The summer they were due to marry, Angus told Flora that he'd been offered a research fellowship at Harvard. It was something he could not refuse. It would mean postponing their marriage for at least another year. Flora was very upset by it but she loved him very much, so eventually she agreed. He left in September of that year and that was the last she saw of him for ten years.
Who knows what goes on in people's heads? Or in their hearts? We think we know someone, then suddenly they do something completely unexpected. So it was with Angus. For the first six months he wrote to Flora as regularly as ever. Then the letters came less and less frequently, until they finally stopped. Flora tried to hide her feelings but it was obvious that she was suffering terribly.
People tried to cheer her up but some wounds cannot be healed. Then, one Saturday night a few months later, Colin met Flora at a 'ceilidh' in Killiecrachan. Her parents had taken her there. She had gone unwillingly. Who knows exactly what happened between Flora and Colin that evening? Perhaps it was the dancing, or the fiddle music, or the whisky ... who knows? Anyway, from then on they began to go about together, and within a year they were married. Miss Flora McIntosh became Mrs Flora Campbell. She moved into the farm across the river and began a new life.
They seemed to be happy together. Flora was a good support to Colin and he was full of attention for her. They never had any children but perhaps children are not everything in a marriage.
Life went on like this for the next nine years. Perrhaps it would have continued too, if Angus's father hadn't died. He was a grand old man but he loved his whisky, and one day he went to bed after drinking too much and never woke up. It was Colin who found him the next morning. He and Flora had taken care of the old man since Angus had gone away. They would pass by most days to see if he needed anything. Angus was working at a university in California by then. Forty-eight hours later he was home - for the first time in ten years.