scope for designing there.”

“Never mind. I’m sure everything will turn out all right for you.”

Graham joined them almost immediately and Judith felt that his appearance was no accident in the course of prowling around his hotel. Barbara had undoubtedly told him that she would be there and that Judith would be coming later.

He asked casual questions about the new job, then asked the two girls if they would be attending the Highland Ball in September.

“I hope so,” Barbara replied. “That is, if I can persuade Judith to make me a dress. I haven’t a rag to wear.” Judith’s interest was aroused. “Is it very exclusive? Do you have to be invited by a chieftain of the clan?”

“Not exactly.” Graham smiled. “I’m surprised Garranmure hasn’t spoken of it. He usually brings a party. It’s held here in our ballroom.”

“Stuart’s had other things to think of in the past few weeks,” Judith defended him quickly.

“Including, of course, his plans for Kylsaig as the new tourist attraction. I hear he’s finished the slipway and it’s in use.”

“Yes, and it makes quite a difference to us to be able to land on our side of Kylsaig.”

“What’s his next project?” asked Graham.

But Judith thought it wiser not to discuss Stuart’s plans in his absence.

While she remained silent, however, Barbara answered, “He’s started to rebuild the old inn. It’s a crazy notion, I think. Your idea, Graham, of a smart hotel is much more sensible.” '

“A smart hotel?” Judith echoed. “All concrete and glass, I suppose? With a cocktail bar and dance band. Lifts to all floors and every mod. con.”

“Kylsaig needs that kind of shot in the arm,” Graham replied lazily, “if it’s ever going to pay. Better than all Garranmure’s re-settling schemes.”

“But Stuart doesn’t want the island spoilt.”

“What’s so spoiling about a decent, first-class hotel?” Graham asked.

“Really, Judith, I think you’re taking a very odd line,” Barbara put in. “Graham has some very modern, go-ahead ideas for Kylsaig.”

“I’m sure he has,” snapped Judith. “And perhaps Kylsaig would be better without them.” She caught Barbara’s warning glance. “Sorry. I apologise for that remark. But for me the whole charm of the island is its remoteness, its peace and quiet—and yet it’s only a mile or so from the mainland and Cruban and railways and the rest.”

Barbara gave a brittle laugh. “When you’ve been on Kylsaig even one winter, you won’t be so fond of its remoteness.”

Judith remained stubbornly silent. When it was time to leave, Barbara said that she wanted to speak to one of the receptionists, and for a few minutes Judith waited in the hall.

Graham, who had been called away by his head waiter, returned to Judith.

“You’re not very helpful to me, Judith,” he protested with a smile. “I can do a lot for Kylsaig, but there’s plenty of ignorance and opposition to face. Still, I didn’t expect opposition from you as well.”

“I don’t have to fall in with your wishes, do I?”

“No, but you want to see your sister happy and comfortable in her surroundings, don’t you?”

“Is your hotel going to do that for her?”

“It might help considerably.”

Judith disliked his smooth undertone and the implication that he could succeed in making Barbara accept life on Kylsaig, whereas Andy had failed.

“I don’t know what your ideas are with regard to Barbara’s future,” she told him now. “But I think you’ve certainly made her discontented in the past. Can’t you see that all this”—she waved her hand round the luxuriously-furnished hall lounge—“keeps reminding her of the life she had in London?”

“She needs reminding of civilisation if she’s to keep sane.”

Judith flinched. No doubt his words were casually spoken and not meant to convey an ominous warning, but, applied to Barbara who had been for months on the edge of nervous collapse, they sounded threatening.

“Well, now that I have a job here, I’ll be able to look after Barbara,” she said firmly.

“I’m glad you’re staying,” he said more cordially. Then a less friendly expression came over his face. “You’ll be able to keep an eye on Kylsaig developments. Garranmure should be grateful to you.” He smiled and jingled loose change in his pocket. “Of course, it wouldn’t surprise me if he has influenced you to—”

He broke off as Barbara approached. Once more he was the smiling hotel owner accompanying the two girls to the main entrance. “You must both come as my guests to the Highland Ball,” he said in parting.

“Thank you, Graham.” Barbara’s face lit up with pleasure. “That’s most handsomely generous of you.”

Judith let her sister do all the thanking. She was imagining to herself the rest of that unspoken sentence. Because she had so hotly defended Stuart, Graham thought that she had taken a job in order to remain near him and that “looking after Barbara” was mere camouflage.

On the way across to Kylsaig, Judith came near to admitting to herself that this was practically the truth, but Graham was the last person to whom she wanted her real reasons to be obvious.

Now that Barbara was assured of Judith’s living with the family indefinitely, she was prepared to be most cooperative.

“Next week you’ll be working,” she said, “so you ought to consider all your free time now as holiday. Maybe we could spend a day at Tobermory and take the children with us.”

“Yes, I’d like that,” Judith agreed. “Choose whichever day suits you.”

She went out in the evening to walk alone by the shore, then across the island to the small sandy spit jutting out into the Firth and pointing like a paw to the Atlantic. Away behind her the ruins of Kylsaig Castle kept sightless watch on approaching enemies and to the left sloping fields glowed rose-red with heather. The plum-blue hills of the mainland were sharply etched like cardboard stage cut-outs against the still luminous sky.

“It’s all too beautiful to leave,” she murmured aloud. Yet in her heart she knew this was just another excuse to try to balance the unwisdom of remaining. Perhaps a wild stormy winter on the island would cure her of her love for the place and at the same time dislodge those other romantic notions in her mind.

Barbara had made speedy preparations for the next day’s trip to Tobermory, and although the day started with broken clouds and a dull atmosphere, by the time the steamer arrived at the pier, the sun broke through.

“Trust me to strike early closing day!” Barbara complained as they walked along the promenade planted with lime trees.

“Well, what do you want to buy in the shops?” retorted Judith. “We have a picnic lunch with us and the cafes look as though they’re open for business. Stop wanting Regent Street every time we set foot on a pavement.”

Barbara gave her a mocking sideways glance. “I believe you’re beginning to enjoy being primitive. A throwback in the family.”

The little town had a faintly foreign air, thought Judith, as they strolled along the tree-lined promenade. Brightly-painted fishing boats were moored to the harbour wall, women gossiped or greeted each other as they passed, and by the Memorial seat an old man sat dozing in the sun, a large black cat curled up close beside him. It was all a happy memory to gloat over when winter came and gales lashed the islands, but she remembered that other occasion when Stuart had accompanied her and Barbara on the steamer down the Sound.

She wondered what his reaction would be when he learned that she had found herself a job and evidently intended to become a more or less permanent resident of Kylsaig. Next day she had an opportunity to find out. for when she rowed Andy’s dinghy across to the mainland, Stuart was there to meet her.

“You’re becoming quite an oarswoman!” he called when she was three or four yards from the shore. “Your navigation, though, reminds me of a bumble bee flitting from flower to flower. Better keep out of the way of the fishing fleet when they go out at nights.”

“How long have you been watching me? Now you’ve made me nervous.” Her oar grated along the submerged part of the ferry slipway, but eventually she ran the boat near enough to throw out the painter to Stuart, who tied up for her.

Then, surprisingly, when he helped her out of the dinghy, he lifted her off her feet, and for a delicious moment she was in his arms. The unexpected contact made her tremble and she fought down the impulse to bury her head against his shoulder, there in broad day-light, but she pulled herself together at the moment he released her.

“I was upstairs in my boathouse and saw you weaving a zigzag passage across,” he explained, his eyes mocking. “I wasn’t sure whether you’d make the bank or land halfway down the Sound. Or were you making for Cruban?”

His derision was exactly what she needed for those few moments, enabling her to gain self-control.

“All very well for you to make fun of me. Your boats are motor-driven. You never have to rely on your own brawn.”

She examined the palms of her hands for blisters, but that was a thoughtless gesture, for he took her fingers in his own, and shivers ran through her all over again.

“Scars of honest toil,” he said, inspecting the little bumps at the base of her fingers. “Well, now that you’re over on this side, what are your plans?”

“Shopping in Cruban. Then I thought I’d bathe at the beach farther along. I shan’t be in so leisurely a position next week.”

“So I heard. Dalkeith’s are in for a spell of slick West End service. No more old ladies hivering and havering over their purchases.”

“What makes you think I’m going to have any effect on the shop’s methods? I’ll do what I’m told—and like it.”

He laughed. “I’m sorry that Scotland seems to have sapped your independence. Will you do what you’re told —and like it—if I say ‘Come over to Callamore today’?

No hard rowing, I guarantee—unless of course
Flying Cloud
breaks down.”

“I ought to do the shopping for Barbara first.”

“Of course. Wait a few minutes while I get the cruiser out. Then to Cruban, you do your shopping, send anything down to the ferry if it’s urgent and ring Barbara if you want to tell her you’ll be out for the day.”

Stuart’s easy plans were too good an offer to miss, and in a quarter of an hour,
Flying Cloud
nosed out into the Sound, heading for Cruban.

Judith happened to glance upwards to the studio floor of the boathouse. She was almost sure that the watching figure was Fiona and quite convinced when the girl picked up binoculars. If Fiona wanted to accompany Stuart, why hadn’t she come down when he was launching the cruiser? She must have heard and seen the boat going down to the water.

“Have you seen any seals during the summer?” Stuart asked. “Sometimes they’re on another small island off Callamore.”

If she had seen seals as frequently as gulls, she would still have said “No, I haven’t seen any yet,” for the sake of letting Stuart have the pleasure of showing her.

Leaving Cruban and speeding across the Firth in the sunlit, dancing spray was sheer delight to Judith. This was the first time she had been alone with him on a boat trip of any distance and she would treasure every moment of it as a day stolen out of paradise. Next week, work, Neil’s importuning, Mairi’s displeasure, a dozen pricks and irritations, but today—a few hours of blissful harmony.

He steered towards a cluster of small islands and slowed down, so that
Flying Cloud
glided gently over the swell.

“Too much noise sends the seals plopping into the water before you have time to—there’s one!” he called. “Look! Several.”

On the shelving rocks, seals lay in the sun. Some slithered into the water, bobbing their glistening black heads up and down like clownish jack-in-the-boxes. They turned, in apparent surprise, to their nearest companions, as though saying, “Look who’s here!” then gave loud snorts of disgust and coughing. Three youngsters played like schoolboys, ducking and pushing each other, and one big fellow, the colour of gingerbread, blinked haughtily from his seaweed-covered rock.

“Let’s go round the other side of Callamore. There should be plenty there.” Stuart swung the boat southwest out into the Firth again.

“Too many skerries close inshore,” he told her. She knew that innumerable rocky islets and reefs ran out from the island coasts, sometimes with razor-sharp edges submerged but visible in the clear water, ready to slice disastrously into a boat’s keel.