Nothing kept her in-doors, and as she always attended to Grizzie's injunctions the moment she returned, she took no harm, and grew much stronger.
It is not encountering the weather that is dangerous, but encountering it when the strength is not equal to the encounter.
These two would come in wet from head to foot, change their clothes, have a good meal, sleep well, and wake in the morning without the least cold.

They would spend the hours between breakfast and dinner ascending the bank of a hill-stream, dammed by the snow, swollen by the thaw, and now rushing with a roar to the valley; or fighting their way through wind and sleet to the top of some wild expanse of hill-moorland, houseless for miles and miles--waste bog, and dry stony soil, as far as eye could reach, with here and there a solitary stock or bush, bending low to the ground in the steady bitter wind--a hopeless region, save that it made the hope in their hearts glow the redder; or climbing a gully, deep-worn by the few wheels of a month but the many of centuries, and more by the torrents that rushed always down its trench when it rained heavily, or thawed after snow--hearing the wind sweep across it above their heads, but feeling no breath of its pres--ence, till emerging suddenly upon its plane, they had to struggle with it for very foot-hold upon the round earth.

In such contests Lady Joan delighted.

It was so nice, she said, to have a downright good fight, and nobody out of temper! She would come home from the windy war with her face glowing, her eyes flashing, her hair challenging storm from every point of the compass, and her heart merry with very peacefulness.

Her only thoughts of trouble were, that her father's body lay unburied, and that Borland would come and take her away.
When the thaw came at last, the laird had the coffin brought again into the guest-chamber, and there placed on trestles, to wait the coming of the new Lord Mergwain.
Outstripping the letter that announced his departure, he arrived at length, and with him his man of business.