Kitabı oxu: «The Clever Woman of the Family»

CHAPTER I. IN SEARCH OF A MISSION

 
“Thou didst refuse the daily round
    Of useful, patient love,
And longedst for some great emprise
    Thy spirit high to prove.”—C. M. N.
“Che mi sedea con l’antica Rachele.”
 

—DANTE.

“It is very kind in the dear mother.”

“But—what, Rachel? Don’t you like it! She so enjoyed choosing it for you.”

“Oh yes, it is a perfect thing in its way. Don’t say a word to her; but if you are consulted for my next birthday present, Grace, couldn’t you suggest that one does cease to be a girl.”

“Only try it on, Rachel dear, she will be pleased to see you in it.”

“Oh yes, I will bedizen myself to oblige her. I do assure you I am not ungrateful. It is beautiful in itself, and shows how well nature can be imitated; but it is meant for a mere girl, and this is the very day I had fixed for hauling down the flag of youth.”

“Oh, Rachel.”

“Ah, ha! If Rachel be an old maid, what is Grace? Come, my dear, resign yourself! There is nothing more unbecoming than want of perception of the close of young-ladyhood.”

“Of course I know we are not quite young girls now,” said Grace, half perplexed, half annoyed.

“Exactly, from this moment we are established as the maiden sisters of Avonmouth, husband and wife to one another, as maiden pairs always are.”

“Then thus let me crown, our bridal,” quoth Grace, placing on her sister’s head the wreath of white roses.

“Treacherous child!” cried Rachel, putting up her hands and tossing her head, but her sister held her still.

“You know brides always take liberties. Please, dear, let it stay till the mother has been in, and pray don’t talk, before her of being so very old.”

“No, I’ll not be a shock to her. We will silently assume our immunities, and she will acquiesce if they come upon her gradually.”

Grace looked somewhat alarmed, being perhaps in some dread of immunities, and aware that Rachel’s silence would in any one else have been talkativeness.

“Ah, mother dear, good morning,” as a pleasant placid-looking lady entered, dressed in black, with an air of feeble health, but of comely middle age.

Birthday greetings, congratulations, and thanks followed, and the mother looked critically at the position of the wreath, and Rachel for the first time turned to the glass and met a set of features of an irregular, characteristic cast, brow low and broad, nose retrousse, with large, singularly sensitive nostrils quivering like those of a high-bred horse at any emotion, full pouting lips, round cheeks glowing with the freshest red, eyes widely opened, dark deep grey and decidedly prominent, though curtained with thick black lashes. The glossy chestnut hair partook of the redundance and vigour of the whole being, and the roses hung on it gracefully though not in congruity with the thick winter dress of blue and black tartan, still looped up over the dark petticoat and hose, and stout high-heeled boots, that like the grey cloak and felt hat bore witness to the early walk. Grace’s countenance and figure were in the same style, though without so much of mark or animation; and her dress was of like description, but less severely plain.

“Yes, my dear, it looks very well; and now you will oblige me by not wearing that black lace thing, that looks fit for your grandmother.”

“Poor Lovedy Kelland’s aunt made it, mother, and it was very expensive, and wouldn’t sell.”

“No wonder, I am sure, and it was very kind in you to take it off their hands; but now it is paid for, it can’t make much difference whether you disfigure yourself with it or not.”

“Oh yes, dear mother, I’ll bind my hair when you bid me do it and really these buds do credit to the makers. I wonder whether they cost them as dear in health as lace does,” she added, taking off the flowers and examining them with a grave sad look.

“I chose white roses,” proceeded the well-pleased mother, “because I thought they would suit either of the silks you have now, though I own I should like to see you in another white muslin.”

“I have done with white muslin,” said Rachel, rousing from her reverie. “It is an affectation of girlish simplicity not becoming at our age.”

“Oh Rachel!” thought Grace in despair; but to her great relief in at that moment filed the five maids, the coachman, and butler, and the mother began to read prayers.

Breakfast over, Rachel gathered up her various gifts, and betook herself to a room on the ground floor with all the appliances of an ancient schoolroom. Rather dreamily she took out a number of copy-books, and began to write copies in them in large text hand.

“And this is all I am doing for my fellow-creatures,” she muttered half aloud. “One class of half-grown lads, and those grudged to me! Here is the world around one mass of misery and evil! Not a paper do I take up but I see something about wretchedness and crime, and here I sit with health, strength, and knowledge, and able to do nothing, nothing—at the risk of breaking my mother’s heart! I have pottered about cottages and taught at schools in the dilettante way of the young lady who thinks it her duty to be charitable; and I am told that it is my duty, and that I may be satisfied. Satisfied, when I see children cramped in soul, destroyed in body, that fine ladies may wear lace trimmings! Satisfied with the blight of the most promising buds! Satisfied, when I know that every alley and lane of town or country reeks with vice and corruption, and that there is one cry for workers with brains and with purses! And here am I, able and willing, only longing to task myself to the uttermost, yet tethered down to the merest mockery of usefulness by conventionalities. I am a young lady forsooth!—I must not be out late, I must not put forth my views; I must not choose my acquaintance, I must be a mere helpless, useless being, growing old in a ridiculous fiction of prolonged childhood, affecting those graces of so-called sweet seventeen that I never had—because, because why? Is it for any better reason than because no mother can bear to believe her daughter no longer on the lists for matrimony? Our dear mother does not tell herself that this is the reason, but she is unconsciously actuated by it. And I have hitherto given way to her wish. I mean to give way still in a measure; but I am five and twenty, and I will no longer be withheld from some path of usefulness! I will judge for myself, and when my mission has declared itself, I will not be withheld from it by any scruple that does not approve itself to my reason and conscience. If it be only a domestic mission—say the care of Fanny, poor dear helpless Fanny, I would that I knew she was safe,—I would not despise it, I would throw myself into it, and regard the training her and forming her boys as a most sacred office. It would not be too homely for me. But I had far rather become the founder of some establishment that might relieve women from the oppressive task-work thrown on them in all their branches of labour. Oh, what a worthy ambition!”

“Rachel!” called Grace. “Come, there’s a letter, a letter from Fanny herself for you. Make haste, mamma is so nervous till you read it.”

No exhortation was needed to make Rachel hurry to the drawing-room, and tear open the black-edged letter with the Australian stamp.

“All is right, mamma. She has been very ill, but is fast recovering, and was to sail by the Voluta. Why, she may be here any day.”

“Any day! My dear Grace, see that the nurseries are well aired.”

“No, mother, she says her party is too large, and wants us to take a furnished house for her to come into at once—Myrtlewood if possible. Is it let, Grace?”

“I think I saw the notice in the window yesterday.”

“Then, I’ll go and see about it at once.”

“But, my dear, you don’t really mean that poor dear Fanny thinks of coming anywhere but to us?” said her mother, anxiously.

“It is very considerate of her,” said Grace, “with so many little children. You would find them too much for you, dear mother. It is just like Fanny to have thought of it. How many are there, Rachel?”

“Oh! I can’t tell. They got past my reckoning long ago. I only know they are all boys, and that this baby is a girl.”

“Baby! Ah, poor Fanny, I feared that was the reason the did not come sooner.”

“Yes, and she has been very ill; she always is, I believe, but there is very little about it. Fanny never could write letters; she only just says: ‘I have not been able to attempt a letter sooner, though my dear little girl is five weeks old to-day. Think of the daughter coming at last, too late for her dear father, who had so wished for one. She is very healthy, I am thankful to say; and I am now so much better, that the doctor says I may sail next week. Major Keith has taken our cabins, in the Voluta, and soon after you receive this, I hope to be showing you my dear boys. They are such good, affectionate fellows; but I am afraid they would be too much for my dear aunt, and our party is so large, so the Major and I both think it will be the best way for you to take a house for me for six months. I should like Myrtlewood best, if it is to be had. I have told Conrade all about it, and how pretty it is, and it is so near you that I think there I can be happy as ever I can be again in this world, and have your advice for the dear children.’”

“Poor darling! she seems but a child herself.”

“My age—five and twenty,” returned Rachel. “Well I shall go and ask about the house. Remember, mother, this influx is to bring no trouble or care on you; Fanny Temple is my charge from henceforth. My mission has come to seek me,” she added as she quitted the room, in eager excitement of affection, emotion, and importance, for Fanny had been more like a sister than a cousin.

Grace and Rachel Curtis were the daughters of the squire of the Homestead; Fanny, of his brother, an officer in the army. Left at home for education, the little girl had spent her life, from her seventh to her sixteenth year, as absolutely one with her cousins, until she was summoned to meet her father at the Cape, under the escort of his old friend, General Sir Stephen Temple. She found Colonel Curtis sinking under fatal disease, and while his relations were preparing to receive, almost to maintain, his widow and daughter, they were electrified by the tidings that the gentle little Fanny, at sixteen, had become the wife of Sir Stephen Temple, at sixty.

From that time little had been known about her; her mother had continued with her, but the two Mrs. Curtises had never been congenial or intimate; and Fanny was never a full nor willing correspondent, feeling perhaps the difficulty of writing under changed circumstances. Her husband had been in various commands in the colonies, without returning to England; and all that was known of her was a general impression that she had much ill-health and numerous children, and was tended like an infant by her bustling mother and doting husband. More than half a year back, tidings had come of the almost sudden death of her mother; and about three months subsequently, one of the officers of Sir Stephen’s staff had written to announce that the good old general had been killed by a fall from his horse, while on a round of inspection at a distance from home. The widow was then completely prostrated by the shock, but promised to write as soon as she was able, and this was the fulfilment of that promise, bringing the assurance that Fanny was coming back with her little ones to the home of her childhood.

Of that home, Grace and Rachel were the joint-heiresses, though it was owned by the mother for her life. It was an estate of farm and moorland, worth some three or four thousand a year, and the house was perched on a beautiful promontory, running out into the sea, and inclosing one side of a bay, where a small fishing-village had recently expanded into a quiet watering-place, esteemed by some for its remoteness from railways, and for the calm and simplicity that were yearly diminished by its increasing popularity. It was the family fashion to look down from their crag at the new esplanade with pity and contempt for the ruined loneliness of the pebbly beach; and as Mrs. Curtis had not health to go often into society, she had been the more careful where she trusted her daughters. They belonged to the county by birth and tradition, and were not to be mixed up with the fleeting residents of the watering-place, on whom they never called, unless by special recommendation from a mutual friend; and the few permanent inhabitants chanced to be such, that a visit to them was in some degree a condescension. Perhaps there was more of timidity and caution than of pride in the mother’s exclusiveness, and Grace had always acquiesced in it as the natural and established state of affairs, without any sense of superiority, but rather of being protected. She had a few alarms as to the results of Rachel’s new immunities of age, and though never questioning the wisdom of her clever sister’s conclusions, dreaded the effect on the mother, whom she had been forbidden to call mamma. “At their age it was affecting an interesting childishness.”

Rachel had had the palm of cleverness conceded to her ever since she could recollect, when she read better at three years old than her sister at five, and ever after, through the days of education, had enjoyed, and excelled in, the studies that were a toil to Grace. Subsequently, while Grace had contented herself with the ordinary course of unambitious feminine life, Rachel had thrown herself into the process of self-education with all her natural energy, and carried on her favourite studies by every means within her reach, until she considerably surpassed in acquirements and reflection all the persons with whom she came in frequent contact. It was a homely neighbourhood, a society well born, but of circumscribed interests and habits, and little connected with the great progressive world, where, however, Rachel’s sympathies all lay, necessarily fed, however, by periodical literature, instead of by conversation or commerce with living minds.

She began by being stranded on the ignorance of those who surrounded her, and found herself isolated as a sort of pedant; and as time went on, the narrowness of interests chafed her, and in like manner left her alone. As she grew past girlhood, the cui bono question had come to interfere with her ardour in study for its own sake, and she felt the influence of an age eminently practical and sifting, but with small powers of acting. The quiet Lady Bountiful duties that had sufficed her mother and sister were too small and easy to satisfy a soul burning at the report of the great cry going up to heaven from a world of sin and woe. The examples of successful workers stimulated her longings to be up and doing, and yet the ever difficult question between charitable works and filial deference necessarily detained her, and perhaps all the more because it was not so much the fear of her mother’s authority as of her horror and despair, that withheld her from the decisive and eccentric steps that she was always feeling impelled to take. Gentle Mrs. Curtis had never been a visible power in her house, and it was through their desire to avoid paining her that her government had been exercised over her two daughters ever since their father’s death, which had taken place in Grace’s seventeenth year. Both she and Grace implicitly accepted Rachel’s superiority as an unquestionable fact, and the mother, when traversing any of her clever daughter’s schemes, never disputed either her opinions or principles, only entreated that these particular developments might be conceded to her own weakness; and Rachel generally did concede. She could not act; but she could talk uncontradicted, and she hated herself for the enforced submission to a state of things that she despised.

This twenty-fifth birthday had long been anticipated as the turning-point when this submissive girlhood ought to close, and the privileges of acting as well as thinking for herself ought to be assumed. Something to do was her cry, and on this very day that something seemed to be cast in her way. It was not ameliorating the condition of the masses, but it was educating those who might ameliorate them; and Rachel gladly hailed the prospect of a vocation that might be conducted without pain to her mother.

Young children of her own class were not exactly what her dream of usefulness had devised; but she had already a decided theory of education, and began to read up with all her might, whilst taking the lead in all the details of house taking, servant hiring, &c., to which her regular occupations of night school in the evening and reading to the lacemakers by day, became almost secondary. In due time the arrival of the ship was telegraphed, a hurried and affectionate note followed, and, on a bright east-windy afternoon, Rachel Curtis set forth to take up her mission. A telegram had announced the arrival of the Voluta, and the train which would bring the travellers to Avonchester. The Homestead carriage was sent to meet them, and Rachel in it, to give her helpless cousin assistance in this beginning of English habits. A roomy fly had been engaged for nurses and children, and Mrs. Curtis had put under the coachman’s charge a parcel of sandwiches, and instructed him to offer all the appliances for making her own into an invalid carriage.

Full of warm tenderness to those who were to be dependent on her exertions, led by her good sense, Rachel paced the platform till the engine rushed up, and she looked along the line of windows, suddenly bewildered. Doors opened, but gentlemen alone met her disappointed eye, until close to her a soft voice said, “Rachel!” and she saw a figure in deep black close to her; but her hand had been hardly clasped before the face was turned eagerly to a tall, bearded man, who was lifting out little boy after little boy, apparently in an endless stream, till at last a sleeping baby was brought out in the arms of a nurse.

“Good-bye. Thank you, oh, thank you. You will come soon. Oh, do come on now.”

“Do come on now,” was echoed by many voices.

“I leave you in good hands. Good-bye.”

“Good-bye. Conrade dear, see what Cyril is doing; never mind, Wilfred, the Major will come and see us; run on with Coombe.” This last was a respectable military-looking servant, who picked up a small child in one hand and a dressing-case in the other, and awaited orders.

There was a clinging to the Major by all the children, only ended by his finally precipitating himself into the carriage, and being borne off. Then came a chorus—“Mamma, let me go with you;” “I’ll go with mamma;” “Me go with mamma;” according to the gradations of age.

While Coombe and mamma decided the question by lifting the lesser ones into the fly, Rachel counted heads. Her mission exceeded her expectations. Here was a pair of boys in knickerbockers, a pair in petticoats, a pair in pelisses, besides the thing in arms. When the fly had been nearly crammed, the two knickerbockers and one pelisse remained for the carriage, quite against Rachel’s opinion, but “Little Wilfred can sit on my lap, he has not been well, poor little man,” was quite conclusive; and when Rachel suggested lying back to rest, there was a sweet, low laugh, and, “Oh, no thank you, Wilfred never tires me.”

Rachel’s first satisfaction was in seeing the veil disclose the face of eight years back, the same soft, clear, olive skin, delicate, oval face, and pretty deep-brown eyes, with the same imploring, earnest sweetness; no signs of having grown older, no sign of wear and tear, climate, or exertion, only the widow’s dress and the presence of the great boys enhancing her soft youthfulness. The smile was certainly changed; it was graver, sadder, tenderer, and only conjured up by maternal affection or in grateful reply, and the blitheness of the young brow had changed to quiet pensiveness, but more than ever there was an air of dependence almost beseeching protection, and Rachel’s heart throbbed with Britomart’s devotion to her Amoret.

“Why wouldn’t the Major come, mamma?”

“He will soon come, I hope, my dear.”

Those few words gave Rachel a strong antipathy to the Major.

Then began a conversation under difficulties, Fanny trying to inquire after her aunt, and Rachel to detail the arrangements made for her at Myrtlewood, while the two boys were each accommodated with a window; but each moment they were claiming their mother’s attention, or rushing across the ladies’ feet to each other’s window, treating Rachel’s knees as a pivot, and vouchsafing not the slightest heed to her attempts at intelligent pointing out of the new scenes.

And Fanny made no apology, but seemed pleased, ready with answers and with eyes, apparently ignorant that Rachel’s toes were less insensible than her own, and her heavy three-years-old Wilfred asleep on her lap all the time.

“She feeble, helpless, sickly!” thought Rachel, “I should have been less tired had I walked the twenty miles!”

She gave up talking in despair, and by the time the young gentlemen had tired themselves into quiescence, and began to eat the provisions, both ladies were glad to be allowed a little silence.

Coming over the last hill, Conrade roused at his mother’s summons to look out at “home,” and every word between them showed how fondly Avonmouth had been remembered far away.

“The sea!” said Fanny, leaning forwards to catch sight of the long grey line; “it is hard to believe we have been on it so long, this seems so much more my own.”

“Yes,” cried Rachel, “you are come to your own home, for us to take care of you.”

“I take care of mamma! Major Keith said so,” indignantly exclaimed Conrade.

“There’s plenty of care for you both to take,” said Fanny, half-smiling, half-sobbing. “The Major says I need not be a poor creature, and I will try. But I am afraid I shall be on all your hands.”

Both boys drummed on her knee in wrath at her presuming to call herself a poor creature—Conrade glaring at Rachel as if to accuse her of the calumny.

“See the church,” said Lady Temple, glad to divert the storm, and eagerly looking at the slender spire surmounting the bell-turret of a small building in early-decorated style, new, but somewhat stained by sea-wind, without having as yet acquired the tender tints of time. “How beautiful!” was her cry. “You were beginning the collection for it when I went away! How we used to wish for it.”

“Yes, we did,” said Rachel, with a significant sigh; but her cousin had no time to attend, for they were turning in a pepper-box lodge. The boys were told that they were arrived, and they were at the door of a sort of overgrown Swiss cottage, where Mrs. Curtis and Grace stood ready to receive them.

There was a confusion of embraces, fondlings, and tears, as Fanny clung to the aunt who had been a mother to her—perhaps a more tender one than the ruling, managing spirit, whom she had hardly known in her childhood; but it was only for a moment, for Wilfred shrieked out in an access of shyness at Grace’s attempt to make acquaintance with him; Francis was demanding, “Where’s the orderly?” and Conrade looking brimful of wrath at any one who made his mother cry. Moreover, the fly had arrived, and the remainder had to be produced, named, and kissed—Conrade and Francis, Leoline and Hubert, Wilfred and Cyril, and little Stephana the baby. Really the names were a study in themselves, and the cousins felt as if it would be hopeless to endeavour to apply them.

Servants had been engaged conditionally, and the house was fully ready, but the young mother could hardly listen to her aunt’s explanations in her anxiety that the little ones should be rested and fed, and she responded with semi-comprehending thanks, while moving on with her youngest in her arms, and as many hanging to her dress as could get hold of it. Her thanks grew more emphatic at the sight of cribs in inviting order, and all things ready for a meal.

“I don’t drink tea with nurse,” was Conrade’s cry, the signal for another general outcry, untranquillized by soothings and persuasions, till the door was shut on the younger half of the family, and those who could not open it remained to be comforted by nurse, a soldier’s widow, who had been with them from the birth of Conrade.

The Temple form of shyness seemed to consist in ignoring strangers, but being neither abashed nor silenced, only resenting or avoiding all attempts at intercourse, and as the boys rushed in and out of the rooms, exploring, exclaiming, and calling mamma, to the interruption of all that was going on, only checked for a few minutes by her uplifted hand and gentle hush, Grace saw her mother so stunned and bewildered that she rejoiced in the fear of cold that had decided that Rachel alone should spend the evening there. Fanny made some excuses; she longed to see more of her aunt, but when they were a little more settled,—and as a fresh shout broke out, she was afraid they were rather unruly,—she must come and talk to her at the dear Homestead. So kind of Rachel to stay—not that the boys seemed to think so, as they went racing in and out, stretching their ship-bound legs, and taking possession of the minute shrubbery, which they scorned for the want of gum-trees and parrots.

“You won’t mind, Rachel dear, I must first see about baby;” and Rachel was left to reflect on her mission, while the boys’ feet cantered up and down the house, and one or other of them would look in, and burst away in search of mamma.

Little more satisfactory was the rest of the evening, for the boys took a great deal of waiting on at tea, and then some of the party would not go to sleep in strange beds without long persuasions and comfortings, till Fanny looked so weary that it was plain that no conversation could have been hoped from her, even if the baby had been less vociferous. All that could be done for her was to wish her good-night, and promise to come down early.

Come early! Yes, Rachel might come, but what was the use of that when Fanny was at the mercy of so many claimants? She looked much better than the day before, and her sweet, soft welcome was most cordial and clinging. “Dear Rachel, it is like a dream to have you so near. I felt like the old life come back again to hear the surge of the sea all night, and know I should see you all so soon again.”

“Yes, it is a great satisfaction to have you back in your old home, under our wing. I have a great deal to tell you about the arrangements.”

“Oh yes; thank you—”

“Mamma!” roared two or three voices.

“I wanted to explain to you—” But Fanny’s eye was roaming, and just then in burst two boys. “Mamma, nurse won’t undo the tin box, and my ship is in it that the Major gave me.”

“Yes, and my stuffed duck-bill, and I want it, mamma.”

“My dear Con, the Major would not let you shout so loud about it, and you have not spoken to Aunt Rachel.”

The boys did present their hands, and then returned to the charge. “Please order nurse to unpack it, mamma, and then Coombe will help us to sail it.”

“Excuse me, dear Rachel,” said Fanny, “I will first see about this.”

And a very long seeing it was, probably meaning that she unpacked the box herself, whilst Rachel was deciding on the terrible spoiling of the children, and preparing a remonstrance.

“Dear Rachel, you have been left a long time.”

“Oh, never mind that, but, Fanny, you must not give way to those children too much; they will be always—Hark! was that the door-bell?”

It was, and the visitor was announced as “Mr. Touchett;” a small, dark, thin young clergyman he was, of a nervous manner, which, growing more nervous as he shook hands with Rachel, became abrupt and hesitating.

“My call is—is early, Lady Temple; but I always pay my respects at once to any new parishioner—resident, I mean—in case I can be of any service.”

“Thank you, I am very much obliged,” said Fanny, with a sweet, gracious smile and manner that would have made him more at ease at once, if Rachel had not added, “My cousin is quite at home here, Mr. Touchett.”

“Oh yes,” he said, “so—so I understood.”

“I know no place in England so well; it is quite a home to me, so beautiful it is,” continued Fanny.

“And you see great changes here.”

“Changes so much for the better,” said Fanny, smiling her winning smile again.

“One always expects more from improvements than they effect,” put in Rachel, severely.

“You have a large young party,” said Mr. Touchett, looking uneasily towards Lady Temple.

“Yes, I have half a dozen boys and one little girl.”

“Seven!” Mr. Touchett looked up half incredulous at the girlish contour of the gentle face, then cast down his eyes as if afraid he had been rude. “Seven! It is—it is a great charge.”

“Yes, indeed it is,” she said earnestly; “and I am sure you will be kind enough to give your influence to help me with them—poor boys.”

“Oh! oh!” he exclaimed, “anything I can do—” in such a transport of eager helpfulness that Rachel coldly said, “We are all anxious to assist in the care of the children.” He coloured up, and with a sort of effort at self-assertion, blurted out, “As the clergyman of the parish—,” and there halted, and was beginning to look foolish, when Lady Temple took him up in her soft, persuasive way. “Of course we shall look to you so much, and you will be so kind as to let me know if there is any one I can send any broth to at anytime.”

“Thank you; you are very good;” and he was quite himself again. “I shall have the pleasure of sending you down a few names.”

“I never did approve the broken victual system,” began Rachel, “it creates dependence.”

“Come here, Hubert,” said Fanny, beckoning a boy she saw at a distance, “come and shake hands with Mr. Touchett.” It was from instinct rather than reason; there was a fencing between Rachel and the curate that made her uncomfortable, and led her to break it off by any means in her power; and though Mr. Touchett was not much at his ease with the little boy, this discussion was staged off. But again Mr. Touchett made bold to say that in case Lady Temple wished for a daily governess, he knew of a very desirable young person, a most admirable pair of sisters, who had met with great reverses, but Rachel snapped him off shorter than ever. “We can decide nothing yet; I have made up my mind to teach the little boys at present.”

“The grand passion of her life is yet to come,” said Rachel.

“I hope not,” said Grace.

“You may be certain of that,” said Rachel. “Feminine women always have it one time or other in their lives; only superior ones are exempt. But I hope I may have influence enough to carry her past it, and prevent her taking any step that might be injurious to the children.”

CHAPTER II. RACHEL’S DISCIPLINE

 
“Thought is free, as sages tells us—
    Free to rove, and free to soar;
But affection lives in bondage,
    That enthrals her more and more.”
 

JEAN INGELOW.

An old friend lived in the neighbourhood who remembered Fanny’s father, and was very anxious to see her again, though not able to leave the house. So the first day that it was fine enough for Mrs. Curtis to venture out, she undertook to convey Fanny to call upon her, and was off with a wonderfully moderate allowance of children, only the two youngest boys outside with their maid. This drive brought more to light about Fanny’s past way of life and feelings than had ever yet appeared. Rachel had never elicited nearly so much as seemed to have come forth spontaneously to the aunt, who had never in old times been Fanny’s confidante.

Fanny’s life had been almost a prolonged childhood. From the moment of her marriage with the kind old General, he and her mother had conspired to make much of her; all the more that she was almost constantly disabled by her state of health, and was kept additionally languid and helpless by the effects of climate. Her mother had managed her household, and she had absolutely had no care, no duty at all but to be affectionate and grateful, and to be pretty and gracious at the dinner parties. Even in her mother’s short and sudden illness, the one thought of both the patient and the General had been to spare Fanny, and she had been scarcely made aware of the danger, and not allowed to witness the suffering. The chivalrous old man who had taken on himself the charge of her, still regarded the young mother of his children as almost as much of a baby herself, and devoted himself all the more to sparing her trouble, and preventing her from feeling more thrown upon her by her mother’s death. The notion of training her to act alone never even occurred to him, and when he was thrown from his horse, and carried into a wayside-hut to die, his first orders were that no hurried message might be sent to her, lest she might be startled and injured by the attempt to come to him. All he could do for her was to leave her in the charge of his military secretary, who had long been as a son to him. Fanny told her aunt with loving detail all that she had heard from Major Keith of the brave old man’s calm and resigned end—too full of trust even to be distressed with alarms for the helpless young wife and children, but committing them in full reliance to the care of their Father in heaven, and to the present kindness of the friend who stood by his pillow.

The will, which not only Rachel but her mother thought strangely unguarded, had been drawn up in haste, because Sir Stephen’s family had outgrown the provisions of a former one, which had besides designated her mother, and a friend since dead, as guardians. Haste, and the conscious want of legal knowledge, had led to its being made as simple as possible, and as it was, Sir Stephen had scarcely had the power to sign it.

It was Major Keith who had borne the tidings to the poor little widow, and had taken the sole care of the boys during the sad weeks of care utter prostration and illness. Female friends were with her, and tended her affectionately, but if exertion or thought were required of her, the Major had to be called to her sofa to awaken her faculties, and she always awoke to attend to his wishes, as though he were the channel of her husband’s. This state of things ended with the birth of the little girl, the daughter that Sir Stephen had so much wished for, coming too late to be welcomed by him, but awakening her mother to tearful joy and renewed powers of life. The nine months of little Stephana’s life had been a tone of continual change and variety, of new interests and occupations, and of the resumption of a feeling of health which had scarcely been tasted since the first plunge into warm climates. Perhaps it was unreasonable to expect to find Fanny broken down; and she talked in her own simple way with abundant overflowing affection of her husband; but even Mrs. Curtis thought it was to her more like the loss of her own father than of the father of her children; and though not in the least afraid of anything unbecoming in her gentle, retiring Fanny, still felt that it was more the charge of a girl than of a widow, dreaded the boys, dreaded their fate, and dreaded the Major more.

During this drive, Grace and Rachel had the care of the elder boys, whom Rachel thought safer in her keeping than in Coombe’s. A walk along the cliffs was one resource for their amusement, but it resulted in Conrade’s climbing into the most break-neck places, by preference selecting those that Rachel called him out of, and as all the others thought it necessary to go after him, the jeopardy of Leoline and Hubert became greater than it was possible to permit; so Grace took them by the hands, and lured them home with promises of an introduction to certain white rabbits at the lodge. After their departure, their brothers became infinitely more obstreperous. Whether it were that Conrade had some slight amount of consideration for the limbs of his lesser followers, or whether the fact were—what Rachel did not remotely imagine—that he was less utterly unmanageable with her sister than with herself, certain it is that the brothers went into still more intolerable places, and treated their guardian as ducklings treat an old hen. At last they quite disappeared from the view round a projecting point of rock, and when she turned it, she found a battle royal going on over an old lobster-pot—Conrade hand to hand with a stout fisher-boy, and Francis and sundry amphibious creatures of both sexes exchanging a hail of stones, water-smoothed brick-bats, cockle-shells, fishes’ backbones, and other unsavoury missiles. Abstractedly, Rachel had her theory that young gentlemen had better scramble their way among their poor neighbours, and become used to all ranks; but when it came to witnessing an actual skirmish when she was responsible for Fanny’s sons, it was needful to interfere, and in equal dismay and indignation she came round the point. The light artillery fled at her aspect, and she had to catch Francis’s arm in the act of discharging after them a cuttlefish’s white spine, with a sharp “For shame, they are running away! Conrade, Zack, have done!” Zack was one of her own scholars, and held her in respect.

He desisted at once, and with a touch of his rough forelock, looked sheepish, and said, “Please ma’am, he was meddling with our lobster-pot.”

“I wasn’t doing any harm,” said Conrade. “I was just looking in, and they all came and shied stones at us.”

“I don’t care how the quarrel began,” said Rachel. “You would not have run into it if you had been behaving properly. Zack was quite right to protect his father’s property, but he might have been more civil. Now shake hands, and have done with it.”

“Not shake hands with a low boy,” growled Francis. But happily Conrade was of a freer spirit, and in spite of Rachel’s interference, had sense enough to know himself in the wrong. He held out his hand, and when the ceremony had been gone through, put his hands in his pockets, produced a shilling, and said, “There, that’s in case I did the thing any harm.” Rachel would have preferred Zachary’s being above its acceptance, but he was not, and she was thankful that a wood path offend itself, leading through the Homestead plantations away from the temptations and perils of the shore.

That the two boys, instead of listening to her remonstrance, took to punching and kicking one another, was a mitigated form of evil for which she willingly compounded, having gone through so much useless interference already, that she felt as if she had no spirit left to keep the peace, and that they must settle their little affairs between themselves. It was the most innocent diversion in which she could hope to see them indulge. She only desired that it might last them past a thrush’s nest, in the hedge between the park and plantation, a somewhat treasured discovery of Grace’s. No such good luck. Either the thrush’s imprudence or Grace’s visits had made the nest dangerously visible, and it was proclaimed with a shout. Rachel, in hot haste, warned them against taking birds’-nests in general, and that in particular.

“Nests are made to be taken,” said Francis.

“I’ve got an egg of all the Australian birds the Major could get me,” said Conrade, “and I mean to have all the English ones.”

“Oh, one egg; there’s no harm in taking that; but this nest has young birds.”

The young birds must of course be seen, and Rachel stood by with despairing frowns, commands, and assurances of their mother’s displeasure, while they peeped in, tantalized the gaping yellow throats, by holding up their fingers, and laid hands on the side of the nest, peeping at her with laughing, mischievous eyes, enjoying her distress. She was glad at last to find them coming away without the nest, and after crossing the park, arrived at the house, tired out, but with two hours of the boys still on her hands. They, however, were a little tired, too; and, further, Grace had hunted out the old bowls, much to the delight of the younger ones. This sport lasted a good while, but at last the sisters, who had relaxed their attention a little, perceived that Conrade and Hubert were both missing, and on Rachel’s inquiry where they were, she received from Francis that elegant stock answer, “in their skins.” However, they came to light in process of time, the two mothers returned home, and Mrs. Curtis and Grace had the conversation almost in their own hands. Rachel was too much tired to do anything but read the new number of her favourite “Traveller’s Magazine,” listening to her mother with one ear, and gathering additional impressions of Sir Stephen Temple’s imprudence, and the need of their own vigilance. To make Fanny feel that she could lean upon some one besides the military secretary, seemed to be the great object, and she was so confiding and affectionate with her own kin, that there were great hopes. Those boys were an infliction, no doubt, but, thought Rachel, “there is always an ordeal at the beginning of one’s mission. I am mastering them by degrees, and should do so sooner if I had them in my own hands, and no more worthy task can be done than training human beings for their work in this world, so I must be willing to go through a little while I bring them into order, and fit their mother for managing them.”

She spent the time before breakfast the next morning in a search among the back numbers of the “Traveller’s Magazine” for a paper upon “Educational Laws,” which she thought would be very good reading for Fanny. Her search had been just completed when Grace returned home from church, looking a good deal distressed. “My poor thrushes have not escaped, Rachel,” she said; “I came home that way to see how they were going on, and the nest is torn out, one poor little fellow lying dead below it.”

“Well, that is much worse than I expected!” burst out Rachel. “I did think that boy Conrade would at least keep his promises.” And she detailed the adventure of the previous day, whence the conclusion was but too evident. Grace, however, said in her own sweet manner that she believed boys could not resist a nest, and thought it mere womanhood to intercede for such lawful game. She thought it would be best to take no notice, it would only distress Fanny and make “the mother” more afraid of the boys than she was already, and she doubted the possibility of bringing it home to the puerile conscience.

“That is weak!” said Rachel. “I received the boy’s word, and it is my business to deal with the breach of promise.”

So down went Rachel, and finding the boys rushing about the garden, according to their practice, before her arrival, she summoned Conrade, and addressed him with, “Well, Conrade, I knew that you were violent and disobedient, but I never expected you to fail in your honour as a gentleman.”

“I’ll thrash any one who says I have,” hotly exclaimed Conrade.

“Then you must thrash me. You gave your word to me not to take your Aunt Grace’s thrush’s nest.”

“And I didn’t,” said Conrade, boldly.

But Rachel, used to flat denials at the village-school, was not to be thus set aside. “I am shocked at you, Conrade,” she said. “I know your mamma will be exceedingly grieved. You must have fallen into very sad ways to be able to utter such a bold untruth. You had better confess at once, and then I shall have something to tell her that will comfort he.”

Conrade’s dark face looked set as iron.

“Come; tell me you are sorry you took the nest, and have broken your word, and told a falsehood.”

Red colour flushed into the brown cheek, and the hands were clenched.

“There is not the smallest use in denying it. I know you took it when you and Hubert went away together. Your Aunt Grace found it gone this morning, and one of the poor little birds dead below. What have you done with the others?”

Not a word.

“Then I grieve to say I must tell all to your mother.”

There was a sort of smile of defiance, and he followed her. For a moment she thought of preventing this, and preparing Fanny in private, but recollecting that this would give him the opportunity of preparing Hubert to support his falsehood, she let him enter with her, and sought Lady Temple in the nursery.

“Dear Fanny, I am very sorry to bring you so much vexation. I am afraid it will be a bitter grief to you, but it is only for Conrade’s own sake that I do it. It was a cruel thing to take a bird’s-nest at all, but worse when he knew that his Aunt Grace was particularly fond of it; and, besides, he had promised not to touch it, and now, saddest of all, he denies having done so.”

“Oh, Conrade, Conrade!” cried Fanny, quite confounded, “You can’t have done like this!”

“So, I have not,” said Conrade, coming up to her, as she held out her hand, positively encouraging him, as Rachel thought, to persist in the untruth.

“Listen, Fanny,” said Rachel. “I do not wonder that you are unwilling to believe anything so shocking, but I do not come without being only too certain.” And she gave the facts, to which Fanny listened with pale cheeks and tearful eyes, then turned to the boy, whose hand she had held all the time, and said, “Dear Con, do pray tell me if you did it.”

“I did not,” said Conrade, wrenching his hand away, and putting it behind his back.

“Where’s Hubert?” asked Rachel, looking round, and much vexed when she perceived that Hubert had been within hearing all the time, though to be sure there was some little hope to be founded upon the simplicity of five years old.

“Come here, Hubert dear,” said his mother; “don’t be frightened, only come and tell me where you and Con went yesterday, when the others were playing at bowls.” Hubert hung his head, and looked at his brother.

“Tell,” quoth Conrade. “Never mind her, she’s only a civilian.”

“Where did you go, Hubert?”

“Con showed me the little birds in their nest.”

“That is right, Hubert, good little boy. Did you or he touch the nest?”

“Yes.” Then, as Conrade started, and looked fiercely at him, “Yes you did, Con, you touched the inside to see what it was made of.”

“But what did you do with it?” asked Rachel.

“Left it there, up in the tree,” said the little boy.

“There, Rachel!” said the mother, triumphantly.

“I don’t know what you mean,” said Rachel, angrily, “only that Conrade is a worse boy than I had thought him, end has been teaching his little brother falsehood.”

The angry voice set Hubert crying, and little Cyril, who was very soft-hearted, joined in chorus, followed by the baby, who was conscious of something very disagreeable going on in her nursery. Thereupon, after the apparently most important business of comforting Miss Temple had been gone through, the court of justice adjourned, Rachel opening the door of Conrade’s little room, and recommending solitary imprisonment there till he should be brought to confession. She did not at all reckon on his mother going in with him, and shutting the door after her. It was not the popular notion of solitary confinement, and Rachel was obliged to retire, and wait in the drawing-room for a quarter of an hour before Fanny came down, and then it was to say—

“Do you know, Rachel dear, I am convinced that it must be a mistake. Conrade assures me he never touched the nest.”

“So he persists in it?”

“And indeed, Rachel dear, I cannot help believing him. If it had been Francie, now; but I never knew Conrade tell an untruth in his life.”

“You never knew, because you always believe him.”

“And it is not only me, but I have often heard the Major say he could always depend on Conrade’s word.”

Rachel’s next endeavour was at gentle argument. “It must be dreadful to make such a discovery, but it was far worse to let deceit go on undetected; and if only they were firm—” At that moment she beheld two knickerbocker boys prancing on the lawn.

“Didn’t you lock the door? Has he broken out? How audacious!”

“I let him come out,” said Fanny; “there was nothing to shut him up for. I beg your pardon, dear Rachel; I am very sony for the poor little birds and for Grace, but I am sure Conrade did not take it.”

“How can you be so unreasonable, Fanny—the evidence,” and Rachel went over it all again.

“Don’t you think,” said Fanny, “that some boy may have got into the park?”

“My dear Fanny, I am sorry for you, it is quite out of the question to think so; the place is not a stone’s-throw from Randall’s lodge. It will be the most fatal thing in the world to let your weakness be imposed on in this way. Now that the case is clear, the boy must be forced to confession, and severely punished.”

Fanny burst into tears.

“I am very sorry for you, Fanny. I know it is very painful; I assure you it is so to me. Perhaps it would be best if I were to lock him up, and go from time to time to see if he is come to a better mind.”

She rose up.

“No, no, Rachel!” absolutely screamed Fanny, starting up, “my boy hasn’t done anything wrong, and I won’t have him locked up! Go away! If anything is to be done to my boys, I’ll do it myself: they haven’t got any one but me. Oh, I wish the Major would come!”

“Fanny, how can you be so foolish?—as if I would hurt your boys!”

“But you won’t believe Conrade—my Conrade, that never told a falsehood in his life!” cried the mother, with a flush in her cheeks and a bright glance in her soft eyes. “You want me to punish him for what he hasn’t done.”

“How much alike mothers are in all classes of life,” thought Rachel, and much in the way in which she would have brought Zack’s mother to reason by threats of expulsion from the shoe-club, she observed, “Well Fanny, one thing is clear, while you are so weak as to let that boy go on in his deceit, unrepentant and unpunished, I can have no more to do with his education.”

“Indeed,” softly said Fanny, “I am afraid so, Rachel. You have taken a great deal of trouble, but Conrade declares he will never say a lesson to you again, and I don’t quite see how to make him after this.”

“Oh, very well; then there’s an end of it. I am sorry for you, Fanny.”

And away walked Rachel, and as she went towards the gate two artificial jets d’eau, making a considerable curve in the air, alighted, the one just before her, the other, better aimed, in the back of her neck. She had too much dignity to charge back upon the offenders, but she went home full of the story of Fanny’s lamentable weakness, and prognostications of the misery she was entailing on herself. Her mother and sister were both much concerned, and thought Fanny extremely foolish; Mrs. Curtis consoling herself with the hope that the boys would be cured and tamed at school, and begging that they might never be let loose in the park again. Rachel could not dwell much longer on the matter, for she had to ride to Upper Avon Park to hold council on the books to be ordered for the book-club; for if she did got go herself, whatever she wanted especially was always set aside as too something or other for the rest of the subscribers.

Mrs. Curtis was tired, and stayed at home; and Grace spent the afternoon in investigations about the harrying of the thrushes, but, alas! without coming a bit nearer the truth. Nothing was seen or heard of Lady Temple till, at half-past nine, one of the midges, or diminutive flies used at Avonmonth, came to the door, and Fanny came into the drawing-room—wan, tearful, agitated.

“Dear Rachel, I am so afraid I was hasty, I could not sleep without coming to tell you how sorry I am.”

“Then you are convinced? I knew you would be.”

“Oh, yes, I have just been sitting by him after he was gone to bed. He never goes to sleep till I have done that, and he always tells me if anything is on his mind. I could not ask him again, it would have been insulting him; but he went over it all of himself, and owned he ought not to have put a finger on the edge of the nest, but he wanted so to see what it was lined with; otherwise he never touched it. He says, poor boy, that it was only your being a civilian that made you not able to believe him, I am sure you must believe him now.”

Mrs. Curtis began, in her gentle way, about the difficulty of believing one’s children in fault, but Lady Temple was entirely past accepting the possibility of Conrade’s being to blame in this particular instance. It made her bristle up again, so that even Rachel saw the impossibility of pressing it, and trusted to some signal confutation to cure her of her infatuation. But she was as affectionate as ever, only wanting to be forgiven for the morning’s warmth, and to assure dear Aunt Curtis, dear Grace, and dearest Rachel in particular, that there was no doing without them, and it was the greatest blessing to be near them.

“Oh! and the squirting, dear Rachel! I was so sorry when I found it out, it was only Francie and Leo. I was very angry with them for it, and I should like to make them ask pardon, only I don’t think Francie would. I’m afraid they are very rude boys. I must write to the Major to find me a governess that won’t be very strict with them, and if she could be an officer’s daughter, the boys would respect her so much more.”

CHAPTER III. MACKAREL LANE

 
“For I would lonely stand
  Uplifting my white hand,
  On a mission, on a mission,
  To declare the coming vision.”
 

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

“Well, Grace, all things considered, perhaps I had better walk down with you to Mackarel Lane, and then I can form a judgment on these Williamses without committing Fanny.”

“Then you do not intend to go on teaching?”

“Not while Conrade continues to brave me, and is backed up by poor Fanny.”

“I might speak to Miss Williams after church, and bring her in to Myrtlewood for Fanny to see.”

“Yes, that might do in time; but I shall make up my mind first. Poor Fanny is so easily led that we must take care what influences fall in her way.”

“I always wished you would call.”

“Yes, and I would not by way of patronage to please Mr. Touchett, but this is for a purpose; and I hope we shall find both sisters at home.”

Mackarel Lane was at right angles to the shore, running up the valley of the Avon; but it soon ceased to be fishy, and became agricultural, owning a few cottages of very humble gentility, which were wont to hang out boards to attract lodgers of small means. At one of these Grace rang, and obtained admittance to a parlour with crazy French windows opening on a little strip of garden. In a large wheeled chair, between the fire and the window, surrounded by numerous little appliances for comfort and occupation, sat the invalid Miss Williams, holding out her hand in welcome to the guests.

“A fine countenance! what one calls a fine countenance!” thought Rachel. “Is it a delusion of insipidity as usual? The brow is good, massive, too much for the features, but perhaps they were fuller once; eyes bright and vigorous, hazel, the colour for thought; complexion meant to be brilliant brunette, a pleasant glow still; hair with threads of grey. I hope she does not affect youth; she can’t be less than one or two and thirty! Many people set up for beauties with far less claim. What is the matter with her? It is not the countenance of deformity—accident, I should say. Yes, it is all favourable except the dress. What a material; what a pattern! Did she get it second-hand from a lady’s-maid? Will there be an incongruity in her conversation to match? Let us see. Grace making inquiries—Quite at my best—Ah! she is not one of the morbid sort, never thinking themselves better.”

“I was afraid, I had not seen you out for some time.”

“No; going out is a troublesome business, and sitting in the garden answers the same purpose.”

“Of air, perhaps, but hardly of change or of view.”

“Oh! I assure you there is a wonderful variety,” she answered, with an eager and brilliant smile.

“Clouds and sunsets?” asked Rachel, beginning to be interested.

“Yes, differing every day. Then I have the tamarisk and its inhabitants. There has been a tom-tit’s nest every year since we came, and that provides us with infinite amusement. Besides the sea-gulls are often so good as to float high enough for me to see them. There is a wonderful charm in a circumcribed view, because one is obliged to look well into it all.”

“Yes; eyes and no eyes apply there,” said Rachel.

“We found a great prize, too, the other day. Rosie!”

At the call a brown-haired, brown-eyed child of seven, looking like a little fawn, sprang to the window from the outside.

“My dear, will you show the sphynx to Miss Curtis?”

The little girl daintily brought a box covered with net, in which a huge apple-green caterpillar, with dashes of bright colour on his sides, and a horny spike on his tail, was feasting upon tamarisk leaves. Grace asked if she was going to keep it. “Yes, till it buries itself,” said the child. “Aunt Ermine thinks it is the elephant sphynx.”

“I cannot be sure,” said the aunt, “my sister tried to find a figure of it at Villars’, but he had no book that gave the caterpillars. Do you care for those creatures?”

“I like to watch them,” said Grace, “but I know nothing about them scientifically; Rachel does that.”

“Then can you help us to the history of our sphynx?” asked Miss Williams, with her pleasant look.

“I will see if I have his portrait,” said Rachel, “but I doubt it. I prefer general principles to details.”

“Don’t you find working out details the best way of entering into general principles?”

It was new to Rachel to find the mention of a general principle received neither with a stare nor a laugh; and she gathered herself up to answer, “Naming and collecting is not science.”

“And masonry is not architecture, but you can’t have architecture without it.”

“One can have broad ideas without all the petty work of flower botanists and butterfly naturalists.”

“Don’t you think the broad ideas would be rather of the hearsay order, at least to most people, unless their application were worked out in the trifle that came first to hand?”

“Experimental philosophy,” said Rachel, in rather a considering tone, as if the notion, when presented to her in plain English, required translation into the language of her thoughts.

“If you like to call it so,” said Miss Williams, with a look of arch fun. “For instance, the great art of mud pie taught us the porous nature of clay, the expansive power of steam, etc. etc.”

“You had some one to improve it to you?”

“Oh dear no. Only afterwards, when we read of such things we remembered how our clay manufactures always burst in the baking unless they were well dried first.”

“Then you had the rare power of elucidating a principle?”

“No, not I. My brother had; but I could only perceive the confirmation.”

“This reminds me of an interesting article on the Edgeworth system of education in the ‘Traveller’s Review.’ I will send it down to you.”

“Thank you, but I have it here.”

“Indeed; and do you not think it excellent, and quite agree with it?”

“Yes, I quite agree with it,” and there was an odd look in her bright transparent eyes that made Grace speculate whether she could have heard that agreement with the Invalid in the “Traveller’s Review” was one of the primary articles of faith acquired by Rachel.

But Grace, though rather proud of Rachel’s falling under the spell of Miss Williams’ conversation, deemed an examination rather hard on her, and took the opportunity of asking for her sister.

“She is generally at home by this time; but this is her last day at Cliff Cottages, and she was to stay late to help in the packing up.”

“Will she be at home for the present?” asked Grace.

“Yes, Rose and I are looking forward to a festival of her.”

Grace was not at all surprised to hear Rachel at once commit herself with “My cousin, Lady Temple,” and rush into the matter in hand as if secure that the other Miss Williams would educate on the principles of the Invalid; but full in the midst there was a sound of wheels and a ring at the bell. Miss Williams quietly signed to her little attendant to put a chair in an accessible place, and in walked Lady Temple, Mrs. Curtis, and the middle brace of boys.

“The room will be too full,” was Grace’s aside to her sister, chiefly thinking of her mother, but also of their hostess; but Rachel returned for answer, “I must see about it;” and Grace could only remove herself into the verandah, and try to attract Leoline and Hubert after her, but failing in this, she talked to the far more conversible Rose about the bullfinch that hung at the window, which loved no one but Aunt Ermine, and scolded and pecked at every one else; and Augustus, the beloved tame toad, that lived in a hole under a tree in the garden. Mrs. Curtis, considerate and tender-hearted, startled to find her daughter in the field, and wishing her niece to begin about her own affairs, talked common-place by way of filling up the time, and Rachel had her eyes free for a range of the apartment. The foundation was the dull, third-rate lodging-house, the superstructure told of other scenes. One end of the room was almost filled by the frameless portrait of a dignified clergyman, who would have had far more justice done to him by greater distance; a beautifully-painted miniature of a lady with short waist and small crisp curls, was the centre of a system of photographs over the mantel-piece; a large crayon sketch showed three sisters between the ages of six and sixteen, sentimentalizing over a flower-basket; a pair of water-colour drawings represented a handsome church and comfortable parsonage; and the domestic gallery was completed by two prints—one of a middle-aged county-member, the other one of Chalon’s ladylike matrons in watered-silk aprons. With some difficulty Rachel read on the one the autograph, J. T. Beauchamp, and on the other the inscription, the Lady Alison Beauchamp. The table-cover was of tasteful silk patchwork, the vase in the centre was of red earthenware, but was encircled with real ivy leaves gummed on in their freshness, and was filled with wild flowers; books filled every corner; and Rachel felt herself out of the much-loathed region of common-place, but she could not recover from her surprise at the audacity of such an independent measure on the part of her cousin; and under cover of her mother’s civil talk, said to Fanny, “I never expected to see you here.”

“My aunt thought of it,” said Fanny, “and as she seems to find the children too much—”

She broke off, for Mrs. Curtis had paused to let her introduce the subject, but poor Fanny had never taken the initiative, and Rachel did it for her by explaining that all had come on the same errand, to ask if Miss Williams would undertake the lessons of her nephews; Lady Temple softly murmured under her veil something about hopes and too much trouble; an appointment was made for the following morning, and Mrs. Curtis, with a general sensation of an oppressive multitude in a small room, took her leave, and the company departed, Fanny, all the way home, hoping that the other Miss Williams would be like her sister, pitying the cripple, wishing that the sisters were in the remotest degree military, so as to obtain the respect of the hoys, and wondering what would be the Major’s opinion.

“So many ladies!” exclaimed little Rose. “Aunt Ermine, have they made your head ache?”

“No, my dear, thank you, I am only tired. If you will pull out the rest for my feet, I will be quiet a little, and be ready for tea when Aunt Ailie comes.”

The child handily converted the chair into a couch, arranging the dress and coverings with the familiarity of long use, and by no means shocked by the contraction and helplessness of the lower limbs, to which she had been so much accustomed all her life that it never even occurred to her to pity Aunt Ermine, who never treated herself as an object of compassion. She was thanked by a tender pressure on her hair, and then saying—

“Now I shall wish Augustus good night; bring Violetta home from her play in the garden, and let her drink tea, and go to bed.”

Ah, Violetta, purchased with a silver groat, what was not your value in Mackarel Lane? Were you not one of its most considered inhabitants, scarcely less a child of Aunt Ermine and Aunt Alison than their Rosebud herself?

Murmur, murmur, rippled the child’s happy low-toned monologue directed to her silent but sufficient playmate, and so far from disturbing the aunt, that more than one smile played on her lips at the quaint fancies, and at the well of gladness in the young spirit, which made day after day of the society of a cripple and an old doll, one constant song of bliss, one dream of bright imaginings. Surely it was an equalization of blessings that rendered little lonely Rose, motherless and well nigh fatherless, poor, with no companion but a crippled aunt, a bird and a toad, with scarcely a toy, and never a party of pleasure, one of the most joyous beings under the sun, free from occasions of childish troubles, without collisions of temper, with few contradictions, and with lessons rather pleasure than toil. Perhaps Ermine did not take into account the sunshiny content and cheerfulness that made herself a delightful companion and playfellow, able to accept the child as her solace, not her burthen.

Presently Rose looked up, and meeting the bright pleasant eyes, observed—“Violetta has been very good, and said all her lessons quite perfect, and she would like to sit up till her Aunt Ailie comes home. Do you think she may?”

“Will she not be tired to-morrow?”

“Oh, then she will be lazy, and not get up when she is called, till I pull all the clothes off, and that will be fun.”

“Or she may be fretful now?”

A series of little squeaks ensued, followed by “Now, my love; that is taking a very unfair advantage of my promise. You will make your poor Aunt Ermine’s head ache, and I shall have to send you to bed.”

“Would not a story pass away the time?”

“You tell it, Aunt Ermine; your stories are always the best. And let there be a fairy in it!”

The fairy had nearly performed her part, when the arrival took place, and Rose darted forward to receive Aunt Ailie’s greeting kiss.

“Yes, Rosie—yes, Violetta; what do you think I have got for you?”

And out came a doll’s chair with a broken leg, condemned by the departing pupils, and granted with a laugh to the governess’s request to take it to her little niece; but never in its best days had the chair been so prized. It was introduced to Violetta as the reward of virtue for having controlled her fretfulness, and the repair of its infirmity was the first consideration that occupied all the three. After all, Violetta’s sitting posture was, as Alison observed, an example of the inclined plane, but that was nothing to Rose, and the seance would have been indefinitely prolonged, but for considerations for Violetta’s health.

The sisters were alike, and Alison had, like her elder, what is emphatically called countenance, but her features were less chiselled, and her dark straight brows so nearly met that, as Rose had once remarked, they made a bridge of one arch instead of two. Six years younger, in full health, and daily battling with the world, Alison had a remarkable look of concentration and vigour, her upright bearing, clear decided speech, and glance of kindness won instant respect and reliance, but her face missed the radiant beamy brightness of her sister’s; her face was sweet and winning, but it was not habitual with her, and there was about her a look as if some terrible wave of grief or suffering had swept over her ere yet the features were fully fixed, and had thus moulded her expression for life. But playfulness was the tone that reigned around Ermine’s couch at ordinary moments, and beside her the grave Alison was lively, not with effort, but by infection.

“There,” she said, holding up a cheque; “now we’ll have a jubilee, and take you down under the East cliff, and we’ll invest a shilling in ‘Ivanhoe,’ and Rose and Violetta shall open their ears!”

“And you shall have a respectable Sunday mantle.”

“Oh, I dare say Julia will send us a box.”

“Then you will have to put a label on your back, ‘Second-hand!’ or her velvet will be a scandal. I can’t wear out that at home like this flagrant, flowery thing, that I saw Miss Curtis looking at as rather a disreputable article. There’s preferment for you, Ailie! What do you think of a general’s widow with six boys? She is come after you. We had a great invasion—three Curtises and this pretty little widow, and various sons!”

“Will she stay?”

“Most likely, for she is a relation of Mrs. Curtis, and comes to be near her. You are to call for inspection at eleven o’clock tomorrow, so I fear your holiday will be short.”

“Well, the less play the less anxiety. How many drives will the six young gentlemen be worth to you?”

“I am afraid it will be at the cost of tough work to you; she looked to me too sweet a creature to have broken her sons in, but I should think she would be pleasant to deal with.”

“If she be like Miss Curtis, I am sure she will.”

“Miss Curtis? My old friend you mean. She was rather suppressed today, and I began to comprehend the reason of the shudder with which Mr. Touchett speaks of the dogmatical young lady.”

“I hope she did not overwhelm you!”

“Oh, no! I rather liked her; she was so earnest and spirited, I could fancy enjoying a good passage at arms with her if these were old times. But I hope she will not take the direction of your school-room, though she is an admirer of the educational papers in the ‘Traveller.’”

And here the discussion was ended by the entrance of little Rose with the preliminaries of the evening meal, after which she went to bed, and the aunts took out books, work, and writing materials.

Alison’s report the next day was—“Well, she is a very sweet creature. There is something indescribably touching in her voice and eyes, so soft and wistful, especially when she implores one not to be hard on those great scrambling boys of hers.”

“So she is your fate?”

“Oh, yes, if there had been ten more engagements offered, I could not have helped accepting hers, even if it had not been on the best terms I have ever had.”

“What?”

“Seventy—for the hours between nine and five. Pretty well for a journeyman hack, is it not? Indeed, the pretty thing’s only fear seemed to be that she was requiring too much, and offering too little. No, not her only fear, for there is some major in the distance to whose approval everything must be subject—uncle or guardian, I suppose, but he seemed to be rather an object of jealousy to the younger Miss Curtis, for every hint of wishing to wait for the Major made her press on the negotiations.”

“Seventy! I hope you will make it do, Ailie. It would be a great relief.”

“And spare your brains not a little. Yes, I do trust to keeping it, for Lady Temple is delightful; and as to the boys, I fancy it is only taming they want. The danger is, as Miss Rachel told me, whether she can bear the sight of the process. I imagine Miss Rachel herself has tried it, and failed.”

“Part amateur work,” said Ermine, smiling. “It really is lucky you had to turn governess, Ailie, or there would have been a talent thrown away.”

“Stay till I have tried,” said Alison, who had, however, had experience enough not to be much alarmed at the prospect. Order was wont to come with her presence, and she hardly knew the aspect of tumultuous idleness or insubordination to unenforced authority; for her eye and voice in themselves brought cheerful discipline without constraint, and upheld by few punishments, for the strong influence took away the spirit of rebellion.

After her first morning’s work she came home full of good auguries; the boys had been very pleasant with her after the first ten minutes, and Conrade had gained her heart by his attention to his mother. He had, however, examined her minutely whether she had any connexion with the army, and looked grave on her disavowal of any relationship with soldiers; Hubert adding, “You see, Aunt Rachel is only a civilian, and she hasn’t any sense at all.” And when Francis had been reduced to the much disliked process of spelling unknown words, he had muttered under his breath, “She was only a civilian.” To which she had rejoined that “At least she knew thus much, that the first military duty was obedience,” and Francis’s instant submission proved that she had made a good shot. Of the Major she had heard much more. Everything was referred to him, both by mother and children, and Alison was the more puzzled as to his exact connexion with them. “I sometimes suspect,” she said, “that he may have felt the influence of those winsome brown eyes and caressing manner, as I know I should if I were a man. I wonder how long the old general has been dead? No, Ermine, you need not shake your head at me. I don’t mean even to let Miss Curtis tell me if she would. I know confidences from partisan relations are the most mischief-making things in the world.”

In pursuance of this principle Alison, or Miss Williams, as she was called in her vocation, was always reserved and discreet, and though ready to talk in due measure, Rachel always felt that it was the upper, not the under current that was proffered. The brow and eyes, the whole spirit of the face, betokened reflection and acuteness, and Rachel wanted to attain to her opinions; but beyond a certain depth there was no reaching. Her ways of thinking, her views of the children’s characters, her estimate of Mr. Touchett—nay, even her tastes as to the Invalid’s letters in the “Traveller’s Review,” remained only partially revealed, in spite of Rachel’s best efforts at fishing, and attempting to set the example.

“It really seemed,” as she observed to Grace, “as if the more I talk, the less she says.” At which Grace gave way to a small short laugh, though she owned the force of Rachel’s maxim, that to bestow confidence was the way to provoke it; and forbore to refer to a certain delightful afternoon that Rachel, in her childhood, had spent alone with a little girl whom she had never discovered to be deaf and dumb. Still Rachel had never been able to make out why Grace, with no theories at all, got so many more confidences than she did. She was fully aware of her sister’s superior attractiveness to common-place people, and made her welcome to stand first with the chief of their kindred, and most of the clergy and young ladies around. But it was hard that where Rachel really liked and met half-way, the intimate confidence should always be bestowed upon Grace, or even the mother. She had yet to learn that the way to draw out a snail is not to, grasp its horns, and that halfway meeting is not to launch one’s self to the opposite starting point. Either her inquiries were too point blank to invite detailed replies, or her own communications absorbed her too much to leave room for a return. Thus she told Miss Williams the whole story of the thrush’s nest, and all her own reflections upon the characteristics it betokened; and only afterwards, on thinking over the conversation, perceived that she had elicited nothing but that it was very difficult to judge in such cases, not even any decided assent to her own demonstrations. It was true that riots and breaches of the peace ceased while Miss Williams was in the house, and learning and good manners were being fast acquired; but until Conrade’s duplicity should be detected, or the whole disposition of the family discussed with herself, Rachel doubted the powers of the instructress. It was true that Fanny was very happy with her, and only regretted that the uncertainty of the Major’s whereabouts precluded his being informed of the newly-found treasure; but Fanny was sure to be satisfied as long as her boys were happy and not very naughty, and she cared very little about people’s minds.

If any one did “get on” with the governess it was Grace, who had been the first acquaintance in the family, and met her often in the service of the parish, as well as in her official character at the Homestead. It so chanced that one Sunday afternoon they found themselves simultaneously at the door of the school-house, whence issued not the customary hum, but loud sounds of singing.

“Ah!” said Grace, “Mr. Touchett was talking of getting the choir master from Avoncester, and giving up an afternoon to practice for Easter, but he never told me it was to be to-day.”

On inquiry, it appeared that notice had been given in the morning, but not till after Miss Williams had gone home to fetch her little niece, and while Rachel was teaching her boys in the class-room out of hearing. It was one of the little bits of bad management that were sure to happen wherever poor Mr. Touchett was concerned; and both ladies feeling it easy to overlook for themselves, were thankful that it had not befallen Rachel. Alison Williams, thinking it far to walk either to the Homestead or Myrtlewood before church, proposed to Grace to come home with her, an offer that was thankfully accepted, with merely the scruple whether she should disturb the invalid.

“Oh, no, it would be a great pleasure; I always wish we could get more change and variety for her on Sunday.”

“She is very self-denying to spare you to the school.”

“I have often wished to give it up, but she never will let me. She says it is one of the few things we can do, and I see besides that it brings her fresh interests. She knows about all my class, and works for them, and has them to see her; and I am sure it is better for her, though it leaves her more hours alone with Rose.”

“And the Sunday services are too long for her?”

“Not so much that, as that she cannot sit on those narrow benches unless two are put close together so that she can almost lie, and there is not room for her chair in the aisle on a Sunday. It is the greatest deprivation of all.”

“It is so sad, and she is so patient and so energetic,” said Grace, using her favourite monosyllable in peace, out of Rachel’s hearing.

“You would say so, indeed, if you really knew her, or how she has found strength and courage for me through all the terrible sutfering.”

“Then does she suffer so much?”

“Oh, no, not now! That was in the first years.”

“It was not always so.”

“No, indeed! You thought it deformity! Oh, no, no! she was so beautiful.”

“That she is still. I never saw my sister so much struck with any one. There is something so striking in her bright glance out of those clear eyes.”

“Ah! if you had only seen her bloom before—”

“The accident?”

“I burnt her,” said Alison, almost inaudibly.

“You! you, poor dear! How dreadful for you.”

“Yes, I burnt her,” said Alison, more steadily. “You ought not to be kind to me without knowing about it. It was an accident of course, but it was a fit of petulance. I threw a match without looking where it was going.”

“It must have been when you were very young.”

“Fourteen. I was in a naughty fit at her refusing to go to the great musical meeting with us. We always used to go to stay at one of the canon’s houses for it, a house where one was dull and shy; and I could not bear going without her, nor understand the reason.”

“And was there a reason?”

“Yes, poor dear Ermine. She knew he meant to come there to meet her, and she thought it would not be right; because his father had objected so strongly, and made him exchange into a regiment on foreign service.”

“And you did not know this?”

“No, I was away all the time it was going on, with my eldest sister, having masters in London. I did not come home till it was all over, and then I could not understand what was the matter with the house, or why Ermine was unlike herself, and papa restless and anxious about her. They thought me too young to be told, and the atmosphere made me cross and fretful, and papa was displeased with me, and Ermine tried in vain to make me good; poor patient Ermine, even then the chief sufferer!”

“I can quite imagine the discomfort and fret of being in ignorance all the time.”

“Dear Ermine says she longed to tell me, but she had been forbidden, and she went on blaming herself and trying to make me enjoy my holidays as usual, till this dreadful day, when I had worried her intolerably about going to this music meeting, and she found reasoning only made me worse. She still wrote her note of refusal, and asked me to light the taper; I dashed down the match in a frenzy of temper and—”

She paused for breath, and Grace squeezed her hand.

“We did not see it at first, and then she threw herself down and ordered me not to come near. Every one was there directly, I believe, but it burst out again and again, and was not put out till they all thought she had not an hour to live. There was no pain, and there she lay, all calmness, comforting us all, and making papa and Edward promise to forgive me—me, who only wished they would kill me! And the next day he came; he was just going to sail, and they thought nothing would hurt her then. I saw him while he was waiting, and never did I see such a fixed deathly face. But they said she found words to cheer and soothe him.”

“And what became of him?”

“We do not know. As long as Lady Alison lived (his aunt) she let us hear about him, and we knew he was recovering from his wound. Then came her death, and then my father’s, and all the rest, and we lost sight of the Beauchamps. We saw the name in the Gazette as killed at Lucknow, but not the right Christian name nor the same rank; but then, though the regiment is come home, we have heard nothing of him, and though she has never spoken of him to me, I am sure Ermine believes he is dead, and thinks of him as part of the sunshine of the old Beauchamp days—the sunshine whose reflection lasts one’s life.”

“He ought to be dead,” said Grace.

“Yes, it would be better for her than to hear anything else of him! He had nothing of his own, so there would have been a long waiting, but his father and brother would not hear of it, and accused us of entrapping him, and that angered my father. For our family is quite good, and we were very well off then. My father had a good private fortune besides the Rectory at Beauchamp; and Lady Alison, who had been like a mother to us ever since our own died, quite thought that the prospect was good enough, and I believe got into a great scrape with her family for having promoted the affair.”

“Your squire’s wife?”

“Yes, and Julia and Ermine had come every day to learn lessons with her daughters. I was too young; but as long as she lived we were all like one family. How kind she was! How she helped us through those frightful weeks!”

“Of your sister’s illness? It must have lasted long?”

“Long? Oh longer than long! No one thought of her living. The doctors said the injury was too extensive to leave any power of rallying; but she was young and strong, and did not die in the torture, though people said that such an existence as remained to her was not worth the anguish of struggling back to it. I think my father only prayed that she might suffer less, and Julia stayed on and on, thinking each day would be the last, till Dr. Long could not spare her any longer; and then Lady Alison nursed her night after night and day after day, till she had worn herself into an illness, and when the doctors spoke of improvement, we only perceived worse agony. It was eight months before she was even lifted up in bed, and it was years before the burns ceased to be painful or the constitution at all recovered the shock; and even now weather tells on her, though since we have lived here she has been far better than I ever dared to hope.”

CHAPTER IV. THE HERO

 
“And which is Lucy’s?  Can it be
  That puny fop, armed cap-a-pie,
  Who loves in the saloon to show
  The arms that never knew a foe.”
 

—SCOTT.

“My lady’s compliments, ma’am, and she would he much obliged if you would remain till she comes home,” was Coombe’s reception of Alison. “She is gone to Avoncester with Master Temple and Master Francis.”

“Gone to Avoncester!” exclaimed Rachel, who had walked from church to Myrtlewood with Alison.

“Mamma is gone to meet the Major!” cried three of the lesser boys, rushing upon them in full cry; then Leoline, facing round, “Not the major, he is lieutenant-colonel now—Colonel Keith, hurrah!”

“What—what do you mean? Speak rationally, Leoline, if you can.”

“My lady sent a note to the Homestead this morning,” explained Coombe. “She heard this morning that Colonel Keith intended to arrive to-day, and took the young gentlemen with her to meet him.”

Rachel could hardly refrain from manifesting her displeasure, and bluntly asked what time Lady Temple was likely to be at home.

“It depended,” Coombe said, “upon the train; it was not certain whether Colonel Keith would come by the twelve or the two o’clock train.”

And Rachel was going to turn sharply round, and dash home with the tidings, when Alison arrested her with the question—

“And who is Colonel Keith?”

Rachel was too much wrapped up in her own view to hear the trembling of the voice, and answered, “Colonel Keith! why, the Major! You have not been here so long without hearing of the Major?”

“Yes, but I did not know. Who is he?” And a more observant person would have seen the governess’s gasping effort to veil her eagerness under her wonted self-control.

“Don’t you know who the Major is?” shouted Leoline. “He is our military secretary.”

“That’s the sum total of my knowledge,” said Rachel, “I don’t understand his influence, nor know where he was picked up.”

“Nor his regiment?”

“He is not a regimental officer; he is on our staff,” said Leoline, whose imagination could not attain to an earlier condition than “on our staff.”

“I shall go home, then,” said Rachel, “and see if there is any explanation there.”

“I shall ask the Major not to let Aunt Rachel come here,” observed Hubert, as she departed; it was well it was not before.

“Leoline,” anxiously asked Alison, “can you tell me the Major’s name?”

“Colonel Keith—Lieutenant-Colonel Keith,” was all the answer.

“I meant his Christian name, my dear.”

“Only little boys have Christian names!” they returned, and Alison was forced to do her best to tame herself and them to the duties of the long day of anticipation so joyous on their part, so full of confusion and bewildered anxiety on her own. She looked in vain, half stealthily, as often before, for a recent Army List or Peerage. Long ago she had lost the Honourable Colin A. Keith from among the officers of the —th Highlanders, and though in the last Peerage she had laid hands on he was still among the surviving sons of the late Lord Keith, of Gowanbrae, the date had not gone back far enough to establish that he had not died in the Indian war. It was fear that predominated with her, there were many moments when she would have given worlds to be secure that the newcomer was not the man she thought of, who, whether constant or inconstant, could bring nothing but pain and disturbance to the calm tenour of her sister’s life. Everything was an oppression to her; the children, in their wild, joyous spirits and gladsome inattention, tried her patience almost beyond her powers; the charge of the younger ones in their mother’s absence was burthensome, and the delay in returning to her sister became well-nigh intolerable, when she figured to herself Rachel Curtis going down to Ermine with the tidings of Colonel Keith’s arrival, and her own discontent at his influence with her cousin. Would that she had spoken a word of warning; yet that might have been merely mischievous, for the subject was surely too delicate for Rachel to broach with so recent a friend. But Rachel had bad taste for anything! That the little boys did not find Miss Williams very cross that day was an effect of the long habit of self-control, and she could hardly sit still under the additional fret, when, just as tea was spread for the school-room party, in walked Miss Rachel, and sat herself down, in spite of Hubert, who made up a most coaxing, entreating face, as he said, “Please, Aunt Rachel, doesn’t Aunt Grace want you very much!”

“Not at all. Why, Hubert?”

“Oh, if you would only go away, and not spoil our fun when the Major comes.”

For once Rachel did laugh, but she did not take the hint, and Alison obtained only the satisfaction of hearing that she had at least not been in Mackarel Lane. The wheels sounded on the gravel, out rushed the boys; Alison and Rachel sat in strange, absolute silence, each forgetful of the other, neither guarding her own looks, nor remarking her companion’s. Alison’s lips were parted by intense listening; Rachel’s teeth were set to receive her enemy. There was a chorus of voices in the hall, and something about tea and coming in warned both to gather up their looks before Lady Temple had opened the door, and brought in upon them not one foe, but two! Was Rachel seeing double? Hardly that, for one was tall, bald, and bearded, not dangerously young, but on that very account the more dangerously good-looking; and the other was almost a boy, slim and light, just of the empty young officer type. Here, too, was Fanny, flushed, excited, prettier and brighter than Rachel had seen her at all, waving an introduction with head and hand; and the boys hanging round the Major with deafening exclamations of welcome, in which they were speedily joined by the nursery detachment. Those greetings, those observations on growth and looks, those glad, eager questions and answers, were like the welcome of an integral part of the family; it was far more intimate and familiar than had been possible with the Curtises after the long separation, and it was enough to have made the two spectators feel out of place, if such a sensation had been within Rachel’s capacity, or if Alison had not been engaged with the tea. Lady Temple made a few explanations, sotto voce, to Alison, whom she always treated as though in dread of not being sufficiently considerate. “I do hope the children have been good; I knew you would not mind; I could not wait to see you, or I should have been too late to meet the train, and then he would have come by the coach; and it is such a raw east wind. He must be careful in this climate.”

“How warm and sunshiny it has been all day,” said Rachel, by way of opposition to some distant echo of this whisper.

“Sunshiny, but treacherous,” answered Colonel Keith; “there are cold gusts round corners. This must be a very sheltered nook of the coast.”

“Quite a different zone from Avoncester,” said the youth.

“Yes, delightful. I told you it was just what would suit you,” added Fanny, to the colonel.

“Some winds are very cold here,” interposed Rachel. “I always pity people who are imposed upon to think it a Mentone near home. They are choking our churchyard.”

“Very inconsiderate of them,” muttered the young man.

“But what made you come home so late, Fanny?” said Rachel.

Alison suspected a slight look of wonder on the part of both the officers at hearing their general’s wife thus called to account; but Fanny, taking it as a matter of course, answered, “We found that the-th was at Avoncester. I had no idea of it, and they did not know I was here; so I went to call upon Mrs. Hammond, and Colonel Keith went to look for Alick, and we have brought him home to dine.”

Fanny took it for granted that Rachel must know who Alick was, but she was far from doing so, though she remembered that the —th had been her uncle’s regiment, and had been under Sir Stephen Temple’s command in India at the time of the mutiny. The thought of Fanny’s lapsing into military society was shocking to her. The boys were vociferating about boats, ponies, and all that had been deferred till the Major’s arrival, and he was answering them kindly, but hushing the extra outcry less by word than sign, and his own lowered voice and polished manner—a manner that excessively chafed her as a sort of insult to the blunt, rapid ways that she considered as sincere and unaffected, a silkiness that no doubt had worked on the honest, simple general, as it was now working on the weak young widow. Anything was better than leaving her to such influence, and in pursuance of the intention that Rachel had already announced at home, she invited herself to stay to dinner; and Fanny eagerly thanked her, for making it a little less dull for Colonel Keith and Alick. It was so good to come down and help. Certainly Fanny was an innocent creature, provided she was not spoilt, and it was a duty to guard her innocence.

Alison Williams escaped to her home, sure of nothing but that her sister must not be allowed to share her uncertainties; and Lady Temple and her guests sat down to dinner. Rachel meant to have sat at the bottom and carved, as belonging to the house; but Fanny motioned the Colonel to the place, observing, “It is so natural to see you there! One only wants poor Captain Dent at the other end. Do you know whether he has his leave?”

Wherewith commenced a discussion of military friends—who had been heard of from Australia, who had been met in England, who was promoted, who married, who retired, &c., and all the quarters of the-th since its return from India two years ago; Fanny eagerly asking questions and making remarks, quite at home and all animation, absolutely a different being from the subdued, meek little creature that Rachel had hitherto seen. Attempts were made to include Miss Curtis in the conversation by addressing anecdotes to her, and asking if she knew the places named; but she had been to none, and the three old friends quickly fell into the swing of talk about what interested them. Once, however, she came down on them with, “What conclusion have you formed upon female emigration?”

 
    “‘His sister she went beyond the seas,
      And died an old maid among black savagees.’
 

“That’s the most remarkable instance of female emigration on record, isn’t it?” observed Alick.

“What; her dying an old maid?” said Colonel Keith. “I am not sure. Wholesale exportations of wives are spoiling the market.”

“I did not mean marriage,” said Rachel, stoutly. “I am particularly anxious to know whether there is a field open to independent female labour.”

“All the superior young women seemed to turn nurserymaids,” said the Colonel.

“Oh,” interposed Fanny, “do you remember that nice girl of ours who would marry that Orderly-Sergeant O’Donoghoe? I have had a letter from her in such distress.”

“Of course, the natural termination,” said Alick, in his lazy voice.

“And I thought you would tell me how to manage sending her some help,” proceeded Fanny.

“I could have helped you, Fanny. Won’t an order do it?”

“Not quite,” said Fanny, a shade of a smile playing on her lip. “It is whether to send it through one of the officers or not. If Captain Lee is with the regiment, I know he would take care of it for her.”

So they plunged into another regiment, and Rachel decided that nothing was so wearisome as to hear triflers talk shop.

There was no opportunity of calling Fanny to order after dinner, for she went off on her progress to all the seven cribs, and was only just returning from them when the gentlemen came in, and then she made room for the younger beside her on the sofa, saying, “Now, Alick, I do so want to hear about poor, dear little Bessie;” and they began so low and confidentially, that Rachel wondered if her alarms wore to be transfered from the bearded colonel to the dapper boy, or if, in very truth, she must deem poor Fanny a general coquette. Besides, a man must be contemptible who wore gloves at so small a party, when she did not.

She had been whiling away the time of Fanny’s absence by looking over the books on the table, and she did not regard the present company sufficiently to desist on their account. Colonel Keith began to turn over some numbers of the “Traveller” that lay near him, and presently looked up, and said, “Do you know who is the writer of this?”

“What is it? Ah! one of the Invalid’s essays. They strike every one; but I fancy the authorship is a great secret.”

“You do not know it?”

“No, I wish I did. Which of them are you reading? ‘Country Walks.’ That is not one that I care about, it is a mere hash of old recollections; but there are some very sensible and superior ones, so that I have heard it sometimes doubted whether they are man’s or woman’s writing. For my part, I think them too earnest to be a man’s; men always play with their subject.”

“Oh, yes,” said Fanny, “I am sure only a lady could have written anything so sweet as that about flowers in a sick-room; it so put me in mind of the lovely flowers you used to bring me one at a time, when I was ill at Cape Town.”

There was no more sense to be had after those three once fell upon their reminiscences.

That night, after having betrayed her wakefulness by a movement in her bed, Alison Williams heard her sister’s voice, low and steady, saying, “Ailie, dear, be it what it may, guessing is worse than certainty.”

“Oh, Ermine, I hoped—I know nothing—I have nothing to tell.”

“You dread something,” said Ermine; “you have been striving for unconcern all the evening, my poor dear, but surely you know, Ailie, that nothing is so bad while we share it.”

“And I have frightened you about nothing.”

“Nothing! nothing about Edward?”

“Oh, no, no!”

“And no one has made you uncomfortable?”

“No.”

“Then there is only one thing that it can be, Ailie, and you need not fear to tell me that. I always knew that if he lived I must be prepared for it, and you would not have hesitated to tell me of his death.”

“It is not that, indeed it is not, Ermine, it is only this—that I found to-day that Lady Temple’s major has the same name.”

“But you said she was come home. You must have seen him.”

“Yes, but I should not know him. I had only seen him once, remember, twelve years ago, and when I durst not look at him.”

“At least,” said Ermine, quickly, “you can tell me what you saw to-day.”

“A Scotch face, bald head, dark beard, grizzled hair.”

“Yes I am grey, and he was five years older; but he used not to have a Scotch face. Can you tell me about his eyes?”

“Dark,” I think.

“They were very dark blue, almost black. Time and climate must have left them alone. You may know him by those eyes, Ailie. And you could not make out anything about him?”

“No, not even his Christian name nor his regiment. I had only the little ones and Miss Rachel to ask, and they knew nothing. I wanted to keep this from you till I was sure, but you always find me out.”

“Do you think I couldn’t see the misery you were in all the evening, poor child? But now you have had it out, sleep, and don’t be distressed.”

“But, Ermine, if you—”

“My dear, I am thankful that nothing is amiss with you or Edward. For the rest, there is nothing but patience. Now, not another word; you must not lose your sleep, nor take away my chance of any.”

How much the sisters slept they did not confide to one another, but when they rose, Alison shook her head at her sister’s heavy eyelids, and Ermine retorted with a reproachful smile at certain dark tokens of sleeplessness under Alison’s eyes.

“No, not the flowered flimsiness, please,” she said, in the course of her toilette, “let me have the respectable grey silk.” And next she asked for a drawer, whence she chose a little Nuremberg horn brooch for her neck. “I know it is very silly,” she said, “but I can’t quite help it. Only one question, Ailie, that I thought of too late. Did he hear your name?”

“I think not, Lady Temple named nobody. But why did you not ask me last night?”

“I thought beginning to talk again would destroy your chance of sleep, and we had resolved to stop.”

“And, Ermine, if it be, what shall I do?”

“Do as you feel right at the moment,” said Ermine, after a moment’s pause. “I cannot tell how it may be. I have been thinking over what you told me about the Major and Lady Temple.”

“Oh, Ermine, what a reproof this is for that bit of gossip.”

“Not at all, my dear, the warning may be all the better for me,” said Ermine, with a voice less steady than her words. “It is not what, under the circumstances, I could think likely in the Colin whom I knew; but were it indeed so, then, Ailie, you had better say nothing about me, unless he found you out. We would get employment elsewhere.”

“And I must leave you to the suspense all day.”

“Much better so. The worst thing we could do would be to go on talking about it. It is far better for me to be left with my dear little unconscious companion.”

Alison tried to comfort herself with this belief through the long hours of the morning, during which she only heard that mamma and Colonel Keith were gone to the Homestead, and she saw no one till she came forth with her troop to the midday meal.

And there, at sight of Lady Temple’s content and calm, satisfied look, as though she were once more in an accustomed atmosphere, and felt herself and the boys protected, and of the Colonel’s courteous attention to her and affectionate authority towards her sons, it was an absolute pang to recognise the hue of eye described by Ermine; but still Alison tried to think them generic Keith eyes, till at length, amid the merry chatter of her pupils, came an appeal to “Miss Williams,” and then came a look that thrilled through her, the same glance that she had met for one terrible moment twelve years before, and renewing the same longing to shrink from all sight or sound. How she kept her seat and continued to attend to the children she never knew, but the voices sounded like a distant Babel; and she did not know whether she were most relieved, disappointed, or indignant when she left the dining-room to take the boys for their walk. Oh, that Ermine could be hid from all knowledge of what would be so much harder to bear than the death in which she had long believed!

Harder to bear? Yes, Ermine had already been passing through a heart sickness that made the morning like an age. Her resolute will had struggled hard for composure, cheerfulness, and occupation; but the little watchful niece had seen through the endeavour, and had made her own to the sleepless night and the headache. The usual remedy was a drive in a wheeled chair, and Rose was so urgent to be allowed to go and order one, that Ermine at last yielded, partly because she had hardly energy enough to turn her refusal graciously, partly because she would not feel herself staying at home for the vague hope and when the child was out of sight, she had the comfort of clasping her hands, and ceasing to restrain her countenance, while she murmured, “Oh, Colin, Colin, are you what you were twelve years back? Is this all dream, all delusion, and waste of feeling, while you are lying in your Indian grave, more mine than you can ever be living be as it may,—

 
                  “‘Calm me, my God, and keep me calm
                      While these hot breezes blow;
                    Be like the night dew’s cooling balm
                      Upon earth’s fevered brow.
                    Calm me, my God, and keep me calm,
                      Soft resting on Thy breast;
                    Soothe me with holy hymn and psalm,
                      And bid my spirit rest.’”
 

CHAPTER V. MILITARY SOCIETY

 
                         “My trust
Like a good parent did beget of him
A falsehood in its contrary as great
As my trust was, which had indeed no limit.”
 

—TEMPEST.

Rose found the wheeled chair, to which her aunt gave the preference, was engaged, and shaking her little discreet head at “the shakey chair” and “the stuffy chair,” she turned pensively homeward, and was speeding down Mackarel Lane, when she was stayed by the words, “My little girl!” and the grandest and most bearded gentleman she had ever seen, demanded, “Can you tell me if Miss Williams lives here?”

“My aunt?” exclaimed Rose, gazing up with her pretty, frightened-fawn look.

“Indeed!” he exclaimed, looking eagerly at her, “then you are the child of a very old friend of mine! Did you never hear him speak of his old school-fellow, Colin Keith?”

“Papa is away,” said Rose, turning back her neck to get a full view of his face from under the brim of her hat.

“‘Will you run on and ask your aunt if she would like to see me?” he added.

Thus it was that Ermine heard the quick patter of the child’s steps, followed by the manly tread, and the words sounded in her ears, “Aunt Ermine, there’s a gentleman, and he has a great beard, and he says he is papa’s old friend! And here he is.”

Ermine’s beaming eyes as absolutely met the new comer as though she had sprung forward. “I thought you would come,” she said, in a voice serene with exceeding bliss.

“I have found you at last,” as their hands clasped; and they gazed into each other’s faces in the untroubled repose of the meeting, exclusive of all else.

Ermine was the first to break silence. “Oh, Colin, you look worn and altered.”

“You don’t; you have kept your sunbeam face for me with the dear brown glow I never thought to have seen again. Why did they tell me you were an invalid, Ermine?”

“Have you not seen Alison?” she asked, supposing he would have known all.

“I saw her, but did not hear her name, till just now at luncheon, when our looks met, and I saw it was not another disappointment.”

“And she knows you are come to me?”

“It was not in me to speak to her till I had recovered you! One can forgive, but not forget.”

“You will do more when you know her, and how she has only lived and worked for me, dear Ailie, and suffered far more than I—”

“While I was suffering from being unable to do anything but live for you,” he repeated, taking up her words; “but that is ended now—” and as she made a negative motion of her head, “have you not trusted to me?”

“I have thought you not living,” she said; “the last I know was your letter to dear Lady Alison, written from the hospital at Cape Town, after your wound. She was ill even when it came, and she could only give it to Ailie for me.”

“Dear good aunt, she got into trouble with all the family for our sake; and when she was gone no one would give me any tidings of you.”

“It was her last disappointment that you were not sent home on sick leave. Did you get well too fast?”

“Not exactly; but my father, or rather, I believe, my brother, intimated that I should be welcome only if I had laid aside a certain foolish fancy, and as lying on my back had not conduced to that end, I could only say I would stay where I was.”

“And was it worse for you? I am sure, in spite of all that tanned skin, that your health has suffered. Ought you to have come home?”

“No, I do not know that London surgeons could have got at the ball,” he said, putting his hand on his chest, “and it gives me no trouble in general. I was such a spectacle when I returned to duty, that good old Sir Stephen Temple, always a proverb for making his staff a refuge for the infirm, made me his aide-de-camp, and was like a father to me.”

“Now I see why I never could find your name in any list of the officers in the moves of the regiment! I gave you quite up when I saw no Keith among those that came home from India. I did believe then that you were the Colonel Alexander Keith whose death I had seen mentioned, though I had long trusted to his not being honourable, nor having your first name.”

“Ah! he succeeded to the command after Lady Temple’s father. A kind friend to me he was, and he left me in charge of his son and daughter. A very good and gallant fellow is that young Alick. I must bring him to see you some day—”

“Oh! I saw his name; I remember! I gloried in the doings of a Keith; but I was afraid he had died, as there was no such name with the regiment when it came home.”

“No, he was almost shattered to pieces; but Sir Stephen sent him up the hills to be nursed by Lady Temple and her mother, and he was sent home as soon as he could be moved. I was astonished to see how entirely he had recovered.”

“Then you went through all that Indian war?”

“Yes; with Sir Stephen.”

“You must show me all your medals! How much you have to tell me! And then—?”

“Just when the regiment was coming home, my dear old chief was appointed to the command in Australia, and insisted on my coming with him as military secretary. He had come to depend on me so much that I could not well leave him; and in five years there was the way to promotion and to claiming you at once. We were just settled there, when what I heard made me long to have decided otherwise, but I could not break with him then. I wrote to Edward, but had my letter returned to me.”

“No wonder; Edward was abroad, all connexion broken.”

“I wrote to Beauchamp, and he knew nothing, and I could only wait till my chief’s time should be up. You know how it was cut short, and how the care of the poor little widow detained me till she was fit for the voyage. I came and sought you in vain in town. I went home, and found my brother lonely and dispirited. He has lost his son, his daughters are married, and he and I are all the brothers left out of the six! He was urgent that I should come and live with him and marry. I told him I would, with all my heart, when I had found you, and he saw I was too much in earnest to be opposed. Then I went to Beauchamp, but Harry knew nothing about any one. I tried to find out your sister and Dr. Long, but heard they were gone to Belfast.”

“Yes, they lost a good deal in the crash, and did not like retrenching among their neighbours, so they went to Ireland, and there they have a flourishing practice.”

“I thought myself on my way there,” he said, smiling; “only I had first to settle Lady Temple, little guessing who was her treasure of a governess! Last night I had nearly opened, on another false scent; I fell in with a description that I could have sworn was yours, of the heather behind the parsonage. I made a note of the publisher in case all else had failed.”

“I’m glad you knew the scent of the thyme!”

“Then it was no false scent?”

“One must live, and I was thankful to do anything to lighten Ailie’s burthen. I wrote down that description that I might live in the place in fancy; and one day, when the contribution was wanted and I was hard up for ideas, I sent it, though I was loth to lay open that bit of home and heart.”

“Well it might give me the sense of meeting you! And in other papers of the series I traced your old self more ripened.”

“The editor was a friend of Edward’s, and in our London days he asked me to write letters on things in general, and when I said I saw the world through a key-hole, he answered that a circumscribed view gained in distinctness. Most kind and helpful he has been, and what began between sport and need to say out one’s mind has come to be a resource for which we are very thankful. He sends us books for reviewal, and that is pleasant and improving, not to say profitable.”

“Little did I think you were in such straits!” he said, stroking the child’s head, and waiting as though her presence were a restraint on inquiries, but she eagerly availed herself of the pause. “Aunt Ermine, please what shall I say about the chairs? Will you have the nice one and Billy when they come home? I was to take the answer, only you did talk so that I could not ask!”

“Thank you, my dear; I don’t want chairs nor anything else while I can talk so,” she answered, smiling. “You had better take a run in the garden when you come back;” and Rose replied with a nod of assent that made the colonel smile and say, “Good-bye then, my sweet Lady Discretion, some day we will be better acquainted.”

“Dear child,” said Ermine, “she is our great blessing, and some day I trust will be the same to her dear father. Oh, Colin! it is too much to hope that you have not believed what you must have heard! And yet you wrote to him.”

“Nay, I could not but feel great distrust of what I heard, since I was also told that his sisters were unconvinced; and besides, I had continually seen him at school the victim of other people’s faults.”

“This is best of all,” exclaimed Ermine, with glistening eyes, and hand laid upon his; “it is the most comfortable word I have heard since it happened. Yes, indeed, many a time before I saw you, had I heard of ‘Keith’ as the friend who saw him righted. Oh, Colin! thanks, thanks for believing in him more than for all!”

“Not believing, but knowing,” he answered—“knowing both you and Edward. Besides, is it not almost invariable that the inventor is ruined by his invention—a Prospero by nature?”

“It was not the invention,” she answered; “that throve as long as my father lived.”

“Yes, he was an excellent man of business.”

“And he thought the concern so secure that there was no danger in embarking all the available capital of the family in it, and it did bring us in a very good income.”

“I remember that it struck me that the people at home would find that they had made a mistake after all, and missed a fortune for me! It was an invention for diminishing the fragility of glass under heat; was it not?”

“Yes, and the manufacture was very prosperous, so that my father was quite at ease about us. After his death we made a home for Edward in London, and looked after him when he used to be smitten with some new idea and forgot all sublunary matters. When he married we went to live at Richmond, and had his dear little wife very much with us, for she was a delicate tender creature, half killed by London. In process of time he fell in with a man named Maddox, plausible and clever, who became a sort of manager, especially while Edward was in his trances of invention; and at all times knew more about his accounts than he did himself. Nothing but my father’s authority had ever made him really look into them, and this man took them all off his hands. There was a matter about the glass that Edward was bent on ascertaining, and he went to study the manufacture in Bohemia, taking his wife with him, and leaving Rose with us. Shortly after, Dr. Long and Harry Beauchamp received letters asking for a considerable advance, to be laid out on the materials that this improvement would require. Immediately afterwards came the crash.”

CHAPTER VI. ERMINE’S RESOLUTION

 
“For as his hand the weather steers,
  So thrive I best ‘twixt joys and tears,
  And all the year have some green ears.”—
 

H. VAUGHAN.

Alison had not been wrong in her presentiment that the second interview would be more trying than the first. The exceeding brightness and animation of Ermine’s countenance, her speaking eyes, unchanged complexion, and lively manner—above all, the restoration of her real substantial self—had so sufficed and engrossed Colin Keith in the gladness of their first meeting that he had failed to comprehend her helpless state; and already knowing her to be an invalid, not entirely recovered from her accident, he was only agreeably surprised to see the beauty of face he had loved so long, retaining all its vivacity of expression. And when he met Alison the next morning with a cordial brotherly greeting and inquiry for her sister, her “Very well,” and “not at all the worse for the excitement,” were so hearty and ready that he could not have guessed that “well” with Ermine meant something rather relative than positive. Alison brought him a playful message from her, that since he was not going to Belfast, she should meet him with a freer conscience if he would first give her time for Rose’s lessons, and, as he said, he had lived long enough with Messrs. Conrade and Co. to acknowledge the wisdom of the message. But Rose had not long been at leisure to look out for him before he made his appearance, and walked in by right, as one at home; and sitting down in his yesterday’s place, took the little maiden on his knee, and began to talk to her about the lessons he had been told to wait for. What would she have done without them? He knew some people who never could leave the house quiet enough to hear one’s-self speak if they were deprived of lessons. Was that the way with her? Rose laughed like a creature, her aunt said, “to whom the notion of noise at play was something strange and ridiculous; necessity has reduced her to Jacqueline Pascal’s system with her pensionnaires, who were allowed to play one by one without any noise.”

“But I don’t play all alone,” said Rose; “I play with you, Aunt Ermine, and with Violetta.”

And Violetta speedily had the honour of an introduction, very solemnly gone through, in due form; Ermine, in the languid sportiveness of enjoyment of his presence and his kindness to the child, inciting Rose to present Miss Violetta Williams to Colonel Keith, an introduction that he returned with a grand military salute, at the same time as he shook the doll’s inseparable fingers. “Well, Miss Violetta, and Miss Rose, when you come to live with me, I shall hope for the pleasure of teaching you to make a noise.”

“What does he mean?” said Rose, turning round amazed upon her aunt.

“I am afraid he does not quite know,” said Ermine, sadly.

“Nay, Ermine,” said he, turning from the child, and bending over her, “you are the last who should say that. Have I not told you that there is nothing now in our way—no one with a right to object, and means enough for all we should wish, including her—? What is the matter?” he added, startled by her look.

“Ah, Colin! I thought you knew—”

“Knew what, Ermine?” with his brows drawn together.

“Knew—what I am,” she said; “knew the impossibility. What, they have not told you? I thought I was the invalid, the cripple, with every one.”

“I knew you had suffered cruelly; I knew you were lame,” he said, breathlessly; “but—what—”

“It is more than lame,” she said. “I should be better off if the fiction of the Queens of Spain were truth with me. I could not move from this chair without help. Oh, Colin! poor Colin! it was very cruel not to have prepared you for this!” she added, as he gazed at her in grief and dismay, and made a vain attempt to find the voice that would not come. “Yes, indeed it is so,” she said; “the explosion, rather than the fire, did mischief below the knee that poor nature could not repair, and I can but just stand, and cannot walk at all.”

“Has anything been done—advice?” he murmured.

“Advice upon advice, so that I felt at the last almost a compensation to be out of the way of the doctors. No, nothing more can be done; and now that one is used to it, the snail is very comfortable in its shell. But I wish you could have known it sooner!” she added, seeing him shade his brow with his hand, overwhelmed.

“What you must have suffered!” he murmured.

“That is all over long ago; every year has left that further behind, and made me more content. Dear Colin, for me there is nothing to grieve.”

He could not control himself, rose up, made a long stride, and passed through the open window into the garden.

“Oh, if I could only follow him,” gasped Ermine, joining her hands and looking up.

“Is it because you can’t walk?” said Rose, somewhat frightened, and for the first time beginning to comprehend that her joyous-tempered aunt could be a subject for pity.

“Oh! this was what I feared!” sighed Ermine. “Oh, give us strength to go through with it.” Then becoming awake to the child’s presence—“A little water, if you please, my dear.” Then, more composedly, “Don’t be frightened, my Rose; you did not know it was such a shock to find me so laid by—”

“He is in the garden walking up and down,” said Rose. “May I go and tell him how much merrier you always are than Aunt Ailie?”

Poor Ermine felt anything but merry just then, but she had some experience of Rose’s powers of soothing, and signed assent. So in another second Colonel Keith was met in the hasty, agonized walk by which he was endeavouring to work off his agitation, and the slender child looked wistfully up at him from dark depths of half understanding eyes—“Please, please don’t be so very sorry,” she said. “Aunt Ermine does not like it. She never is sorry for herself—”

“Have I shaken her—distressed her?” he asked, anxiously.

“She doesn’t like you to be sorry,” said Rose, looking up. “And, indeed, she does not mind it; she is such a merry aunt! Please, come in again, and see how happy we always are—”

The last words were spoken so near the window that Ermine caught them, and said, “Yes, come in, Colin, and learn not to grieve for me, or you will make me repent of my selfish gladness yesterday.”

“Not grieve!” he exclaimed, “when I think of the beautiful vigorous being that used to be the life of the place—” and he would have said more but for a deprecating sign of the hand.

“Well,” she said, half smiling, “it is a pity to think even of a crushed butterfly; but indeed, Colin, if you can bear to listen to me, I think I can show you that it all has been a blessing even by sight, as well as, of course, by faith. Only remember the unsatisfactoriness of our condition—the never seeing or hearing from one another after that day when Mr. Beauchamp came down on us. Did not the accident win for us a parting that was much better to remember than that state of things? Oh, the pining, weary feel as if all the world had closed on me! I do assure you it was much worse than anything that came after the burn. Yes, if I had been well and doing like others, I know I should have fretted and wearied, pined myself ill perhaps, whereas I could always tell myself that every year of your absence might be a step towards your finding me well; and when I was forced to give up that hope for myself, why then, Colin, the never seeing your name made me think you would never be disappointed and grieved as you are now. It is very merciful the way that physical trials help one through those of the mind.”

“I never knew,” said the Colonel; “all my aunt’s latter letters spoke of your slow improvement beyond hope.”

“True, in her time, I had not reached the point where I stopped. The last time I saw her I was still upstairs; and, indeed, I did not half know what I could do till I tried.”

“Yes,” said he, brightened by that buoyant look so remarkable in her face; “and you will yet do more, Ermine. You have convinced me that we shall be all the happier together—”

“But that was not what I meant to convince you of—” she said, faintly.

“Not what you meant, perhaps; but what it did convince me was, that you—as you are, my Ermine—are ten thousand times more to me than even as the beautiful girl, and that there never can be a happier pair than we shall be when I am your hands and feet.”

Ermine sat up, and rallied all her forces, choked back the swelling of her throat, and said, “Dear Colin, it cannot be! I trusted you were understanding that when I told you how it was with me.”

He could not speak from consternation.

“No,” she said; “it would be wrong in me to think of it for an instant. That you should have done so, shows—O Colin, I cannot talk of it; but it would be as ungenerous in me to consent, as it is noble of you to propose it.”

“It is no such thing,” he answered; “it has been the one object and thought of my life, the only hope I have had all these years.”

“Exactly so,” she said, struggling again to speak firmly; “and that is the very thing. You kept your allegiance to the bright, tall, walking, active girl, and it would be a shame in the scorched cripple to claim it.”

“Don’t call yourself names. Have I not told you that you are more than the same?”

“You do not know. You are pleased because my face is not burnt, nor grown much older, and because I can talk and laugh in the same voice still.” (Oh, how it quivered!) “But it would be a wicked mockery in me to pretend to be the wife you want. Yes, I know you think you do, but that is just because my looks are so deceitful, and you have kept on thinking about me; but you must make a fresh beginning.”

“You can tell me that,” he said, indignantly.

“Because it is not new to me,” she said; “the quarter of an hour you stood by me, with that deadly calm in your white face, was the real farewell to the young hopeful dream of that bright summer. I wish it was as calm now.”

“I believed you dying then,” answered he.

“Do not make me think it would have been better for you if I had been,” she said, imploringly. “It was as much the end, and I knew it from the time my recovery stopped short. I would have let you know if I could, and then you would not have been so much shocked.”

“So as to cut me off from you entirely?”

“No, indeed. The thought of seeing you again was too—too overwhelming to be indulged in; knowing, as I did, that if you were the same to me, it must be at this sad cost to you,” and her eyes filled with tears.

“It is you who make it so, Ermine.”

“No; it is the providence that has set me aside from the active work of life. Pray do not go on, Colin, it is only giving us both useless pain. You do not know what it costs me to deny you, and I feel that I must. I know you are only acting on the impulse of generosity. Yes, I will say so, though you think it is to please yourself,” she added, with one of those smiles that nothing could drive far from her lips, and which made it infinitely harder to acquiesce in her denial.

“I will make you think so in time,” he said. “Then I might tell you, you had no right to please yourself,” she answered, still with the same air of playfulness; “you have got a brother, you know—and—yes, I hear you growl; but if he is a poor old broken man out of health, it is the more reason you should not vex him, nor hamper yourself with a helpless commodity.”

“You are not taking the way to make me forget what my brother has done for us.”

“How do you know that he did not save me from being a strong-minded military lady! After all, it was absurd to expect people to look favourably on our liking for one another, and you know they could not be expected to know that there was real stuff in the affair. If there had not been, we should have thought so all the same, you know, and been quite as furious.”

He could not help smiling, recollecting fury that, in the course of these twelve years, he had seen evinced under similar circumstances by persons who had consoled themselves before he had done pitying them. “Still,” he said gravely, “I think there was harshness.”

“So do I, but not so much as I thought at that time, and—oh, surely that is not Rachel Curtis? I told her I thought you would call.”

“Intolerable!” he muttered between his teeth. “Is she always coming to bore you?”

“She has been very kind, and my great enlivenment,” said Ermine, “and she can’t be expected to know how little we want her. Oh, there, the danger is averted! She must have asked if you were here.”

“I was just thinking that she was the chief objection to Lady Temple’s kind wish of having you at Myrtlewood.”

“Does Lady Temple know?” asked Ermine, blushing.

“I could not keep it from one who has been so uniformly kind to me; but I desired her not to let it go further till I should hear your wishes.”

“Yes, she has a right to know,” said Ermine; “but please, not a word elsewhere.”

“And will you not come to stay with her?”

“I? Oh, no; I am fit for no place but this. You don’t half know how bad I am. When you have seen a little more of us, you will be quite convinced.”

“Well, at least, you give me leave to come here.”

“Leave? When it is a greater pleasure than I ever thought to have again; that is, while you understand that you said good-bye to the Ermine of Beauchamp Parsonage twelve years ago, and that the thing here is only a sort of ghost, most glad and grateful to be a friend—a sister.”

“So,” he said, “those are to be the terms of my admission.”

“The only possible ones.”

“I will consider them. I have not accepted them.”

“You will,” she said.

But she met a smile in return, implying that there might be a will as steadfast as her own, although the question might be waived for a time.

Meantime, Rachel was as nearly hating Colonel Keith as principle would allow, with “Human Reeds,” newly finished, burning in her pocket, “Military Society” fermenting in her brain, and “Curatocult” still unacknowledged. Had he not had quite time for any rational visit? Was he to devour Mackarel Lane as well as Myrtlewood? She was on her way to the latter house, meeting Grace as she went, and congratulating herself that he could not be in two places at once, whilst Grace secretly wondered how far she might venture to build on Alison Williams’s half confidence, and regretted the anxiety wasted by Rachel and the mother; though, to be sure, that of Mrs. Curtis was less uncalled for than her daughter’s, since it was only the fear of Fanny’s not being sufficiently guarded against misconstructions.

Rachel held up her hands in despair in the hall. “Six officers’ cards!” she exclaimed.

“No, only six cards,” said Grace; “there are two of each.”

“That’s enough,” sighed Rachel; “and look there,” gazing through the garden-door. “She is walking with the young puppy that dined here on Thursday, and they called Alick.”

“Do you remember,” said Grace, “how she used to chatter about Alick, when she first came to us, at six years old. He was the child of one of the officers. Can this be the same?”

“That’s one of your ideas, Grace. Look, this youth could have been hardly born when Fanny came to us. No; he is only one of the idlers that military life has accustomed her to.”

Rather against Grace’s feeling, Rachel drew her on, so as to come up with Lady Temple and her friend in the midst of their conversation, and they heard the last words—

“Then you will give me dear Bessie’s direction?”

“Thank you, it will be the greatest kindness—”

“Oh, Grace, Rachel, is it you?” exclaimed Fanny. “You have not met before, I think. Mr. Keith—Miss Curtis.”

Very young indeed were both face and figure, fair and pale, and though there was a moustache, it was so light and silky as to be scarcely visible; the hair, too, was almost flaxen, and the whole complexion had a washed-out appearance. The eyes, indeed, were of the same peculiar deep blue as the Colonel’s, but even these were little seen under their heavy sleepy lids, and the long limbs had in every movement something of weight and slowness, the very sight of which fretted Rachel, and made her long to shake him. It appeared that he was come to spend the Sunday at Avonmouth, and Grace tried to extract the comfort for her mother that two gentlemen were better than one, and Fanny need not be on their minds for chaperonage for that day.

A party of garden-chairs on the lawn invited repose, and there the ladies seated themselves; Fanny laying down her heavy crape bonnet, and showing her pretty little delicate face, now much fresher and more roseate than when she arrived, though her wide-spreading black draperies gave a certain dignity to her slight figure, contrasting with the summer muslins of her two cousins; as did her hot-house plant fairness, with their firm, healthy glow of complexion; her tender shrinking grace, with their upright vigour. The gentleman of the party leant hack in a languid, easy posture, as though only half awake, and the whole was so quiet that Grace, missing the usual tumult of children, asked after them.

“The boys have gone to their favourite cove under the plantation. They have a fort there, and Hubert told me he was to be a hero, and Miss Williams a she-ro.”

“I would not encourage that description of sport,” said Rachel, willing to fight a battle in order to avert maternal anecdotes of boyish sayings.

“They like it so much,” said Fanny, “and they learn so much now that they act all the battles they read about.”

“That is what I object to,” said Rachel; “it is accustoming them to confound heroism with pugnacity.”

“No, but Rachel dear, they do quarrel and fight among themselves much less now that this is all in play and good humour,” pleaded Fanny.

“Yes, that may be, but you are cultivating the dangerous instinct, although for a moment giving it a better direction.”

“Dangerous? Oh, Alick! do you think it can be?” said Fanny, less easily borne down with a supporter beside her.

“According to the Peace Society,” he answered, with a quiet air of courteous deference; “perhaps you belong to it?”

“No, indeed,” answered Rachel, rather indignantly, “I think war the great purifier and ennobler of nations, when it is for a good and great cause; but I think education ought to protest against confounding mere love of combat with heroism.”

“Query, the true meaning of the word?” he said, leaning back.

“Heros, yes from the same root as the German herr,” readily responded Rachel, “meaning no more than lord and master; but there can be no doubt that the progress of ideas has linked with it a much nobler association.”

“Progress! What, since the heroes were half divine!”

“Half divine in the esteem of a people who thought brute courage godlike. To us the word maintains its semi-divinity, and it should be our effort to associate it only with that which veritably has the god-like stamp.”

“And that is—?”

“Doing more than one’s duty,” exclaimed Rachel, with a glistening eye.

“Very uncomfortable and superfluous, and not at all easy,” he said, half shutting his already heavy eyes.

“Easy, no, that’s the beauty and the glory—”

“Major Sherborne and Captain Lester in the drawing room, my lady,” announced Coombe, who had looked infinitely cheered since this military influx.

“You will come with me, Grace,” said Fanny, rising. “I dare say you had rather not, Rachel, and it would be a pity to disturb you, Alick.”

“Thank you; it would be decidedly more than my duty.”

“I am quite sorry to go, you are so amusing,” said Fanny, “but I suppose you will have settled about heroism by the time we come out again, and will tell me what the boys ought to play at.”

Rachel’s age was quite past the need of troubling herself at being left tete-a-tete with a mere lad like this; and, besides, it was an opportunity not to be neglected of giving a young carpet knight a lesson in true heroism. There was a pause after the other two had moved off. Rachel reflected for a few moments, and then, precipitated by the fear of her audience falling asleep, she exclaimed—

“No words have been more basely misused than hero and heroine. The one is the mere fighting animal whose strength or fortune have borne him through some more than ordinary danger, the other is only the subject of an adventure, perfectly irrespective of her conduct in it.”

“Bathos attends all high words,” he said, as she paused, chiefly to see whether he was awake, and not like her dumb playfellow of old.

“This is not their natural bathos but their misuse. They ought to be reserved for those who in any department have passed the limits to which the necessity of their position constrained them, and done acts of self-devotion for the good of others. I will give you an instance, and from your own profession, that you may see I am not prejudiced, besides, the hero of it is past praise or blame.”

Encouraged by seeing a little more of his eyes, she went on. “It was in the course of the siege of Delhi, a shell came into a tent where some sick and wounded were lying. There was one young officer among them who could move enough to have had a chance of escaping the explosion, but instead of that he took the shell up, its fuse burning as it was, and ran with it out of the tent, then hurled it to a distance. It exploded, and of course was his death, but the rest were saved, and I call that a deed of heroism far greater than mounting a breach or leading a forlorn hope.”

“Killed, you say?” inquired Mr. Keith, still in the same lethargic manner.

“Oh yes, mortally wounded: carried back to die among the men he had saved.”

“Jessie Cameron singing his dirge,” mumbled this provoking individual, with something about the form of his cheek that being taken by Rachel for a derisive smile, made her exclaim vehemently, “You do not mean to undervalue an action like that in comparison with mere animal pugnacity in an advance.”

“More than one’s duty was your test,” he said.

“And was not this more than duty? Ah! I see yours is a spirit of depreciation, and I can only say I pity you.”

He took the trouble to lift himself up and make a little bow of acknowledgment. Certainly he was worse than the Colonel; but Rachel, while mustering her powers for annihilating him, was annoyed by all the party in the drawing-room coming forth to join them, the other officers rallying young Keith upon his luxurious station, and making it evident that he was a proverb in the regiment for taking his ease. Chairs were brought out, and afternoon tea, and the callers sat down to wait for Colonel Keith to come in; Grace feeling obliged to stay to help Fanny entertain her visitors, and Rachel to protect her from their follies. One thing Grace began to perceive, that Lady Temple had in her former world been a person of much more consideration than she was made here, and seeing the polite and deferential manner of these officers to her, could only wonder at her gentle content and submission in meeting with no particular attention from anybody, and meekly allowing herself to be browbeaten by Rachel and lectured by her aunt.

A lecture was brewing up for her indeed. Poor Mrs. Curtis was very much concerned at the necessity, and only spurred up by a strong sense of duty to give a hint—the study of which hint cost her a whole sleepless night and a very weary Sunday morning. She decided that her best course would be to drive to Myrtlewood rather early on her way to church, and take up Fanny, gaining a previous conference with her alone, if possible. “Yes, my dear,” she said to Grace, “I must get it over before church, or it will make me so nervous all through the service.” And Grace, loving her mother best, durst not suggest what it might do to Fanny, hoping that the service might help her to digest the hint.

Mrs. Curtis’s regular habits were a good deal shocked to find Fanny still at the breakfast table. The children had indeed long finished, and were scattered about the room, one of them standing between Colonel Keith’s knees, repeating a hymn; but the younger guest was still in the midst of his meal, and owned in his usual cool manner that he was to blame for the lateness, there was no resisting the charms of no morning parade.

Her aunt’s appearance made Fanny imagine it much later than it really was, and she hurried off the children to be dressed, and proceeded herself to her room, Mrs. Curtis following, and by way of preliminary, asking when Colonel Keith was going to Ireland.

“Oh!” said Fanny, blushing most suspiciously under her secret, “he is not going to Ireland now.”

“Indeed! I quite understood he intended it.”

“Yes,” faltered Fanny, “but he found that he need not.”

“Indeed!” again ejaculated poor perplexed Mrs. Curtis; “but then, at least, he is going away soon.”

“He must go to Scotland by-and-by, but for the present he is going into lodgings. Do you know of any nice ones, dear aunt?”

“Well, I suppose you can’t help that; you know, my dear, it would never do for him to stay in this house.”

“I never thought of that,” said Fanny simply, the colour coming in a fresh glow.

“No, my dear, but you see you are very young and inexperienced. I do not say you have done anything the least amiss, or that you ever would mean it, only you will forgive your old aunt for putting you on your guard.”

Fanny kissed her, but with eyes full of tears, and cheeks burning, then her candour drew from her—“It was he that thought of getting a lodging. I am glad I did not persuade him not; but you know he always did live with us.”

“With us. Yes, my poor dear, that is the difference, and you see he feels it. But, indeed, my dear child, though he is a very good man, I dare say, and quite a gentleman all but his beard, you had better not encourage—You know people are so apt to make remarks.”

“I have no fear,” said Fanny, turning away her head, conscious of the impossibility of showing her aunt her mistake.

“Ah! my dear, you don’t guess how ready people are to talk; and you would not like—for your children’s sake, for your husband’s sake—that—that—”

“Pray, pray aunt,” cried Fanny, much pained, “indeed you don’t know. My husband had confidence in him more than in any one. He told him to take care of me and look after the boys. I couldn’t hold aloof from him without transgressing those wishes”—and the words were lost in a sob.

“My dear, indeed I did not mean to distress you. You know, I dare say—I mean—” hesitated poor Mrs. Curtis. “I know you must see a great deal of him. I only want you to take care—appearances are appearances, and if it was said you had all these young officers always coming about—”

“I don’t think they will come. It was only just to call, and they have known me so long. It is all out of respect to my father and Sir Stephen,” said Fanny, meekly as ever. “Indeed, I would not for the world do anything you did not like, dear aunt; but there can’t be any objection to my having Mrs. Hammond and the children to spend the day to-morrow.”

Mrs. Curtis did not like it; she had an idea that all military ladies were dashing and vulgar, but she could not say there was any objection, so she went on to the head of poor Fanny’s offending. “This young man, my dear, he seems to make himself very intimate.”

“Alick Keith? Oh aunt!” said Fanny, more surprised than by all the rest; “don’t you know about him? His father and mother were our greatest friends always; I used to play with him every day till I came to you. And then just as I married, poor Mrs. Keith died, and we had dear little Bessie with us till her father could send her home. And when poor Alick was so dreadfully wounded before Delhi, Sir Stephen sent him up in a litter to the hills for mamma and me to nurse. Mamma was so fond of him, she used to call him her son.”

“Yes, my dear, I dare say you have been very intimate; but you see you are very young; and his staying here—”

“I thought he would be so glad to come and be with the Colonel, who was his guardian and Bessie’s,” said Fanny, “and I have promised to have Bessie to stay with me, she was such a dear little thing—”

“Well, my dear, it may be a good thing for you to have a young lady with you, and if he is to come over, her presence will explain it. Understand me, my dear, I am not at all afraid of your—your doing anything foolish, only to get talked of is so dreadful in your situation, that you can’t be too careful.”

“Yes, yes, thank you, dear aunt,” murmured the drooping and subdued Fanny, aware how much the remonstrance must cost her aunt, and sure that she must be in fault in some way, if she could only see how. “Please, dear aunt, help me, for indeed I don’t know how to manage—tell me how to be civil and kind to my dear husband’s friends without—without—”

Her voice broke down, though she kept from tears as an unkindness to her aunt.

In very fact, little as she knew it, she could not have defended herself better than by this humble question, throwing the whole guidance of her conduct upon her aunt. If she had been affronted, Mrs. Curtis could have been displeased; but to be thus set to prescribe the right conduct, was at once mollifying and perplexing.

“Well, well, my dear child, we all know you wish to do right; you can judge best. I would not have you ungrateful or uncivil, only you know you are living very quietly, and intimacy—oh! my dear, I know your own feeling will direct you. Dear child! you have taken what I said so kindly. And now let me see that dear little girl.”

Rachel had not anticipated that the upshot of a remonstrance, even from her mother, would be that Fanny was to be directed by her own feeling!

That same feeling took Lady Temple to Mackarel Lane later in the day. She had told the Colonel her intention, and obtained Alison’s assurance that Ermine’s stay at Myrtlewood need not be impracticable, and armed with their consent, she made her timid tap at Miss Williams’ door, and showed her sweet face within it.

“May I come in? Your sister and your little niece are gone for a walk. I told them I would come! I did want to see you!”

“Thank you,” said Ermine, with a sweet smile, colouring cheek, yet grave eyes, and much taken by surprise at being seized by both hands, and kissed on each cheek.

“Yes, you must let me,” said her visitor, looking up with her pretty imploring gesture, “you know I have known him so long, and he has been so good to me!”

“Indeed it is very kind in you,” said Ermine, fully feeling the force of the plea expressed in the winning young face and gentle eyes full of tears.

“Oh, no, I could not help it. I am only so sorry we kept him away from you when you wanted him so much; but we did not know, and he was Sir Stephen’s right hand, and we none of us knew what to do without him; but if he had only told—”

“Thank you, oh, thank you!” said Ermine, “but indeed it was better for him to be away.”

Even her wish to console that pleading little widow could not make her say that his coming would not have been good for her. “It has been such a pleasure to hear he had so kind and happy a home all these years.”

“Oh, you cannot think how Sir Stephen loved and valued him. The one thing I always did wish was, that Conrade should grow up to be as much help and comfort to his father, and now he never can! But,” driving back a tear, “it was so hard that you should not have known how distinguished and useful and good he was all those years. Only now I shall have the pleasure of telling you,” and she smiled. She was quite a different being when free from the unsympathizing influence which, without her understanding it, had kept her from dwelling on her dearest associations.

“It will be a pleasure of pleasures,” said Ermine, eagerly.

“Then you will do me a favour, a very great favour,” said Lady Temple, laying hold of her hand again, “if you and your sister and niece will come and stay with me.” And as Ermine commenced her refusal, she went on in the same coaxing way, with a description of her plans for Ermine’s comfort, giving her two rooms on the ground floor, and assuring her of the absence of steps, the immunity from all teasing by the children, of the full consent of her sister, and the wishes of the Colonel, nay, when Ermine was still unpersuaded of the exceeding kindness it would be to herself. “You see I am terribly young, really,” she said, “though I have so many boys, and my aunt thinks it awkward for me to have so many officers calling, and I can’t keep them away because they are my father’s and Sir Stephen’s old friends; so please do come and make it all right!”

Ermine was driven so hard, and so entirely deprived of all excuse, that she had no alternative left but to come to the real motive.

“I ought not,” she said, “it is not good for him, so you must not press me, dear Lady Temple. You see it is best for him that nobody should ever know of what has been between us.”

“What! don’t you mean—?” exclaimed Fanny, breaking short off.

“I cannot!” said Ermine.

“But he would like it. He wishes it as much as ever.”

“I know he does,” said Ermine, with a troubled voice; “but you see that is because he did not know what a wretched remnant I am, and he never has had time to think about any one else.”

“Oh no, no.”

“And it would be very unfair of me to take advantage of that, and give him such a thing as I am.”

“Oh dear, but that is very sad!” cried Fanny, looking much startled.

“But I am sure you must see that it is right.”

“It may be right,” and out burst Fanny’s ready tears; “but it is very, very hard and disagreeable, if you don’t mind my saying so, when I know it is so good of you. And don’t you mean to let him even see you, when he has been constant so long?”

“No; I see no reason for denying myself that; indeed I believe it is better for him to grow used to me as I am, and be convinced of the impossibility.”

“Well then, why will you not come to me?”

“Do you not see, in all your kindness, that my coming to you would make every one know the terms between us, while no one remarks his just coming to me here as an old friend? And if he were ever to turn his mind to any one else—”

“He will never do that, I am sure.”

“There is no knowing. He has never been, in his own estimation, disengaged from me,” said Ermine; “his brother is bent on his marrying, and he ought to be perfectly free to do so, and not under the disadvantage that any report of this affair would be to him.”

“Well, I am sure he never will,” said Fanny, almost petulantly; “I know I shall hate her, that’s all.”

Ermine thought her own charity towards Mrs. Colin Keith much more dubious than Lady Temple’s, but she continued—

“At any rate you will be so very kind as not to let any one know of it. I am glad you do. I should not feel it right that you should not, but it is different with others.”

“Thank you. And if you will not come to me, you will let me come to you, won’t you? It will be so nice to come and talk him over with you. Perhaps I shall persuade you some of these days after all. Only I must go now, for I always give the children their tea on Sunday. But please let your dear little niece come up to-morrow and play with them; the little Hammonds will be there, she is just their age.”

Ermine felt obliged to grant this at least, though she was as doubtful of her shy Rose’s happiness as of the expedience of the intimacy; but there was no being ungracious to the gentle visitor, and no doubt Ermine felt rejoiced and elevated. She did not need fresh assurances of Colin’s constancy, but the affectionate sister-like congratulations of this loving, winning creature, showed how real and in earnest his intentions were. And then Lady Temple’s grateful esteem for him being, as it was, the reflection of her husband’s, was no small testimony to his merits.

“Pretty creature!” said Ermine to herself, “really if it did come to that, I could spare him to her better than to any one else. She has some notion how to value him.”

Alison and Rose had, in the meantime, been joined by Colonel Keith and the boys, whom Alick had early deserted in favour of a sunny sandy nook. The Colonel’s purpose was hard on poor Alison; it was to obtain her opinion of her sister’s decision, and the likelihood of persistence in it. It was not, perhaps, bad for either that they conversed under difficulties, the boys continually coming back to them from excursions on the rocks, and Rose holding her aunt’s hand all the time, but to be sure Rose had heard nearly all the Colonel’s affairs, and somehow mixed him up with Henry of Cranstoun.

Very tenderly towards Alison herself did Colin Keith speak. It was the first time they had ever been brought into close contact, and she had quite to learn to know him. She had regarded his return as probably a misfortune, but it was no longer possible to do so when she heard his warm and considerate way of speaking of her sister, and saw him only desirous of learning what was most for her real happiness. Nay, he even made a convert of Alison herself! She did believe that would Ermine but think it right to consent, she would be happy and safe in the care of one who knew so well how to love her. Terrible as the wrench would be to Alison herself, she thought he deserved her sister, and that she would be as happy with him as earth could make her. But she did not believe Ermine would ever accept him. She knew the strong, unvarying resolution by which her sister had always held to what she thought right, and did not conceive that it would waver. The acquiescence in his visits, and the undisguised exultant pleasure in his society, were evidences to Alison not of wavering or relenting, but of confidence in Ermine’s own sense of impossibility. She durst not give him any hope, though she owned that he merited success. “Did she think his visits bad for her sister?” he then asked in the unselfishness that pleaded so strongly for him.

“No, certainly not,” she answered eagerly, then made a little hesitation that made him ask further.

“My only fear,” she said candidly, “is, that if this is pressed much on her, and she has to struggle with you and herself too, it may hurt her health. Trouble tells not on her cheerfulness, but on her nerves.”

“Thank you,” he said, “I will refrain.”

Alison was much happier than she had been since the first apprehension of his return. The first pang at seeing Ermine’s heart another’s property had been subdued; the present state of affairs was indefinitely-prolonged, and she not only felt trust in Colin Keith’s consideration for her sister, but she knew that an act of oblivion was past on her perpetration of the injury. She was right. His original pitying repugnance to a mere unknown child could not be carried on to the grave, saddened woman devoted to her sister, and in the friendly brotherly tone of that interview, each understood the other. And when Alison came home and said, “I have been walking with Colin,” her look made Ermine very happy.

“And learning to know him.”

“Learning to sympathize with him, Ermine,” with steady eyes and voice. “You are hard on him.”

“Now, Ailie,” said Ermine, “once for all, he is not to set you on me, as he has done with Lady Temple. The more he persuades me, the better I know that to listen would be an abuse of his constancy. It would set him wrong with his brother, and, as dear Edward’s affairs stand, we have no right to carry the supposed disgrace into a family that would believe it, though he does not. If I were ever so well, I should not think it right to marry. I shall not shun the sight of him; it is delightful to me, and a less painful cure to him than sending him away would be. It is in the nature of things that he should cool into a friendly kindly feeling, and I shall try to bear it. Or if he does marry, it will be all right I suppose—” but her voice faltered, and she gave a sort of broken laugh.

“There,” she said, with a recovered flash of liveliness, “there’s my resolution, to do what I like more than anything in the world as long as I can; and when it is over I shall be helped to do without it!”

“I can’t believe—” broke out Alison.

“Not in your heart, but in your reason,” said Ermine, endeavouring to smile. “He will hover about here, and always be kind, loving, considerate; but a time will come that he will want the home happiness I cannot give. Then he will not wear out his affection on the impossible literary cripple, but begin over again, and be happy. And, Alison, if your love for me is of the sound, strong sort I know it is, you will help me through with it, and never say one word to make all this less easy and obvious to him.”

CHAPTER VII. WAITNG FOR ROSE

 
“Not envy, sure! for if you gave me
  Leave to take or to refuse
  In earnest, do you think I’d choose
  That sort of new love to enslave me?”
 

—R. BROWNING.

So, instead of going to Belfast, here was Colonel Keith actually taking a lodging and settling himself into it; nay, even going over to Avoncester on a horse-buying expedition, not merely for the Temples, but for himself.

This time Rachel did think herself sure of Miss Williams’ ear in peace, and came down on her with two fat manuscripts upon Human Reeds and Military Society, preluding, however, by bitter complaints of the “Traveller” for never having vouchsafed her an answer, nor having even restored “Curatocult,” though she had written three times, and sent a directed envelope and stamps for the purpose. The paper must be ruined by so discourteous an editor, indeed she had not been nearly so much interested as usual by the last few numbers. If only she could get her paper back, she should try the “Englishwoman’s Hobby-horse,” or some other paper of more progress than that “Traveller.” “Is it not very hard to feel one’s self shut out from the main stream of the work of the world when one’s heart is burning?”

“I think you overrate the satisfaction.”

“You can’t tell! You are contented with that sort of home peaceful sunshine that I know suffices many. Even intellectual as you are, you can’t tell what it is to feel power within, to strain at the leash, and see others in the race.”

“I was thinking whether you could not make an acceptable paper on the lace system, which you really know so thoroughly.”

“The fact is,” said Rachel, “it is much more difficult to describe from one’s own observation than from other sources.”

“But rather more original,” said Ermine, quite overcome by the naivete of the confession.

“I don’t see that,” said Rachel. “It is abstract reasoning from given facts that I aim at, as you will understand when you have heard my ‘Human Reeds,’ and my other—dear me, there’s your door bell. I thought that Colonel was gone for the day.”

“There are other people in the world besides the Colonel,” Ermine began to say, though she hardly felt as if there were, and at any rate a sense of rescue crossed her. The persons admitted took them equally by surprise, being Conrade Temple and Mr. Keith.

“I thought,” said Rachel, as she gave her unwilling hand to the latter, “that you would have been at Avoncester to-day.”

“I always get out of the way of horse-dealing. I know no greater bore,” he answered.

“Mamma sent me down,” Conrade was explaining; “Mr. Keith’s uncle found out that he knew Miss Williams—no, that’s not it, Miss Williams’ uncle found out that Mr. Keith preached a sermon, or something of that sort, so mamma sent me down to show him the way to call upon her; but I need not stay now, need I?”

“After that elegant introduction, and lucid explanation, I think you may be excused,” returned Alick Keith.

The boy shook Ermine’s hand with his soldierly grace, but rather spoilt the effect thereof by his aside, “I wanted to see the toad and the pictures our Miss Williams told me about, but I’ll come another time;” and the wink of his black eyes, and significant shrug of his shoulders at Rachel, were irresistible. They all laughed, even Rachel herself, as Ermine, seeing it would be worse to ignore the demonstration, said, “The elements of aunt and boy do not always work together.”

“No,” said Rachel; “I have never been forgiven for being the first person who tried to keep those boys in order.”

“And now,” said Ermine, turning to her other visitor, “perhaps I may discover which of us, or of our uncles, preached a sermon.”

“Mine, I suspect,” returned Mr. Keith. “Your sister and I made out at luncheon that you had known my uncle, Mr. Clare, of Bishopsworthy.”

“Mr. Clare! Oh yes,” cried Ermine eagerly, “he took the duty for one of our curates once for a long vacation. Did you ever hear him speak of Beauchamp?”

“Yes, often; and of Dr. Williams. He will be very much interested to hear of you.”

“It was a time I well remember,” said Ermine. “He was an Oxford tutor then, and I was about fourteen, just old enough to be delighted to hear clever talk. And his sermons were memorable; they were the first I ever listened to.”

“There are few sermons that it is not an infliction to listen to,” began Rachel, but she was not heard or noticed.

“I assure you they are even more striking now in his blindness.”

“Blindness! Indeed, I had not heard of that.”

Even Rachel listened with interest as the young officer explained that his uncle, whom both he and Miss Williams talked of as a man of note, of whom every one must have heard, had for the last four years been totally blind, but continued to be an active parish priest, visiting regularly, preaching, and taking a share in the service, which he knew by heart. He had, of course, a curate, who lived with him, and took very good care of him.

“No one else?” said Rachel. “I thought your sister lived at Bishopsworthy.”

“No, my sister lives, or has lived, at Little Worthy, the next parish, and as unlike it as possible. It has a railroad in it, and the cockneys have come down on it and ‘villafied’ it. My aunt, Mrs. Lacy Clare, has lived there ever since my sister has been with her; but now her last daughter is to be married, she wishes to give up housekeeping.”

“And your sister is coming to Lady Temple,” said Rachel, in her peculiar affirmative way of asking questions. “She will find it very dull here.”

“With all the advantages of Avoncester at hand?” inquired Alick, with a certain gleam under his flaxen eyelashes that convinced Ermine that he said it in mischief. But Rachel drew herself up gravely, and answered—

“In Lady Temple’s situation any such thing would be most inconsistent with good feeling.”

“Such as the cathedral?” calmly, not to say sleepily, inquired Alick, to the excessive diversion of Ermine, who saw that Rachel had never been laughed at in her life, and was utterly at a loss what to make of it.

“If you meant the cathedral,” she said, a little uncertainly, recollecting the tone in which Mr. Clare had just been spoken of, and thinking that perhaps Miss Keith might be a curatolatress, “I am afraid it is not of much benefit to people living at this distance, and there is not much to be said for the imitation here.”

“You will see what my sister says to it. She only wants training to be the main strength of the Bishopsworthy choir, and perhaps she may find it here.”

Rachel was evidently undecided whether chants or marches were Miss Keith’s passion, and, perhaps, which propensity would render the young lady the most distasteful to herself. Ermine thought it merciful to divert the attack by mentioning Mr. Clare’s love of music, and hoping his curate could gratify it. “No,” Mr. Keith said, “it was very unlucky that Mr. Lifford did not know one note from another; so that his vicar could not delude himself into hoping that his playing on his violin was anything but a nuisance to his companion, and in spite of all the curate’s persuasions, he only indulged himself therewith on rare occasions.” But as Ermine showed surprise at the retention of a companion devoid of this sixth sense, so valuable to the blind, he added—“No one would suit him so well. Mr. Lifford has been with him ever since his sight began to fail, and understands all his ways.”

“Yes, that makes a great difference.”

“And,” pursued the young man, coming to something like life as he talked of his uncle, “though he is not quite all that a companion might be, my uncle says there would be no keeping the living without him, and I do not believe there would, unless my uncle would have me instead.”

Ermine laughed and looked interested, not quite knowing what other answer to make. Rachel lifted up her eyebrows in amazement.

“Another advantage,” added Alick, who somehow seemed to accept Ermine as one of the family, “is, that he is no impediment to Bessie’s living there, for, poor man, he has a wife, but insane.”

“Then your sister will live there?” said Rachel. “What an enviable position, to have the control of means of doing good that always falls to the women of a clerical family.”

“Tell her so,” said the brother, with his odd, suppressed smile.

“What, she does not think so?”

“Now,” said Mr. Keith, leaning back, “on my answer depends whether Bessie enters this place with a character for chanting, croquet, or crochet. Which should you like worst, Miss Curtis?”

“I like evasions worst of all,” said Rachel, with a flash of something like playful spirit, though there was too much asperity in it.

“But you see, unfortunately, I don’t know,” said Alick Keith, slowly. “I have never been able to find out, nor she either. I don’t know what may be the effect of example,” he added. Ermine wondered whether he were in mischief or earnest, and suspected a little of both.

“I shall be very happy to show Miss Keith any of my ways,” said Rachel, with no doubts at all; “but she will find me terribly impeded here. When does she come?”

“Not for a month or six weeks, when the wedding will be over. It is high time she saw something of her respected guardian.”

“The Colonel?”

“Yes,” then to Ermine, “Every one turns to him with reliance and confidence. I believe no one in the army received so many last charges as he has done, or executes them more fully.”

“And,” said Ermine, feeling pleasure colour her cheek more deeply than was convenient, “you are relations.”

“So far away that only a Scotsman would acknowledge the cousinship.”

“But do not you call yourself Scotch?” said Ermine, who had for years thought it glorious to do so.

“My great grandfather came from Gowan-brae,” said Alick, “but our branch of the family has lived and died in the —th Highlanders for so many generations that we don’t know what a home is out of it. Our birthplaces—yes, and our graves—are in all parts of the world.”

“Were you ever in Scotland?”

“Never; and I dread nothing so much as being quartered there. Just imagine the trouble it would be to go over the pedigree of every Keith I met, and to dine with them all upon haggis and sheeps’ head!”

“There’s no place I want to sea as much as Scotland,” said Rachel.

“Oh, yes! young ladies always do.”

“It is not for a young lady reason,” said Rachel, bluntly. “I want to understand the principle of diffused education, as there practised. The only other places I should really care to see are the Grand Reformatory for the Destitute in Holland, and the Hospital for Cretins in Switzerland.”

“Scotch pedants, Dutch thieves, Swiss goitres—I will bear your tastes in mind,” said Mr. Keith, rising to take leave.

“Really,” said Rachel, when he was gone, “if he had not that silly military tone of joking, there might be something tolerable about him if he got into good hands. He seems to have some good notions about his sister. She must be just out of the school-room, at the very turn of life, and I will try to get her into my training and show her a little of the real beauty and usefulness of the career she has before her. How late he has stayed! I am afraid there is no time for the manuscripts.”

And though Ermine was too honest to say she was sorry, Rachel did not miss the regret.

Colonel Keith came the next day, and under his arm was a parcel, which was laid in little Rose’s arms, and, when unrolled, proved to contain a magnificent wax doll, no doubt long the object of unrequited attachment to many a little Avoncestrian, a creature of beauteous and unmeaning face, limpid eyes, hair that could be brushed, and all her members waxen, as far as could be seen below the provisional habiliment of pink paper that enveloped her. Little Rose’s complexion became crimson, and she did not utter a word, while her aunt, colouring almost as much, laughed and asked where were her thanks.

“Oh!” with a long gasp, “it can’t be for me!”

“Do you think it is for your aunt?” said the Colonel.

“Oh, thank you! But such a beautiful creature for me!” said Rose, with another gasp, quite oppressed. “Aunt Ermine, how shall I ever make her clothes nice enough?”

“We will see about that, my dear. Now take her into the verandah and introduce her to Violetta.”

“Yes;” then pausing and looking into the fixed eyes, “Aunt Ermine, I never saw such a beauty, except that one the little girl left behind on the bench on the esplanade, when Aunt Ailie said I should he coveting if I went on wishing Violetta was like her.”

“I remember,” said Ermine, “I have heard enough of that ‘ne plus ultra’ of doll! Indeed, Colin, you have given a great deal of pleasure, where the materials of pleasure are few. No one can guess the delight a doll is to a solitary imaginative child.”

“Thank you,” he said, smiling.

“I believe I shall enjoy it as much as Rose,” added Ermine, “both for play and as a study. Please turn my chair a little this way, I want to see the introduction to Violetta. Here comes the beauty, in Rose’s own cloak.”

Colonel Keith leant over the back of her chair and silently watched, but the scene was not quite what they expected. Violetta was sitting in her “slantingdicular” position on her chair placed on a bench, and her little mistress knelt down before her, took her in her arms, and began to hug her.

“Violetta, darling, you need not be afraid! There is a new beautiful creature come, and I shall call her Colinette, and we must be very kind to her, because Colonel Keith is so good, and knows your grandpapa; and to tell you a great secret, Violetta, that you must not tell Colinette or anybody, I think he is Aunt Ermine’s own true knight.”

“Hush!” whispered the Colonel, over Ermine’s head, as he perceived her about to speak.

“So you must be very good to her, Violetta, and you shall help me make her clothes; but you need not be afraid I ever could love any one half or one quarter as much as you, my own dear child, not if she were ten times as beautiful, and so come and show her to Augustus. She’ll never be like you, dear old darling.”

“It is a study,” said the Colonel, as Rose moved off with a doll in either hand; “a moral that you should take home.”

Ermine shook her head, but smiled, saying, “Tell me, does your young cousin know—”

“Alick Keith! Not from me, and Lady Temple is perfectly to be trusted; but I believe his father knew it was for no worse reason that I was made to exchange. But never mind, Ermine, he is a very good fellow, and what is the use of making a secret of what even Violetta knows?”

There was no debating the point, for her desire of secrecy was prompted by the resolution to leave him unbound, whereas his wish for publicity was with the purpose of binding himself, and Ermine was determined that discussion was above all to be avoided, and that she would, after the first explanation, keep the conversation upon other subjects. So she only answered with another reproving look and smile, and said, “And now I am going to make you useful. The editor of the ‘Traveller’ is travelling, and has left his work to me. I have been keeping some letters for him to answer in his own hand, because mine betrays womanhood; but I have just heard that he is to stay about six weeks more, and people must be put out of their misery before that. Will you copy a few for me? Here is some paper with the office stamp.”

“What an important woman you are, Ermine.”

“If you had been in England all this time, you would see how easy the step is into literary work; but you must not betray this for the ‘Traveller’s’ sake or Ailie’s.”

“Your writing is not very womanish,” said the colonel, as she gave him his task. “Or is this yours? It is not like that of those verses on Malvern hills that you copied out for me, the only thing you ever gave me.”

“I hope it is more to the purpose than it was then, and it has had to learn to write in all sorts of attitudes.”

“What’s this?” as he went on with the paper; “your manuscript entitled ‘Curatocult.’ Is that the word? I had taken it for the produce of Miss Curtis’s unassisted genius.”

“Have you heard her use it!” said Ermine, disconcerted, having by no means intended to betray Rachel.

“Oh yes! I heard her declaiming on Sunday about what she knows no more about than Conrade! A detestable, pragmatical, domineering girl! I am thankful that I advised Lady Temple only to take the house for a year. It was right she should see her relations, but she must not be tyrannized over.”

“I don’t believe she dislikes it.”

“She dislikes no one! She used to profess a liking for a huge Irishwoman, whose husband had risen from the ranks; the most tremendous woman I ever saw, except Miss Curtis.”

“You know they were brought up together like sisters.”

“All the worse, for she has the habit of passive submission. If it were the mother it would be all right, and I should be thankful to see her in good keeping, but the mother and sister go for nothing, and down comes this girl to battle every suggestion with principles picked up from every catchpenny periodical, things she does not half understand, and enunciates as if no one had even heard of them before.”

“I believe she seldom meets any one who has. I mean to whom they are matters of thought. I really do like her vigour and earnestness.”

“Don’t say so, Ermine! One reason why she is so intolerable to me is that she is a grotesque caricature of what you used to be.”

“You have hit it! I see why I always liked her, besides that it is pleasant to have any sort of visit, and a good scrimmage is refreshing; she is just what I should have been without papa and Edward to keep me down, and without the civilizing atmosphere at the park.”

“Never.”

“No, I was not her equal in energy and beneficence, and I was younger when you came. But I feel for her longing to be up and doing, and her puzzled chafing against constraint and conventionality, though it breaks out in very odd effervescences.”

“Extremely generous of you when you must be bored to death with her interminable talk.”

“You don’t appreciate the pleasure of variety! Besides, she really interests me, she is so full of vigorous crudities. I believe all that is unpleasing in her arises from her being considered as the clever woman of the family; having no man nearly connected enough to keep her in check, and living in society that does not fairly meet her. I want you to talk to her, and take her in hand.”

“Me! Thank you, Ermine! Why, I could not even stand her talking about you, though she has the one grace of valuing you.”

“Then you ought, in common gratitude, for there is no little greatness of soul in patiently coming down to Mackarel Lane to be snubbed by one’s cousin’s governess’s sister.”

“If you will come up to Myrtlewood, you don’t know what you may do.”

“No, you are to set no more people upon me, though Lady Temple’s eyes are very wistful.”

“I did not think you would have held out against her.”

“Not when I had against you? No, indeed, though I never did see anybody more winning than she is in that meek, submissive gentleness! Alison says she has cheered up and grown like another creature since your arrival.”

“And Alexander Keith’s. Yes, poor thing, we have brought something of her own old world, where she was a sort of little queen in her way. It is too much to ask me to have patience with these relations, Ermine. If you could see the change from the petted creature she was with her mother and husband, almost always the first lady in the place, and latterly with a colonial court of her own, and now, ordered about, advised, domineered over, made nobody of, and taking it as meekly and sweetly as if she were grateful for it! I verily believe she is! But she certainly ought to come away.”

“I am not so sure of that. It seems to me rather a dangerous responsibility to take her away from her own relations, unless there were any with equal claims.”

If she had done it on purpose, she could not have better freshly riveted his chains. That pensive simplicity, with the smile of heartfelt satisfaction at giving pleasure to anybody, were more and more engaging as her spirits recovered their tone, and the most unsatisfactory consideration which Rachel carried away that evening was that Alexander Keith being really somewhat the senior, if the improvement in Fanny’s spirits were really owing to his presence, the objection on the score of age would not hold. But, thought Rachel, Colonel Keith being her own, what united power they should have over Fanny. Pooh! she had by no means resigned herself to have him, though for Fanny’s sake it might be well, and was there not a foolish prejudice in favour of married women, that impeded the usefulness of single ones? However, if the stiff, dry old man approved of her for her fortune’s sake, that would be quite reason enough for repugnance.

The stiff old man was the pink of courtesy, and paid his respects in due order to his brother’s friends the next day, Colin attending in his old aide-de-camp fashion. It was curious to see them together. The old peer was not at all ungracious to his brother; indeed, Colin had been agreeably surprised by an amount of warmth and brotherliness that he had never experienced from him before, as if old age had brought a disposition to cling to the remnant of the once inconveniently large family, and make much of the last survivor, formerly an undesirable youngest favourite, looked on with jealous eyes and thwarted and retaliated on for former petting, as soon as the reins of government fell from the hands of the aged father. Now, the elder brother was kind almost to patronizing, though evidently persuaded that Colin was a gay careless youth, with no harm in him, but needing to be looked after; and as to the Cape, India, and Australia being a larger portion of the world than Gowanbrae, Edinburgh, and London, his lordship would be incredulous to the day of his death.

He paid his formal and gracious visits at Myrtlewood and the Homestead, and then supposed that his brother would wish him to call upon “these unfortunate ladies.” Colin certainly would have been vexed if he had openly slighted them; but Alison, whom the brothers overtook on their way into Mackarel Lane, did not think the colonel looked in the most felicitous frame of mind, and thought the most charitable construction might be that he shared her wishes that she could be a few minutes in advance; to secure that neither Rose’s sports nor Colinette’s toilette were very prominent.

All was right, however; Ermine’s taste for the fitness of things had trained Rose into keeping the little parlour never in stiff array, but also never in a state to be ashamed of, and she herself was sitting in the shade in the garden, whither, after the first introduction, Colin and Rose brought seats; and the call, on the whole, went off extremely well. Ermine naver let any one be condescending to her, and conducted the conversation with her usual graceful good breeding, while the colonel, with Rose on his knee, half talked to the child, half listened and watched.

As soon as he had deposited his brother at the hotel, he came back again, and in answer to Ermine’s “Well,” he demanded, “What she thought of his brother, and if he were what she expected?”

“Very much, only older and feebler. And did he communicate his views of Mackarel Lane? I saw him regarding, me as a species of mermaid or syren, evidently thinking it a great shame that I have not a burnt face. If he had only known about Rose!”

“The worst of it is that he wants me to go home with him, and I am afraid I must do so, for now that he and I are the last in the entail, there is an opportunity of making an arrangement about the property, for which he is very anxious.”

“Well, you know, I have long thought it would be very good for you.”

“And when I am there I shall have to visit every one in the family;” and he looked into her eyes to see if she would let them show concern, but she kept up their brave sparkle as she still said, “You know you ought.”

“Then you deliver me up to Keith’s tender mercies till—”

“Till you have done your duty—and forgiven him.”

“Remember, Ermine, I can’t spend a winter in Scotland. A cold always makes the ball remind me of its presence in my chest, and I was told that if I spent a winter at home, it must be on the Devonshire coast.”

“That ball is sufficient justification for ourselves, I allow,” she said, that one little word our making up for all that had gone before.

“And meantime you will write to me—about Rose’s education.”

“To be sure, or what would be the use of growing old?”

Alison felt savage all through this interview. That perfect understanding and the playful fiction about waiting for Rose left him a great deal too free. Ermine might almost be supposed to want to get rid of him, and even when he took leave she only remained for a few minutes leaning her cheek on her hand, and scarcely indulged in a sigh before asking to be wheeled into the house again, nor would she make any remark, save “It has been too bright a summer to last for ever. It would be very wrong to wish him to stay dangling here. Let what will happen, he is himself.”

It sounded far too like a deliberate resignation of him, and persuasion that if he went he would not return to be all he had been. However, the departure was not immediate, Lord Keith had taken a fancy to the place and scenery, and wished to see all the lions of the neighbourhood, so that there were various expeditions in the carriages or on horseback, in which he displayed his grand courtesy to Lady Temple, and Rachel enjoyed the colonel’s conversation, and would have enjoyed it still more if she had not been tracing a meaning in every attention that he paid her, and considering whether she was committing herself by receiving it. She was glad he was going away that she might have time to face the subject, and make up her mind, for she was convinced that the object of his journey was to make himself certain of his prospects. When he said that he should return for the winter, and that he had too much to leave at Avonmouth to stay long away from it, there must be a meaning in his words.

Ermine had one more visit from Lord Keith, and this time he came alone. He was in his most gracious and courteous mood, and sat talking of indifferent things for some time, of his aunt Lady Alison, and of Beauchamp in the old time, so that Ermine enjoyed the renewal of old associations and names belonging to a world unlike her present one. Then he came to Colin, his looks and his health, and his own desire to see him quit the army.

Ermine assented to his health being hardly fit for the army, and restrained the rising indignation as she recollected what a difference the best surgical advice might have made ten years ago.

And then, Lord Keith said, a man could hardly be expected to settle down without marrying. He wished earnestly to see his brother married, but, unfortunately, charges on his estate would prevent him from doing anything for him; and, in fact, he did not see any possibility of his—of his marrying, except a person with some means.

“I understand,” said Ermine, looking straight before her, and her colour mounting.

“I was sure that a person of your great good sense would do so,” said Lord Keith. “I assure you no one can be more sensible than myself of the extreme forbearance, discretion, and regard for my brother’s true welfare that has been shown here.”

Ermine bowed. He did not know that the vivid carmine that made her look so handsome was not caused by gratification at his praise, but by the struggle to brook it patiently.

“And now, knowing the influence over him that, most deservedly, you must always possess, I am induced to hope that, as his sincere friend, you will exert it in favour of the more prudent counsels.”

“I have no influence over his judgment,” said Ermine, a little proudly.

“I mean,” said Lord Keith, forced to much closer quarters, “you will excuse me for speaking thus openly—that in the state of the case, with so much depending on his making a satisfactory choice, I feel convinced, with every regret, that you will feel it to be for his true welfare—as indeed I infer that you have already endeavoured to show him—to make a new beginning, and to look on the past as past.”

There was something in the insinuating tone of this speech, increased as it was by the modulation of his Scottish voice, that irritated his hearer unspeakably, all the more because it was the very thing she had been doing.

“Colonel Keith must judge for himself,” she said, with a cold manner, but a burning heart.

“I—I understand,” said Lord Keith, “that you had most honourably, most consistently, made him aware that—that what once might have been desirable has unhappily become impossible.”

“Well,” said Ermine.

“And thus,” he proceeded, “that the sincere friendship with which you still regard him would prevent any encouragement to continue an attachment, unhappily now hopeless and obstructive to his prospects.”

Ermine’s eyes flashed at the dictation. “Lord Keith,” she said, “I have never sought your brother’s visits nor striven to prolong them; but if he finds pleasure in them after a life of disappointment and trouble, I cannot refuse nor discourage them.”

“I am aware,” said Lord Keith, rising as if to go, “that I have trespassed long on your time, and made a suggestion only warranted by the generosity with which you have hitherto acted.”

“One may be generous of one’s own, not of other people’s,” said Ermine.

He looked at her puzzled, then said, “Perhaps it will be best to speak categorically, Miss Williams. Let it be distinctly understood that my brother Colin, in paying his addresses to you, is necessarily without my sanction or future assistance.”

“It might not be necessary, my lord. Good morning;” and her courteous bow was an absolute dismissal.

But when Alison came home she found her more depressed than she had allowed herself to be for years, and on asking what was the matter was answered—

“Pride and perverseness, Ailie!” then, in reply to the eager exclamation, “I believe he was justified in all he said. But, Ailie, I have preached to Colin more than I had a right to do about forgiving his brother. I did not know how provoking he can be. I did not think it was still in me to fly out as I did!”

“He had no business to come here interfering and tormenting you,” said Alison, hotly.

“I dare say he thought he had! But one could not think of that when it came to threatening me with his giving no help to Colin if—There was no resisting telling him how little we cared!”

“You have not offended him so that he will keep Colin away!”

“The more he tried, the more Colin would come! No, I am not sorry for having offended him. I don’t mind him; but Ailie, how little one knows! All the angry and bitter feelings that I thought burnt out for ever when I lay waiting for death, are stirred up as hotly as they were long ago. The old self is here as strong as ever! Ailie, don’t tell Colin about this; but to-morrow is a saint’s day, and would you see Mr. Touchett, and try to arrange for me to go to the early service? I think then I might better be helped to conquer this.”

“But, Ermine, how can you? Eight o’clock, you know.”

“Yes, dearest, it will give you a great deal of trouble, but you never mind that, you know; and I am so much stronger than I used to be, that you need not fear. Besides, I want help so much! And it is the day Colin goes away!”

Alison obeyed, as she always obeyed her sister; and Lord Keith, taking his constitutional turn before breakfast on the esplanade, was met by what he so little expected to encounter that he had not time to get out of the way—a Bath chair with Alison walking on one side, his brother on the other. He bowed coldly, but Ermine held out her hand, and he was obliged to come near.

“I am glad to have met you,” she said.

“I am glad to see you out so early,” he answered, confused.

“This is an exception,” she said, smiling and really looking beautiful. “Good-bye, I have thought over what passed yesterday, and I believe we are more agreed than perhaps I gave you reason to think.”

There was a queenly air of dignified exchange of pardon in her manner of giving her hand and bending her head as she again said “Good-bye,” and signed to her driver to move on.

Lord Keith could only say “Good-bye;” then, looking after her, muttered, “After all, that is a remarkable woman.”

CHAPTER VIII. WOMAN’S MISSION DISCOVERED

 
“But O unseen for three long years,
  Dear was the garb of mountaineers
  To the fair maid of Lorn.”
 

—LORD OF THE ISLES.

“Only nerves,” said Alison Williams, whenever she was pushed hard as to why her sister continued unwell, and her own looks betrayed an anxiety that her words would not confess. Rachel, after a visit on the first day, was of the same opinion, and prescribed globules and enlivenment; but after a personal administration of the latter in the shape of a discussion of Lord Keith, she never called in the morning without hearing that Miss Williams was not up, nor in the afternoon without Alison’s meeting her, and being very sorry, but really she thought it better for her sister to be quite quiet.

In fact, Alison was not seriously uneasy about Ermine’s health, for these nervous attacks were not without precedent, as the revenge for all excitement of the sensitive mind upon the much-tried constitution. The reaction must pass off in time, and calm and patience would assist in restoring her; but the interview with Lord Keith had been a revelation to her that her affection was not the calm, chastened, mortified, almost dead thing of the past that she had tried to believe it; but a young, living, active feeling, as vivid, and as little able to brook interference as when the first harsh letter from Gowanbrae had fallen like a thunderbolt on the bright hopes of youth. She looked back at some verses that she had written, when first perceiving that life was to be her portion, where her own intended feelings were ascribed to a maiden who had taken the veil, believing her crusader slain, but who saw him return and lead a recluse life, with the light in her cell for his guiding star. She smiled sadly to find how far the imaginings of four and twenty transcended the powers of four and thirty; and how the heart that had deemed itself able to resign was chafed at the appearance of compulsion. She felt that the right was the same as ever; but it was an increased struggle to maintain the resolute abstinence from all that could bind Colin to her, at the moment when he was most likely to be detached, and it was a struggle rendered the more trying by the monotony of a life, scarcely varied except by the brainwork, which she was often obliged to relinquish.

Nothing, however, here assisted her so much as Lady Temple’s new pony carriage which, by Fanny’s desire, had been built low enough to permit of her being easily lifted into it. Inert, and almost afraid of change, Ermine was hard to persuade, but Alison, guessing at the benefit, was against her, and Fanny’s wistful eyes and caressing voice were not to be gainsaid; so she suffered herself to be placed on the broad easy seat, and driven about the lanes, enjoying most intensely the new scenes, the peeps of sea, the distant moors, the cottages with their glowing orchards, the sloping harvest fields, the variety that was an absolute healing to the worn spirits, and moreover, that quiet conversation with Lady Temple, often about the boys, but more often about Colonel Keith.

Not only Ermine, but other inhabitants of Avonmouth found the world more flat in his absence. Rachel’s interest was lessened in her readings after she had lost the pleasure of discussion, and she asked herself many times whether the tedium were indeed from love, or if it were simply from the absence of an agreeable companion. “I will try myself,” she said to herself, “if I am heartily interested in my occupations by the end of the next week, then I shall believe myself my own woman!”

But in going back to her occupations, she was more than ordinarily sensible of their unsatisfactoriness. One change had come over her in the last few months. She did not so much long for a wider field, as for power to do the few things within her reach more thoroughly. Her late discussions had, as it were, opened a second eye, that saw two sides of questions that she had hitherto thought had only one, and she was restless and undecided between them, longing for some impulse from within or without, and hoping, for her own dignity and consistency’s sake, that it was not only Colonel Keith’s presence which had rendered this summer the richest in her life.

A test was coming for her, she thought, in the person of Miss Keith. Judging by the brother, Rachel expected a tall fair dreamy blonde, requiring to be taught a true appreciation of life and its duties, and whether the training of this young girl would again afford her food for eagerness and energy, would, as she said to herself, show whether her affections were still her own. Moreover, there was the great duty of deciding whether the brother were worthy of Fanny!

It chanced to be convenient that Rachel should go to Avoncester on the day of the arrival, and call at the station for the traveller. She recollected how, five months previously, she had there greeted Fanny, and had seen the bearded apparition since regarded, with so much jealousy, and now with such a strangely mixed feeling. This being a far more indifferent errand, she did not go on the platform, but sat in the carriage reading the report of the Social Science Congress, until the travellers began to emerge, and Captain Keith (for he had had his promotion) came up to her with a young lady who looked by no means like his sister. She was somewhat tall, and in that matter alone realized Rachel’s anticipations, for she was black-eyed, and her dark hair was crepe and turned back from a face of the plump contour, and slightly rosy complexion that suggested the patches of the last century; as indeed Nature herself seemed to have thought when planting near the corner of the mouth a little brown mole, that added somehow to the piquancy of the face, not exactly pretty, but decidedly attractive under the little round hat, and in the point device, though simple and plainly coloured travelling dress.

“Will you allow me a seat?” asked Captain Keith, when he had disposed of his sister’s goods; and on Rachel’s assent, he placed himself on the back seat in his lazy manner.

“If you were good for anything, you would sit outside and smoke,” said his sister.

“If privacy is required for swearing an eternal friendship, I can go to sleep instead,” he returned, closing his eyes.

“Quite the reverse,” quoth Bessie Keith; “he has prepared me to hate you all, Miss Curtis.”

“On the mutual aversion principle,” murmured the brother.

“Don’t you flatter yourself! Have you found out, Miss Curtis, that it is the property of this species always to go by contraries?”

“To Miss Curtis I always appear in the meekest state of assent,” said Alick.

“Then I would not be Miss Curtis. How horribly you must differ!”

Rachel was absolutely silenced by this cross fire; something so unlike the small talk of her experience, that her mind could hardly propel itself into velocity enough to follow the rapid encounter of wits. However, having stirred up her lightest troops into marching order, she said, in a puzzled, doubtful way, “How has he prepared you to hate us?—By praising us?”

“Oh, no; that would have been too much on the surface. He knew the effect of that,” looking in his sleepy eyes for a twinkle of response. “No; his very reserve said, I am going to take her to ground too transcendent for her to walk on, but if I say one word, I shall never get her there at all. It was a deep refinement, you see, and he really meant it, but I was deeper,” and she shook her head at him.

“You are always trying which can go deepest?” said Rachel.

“It is a sweet fraternal sport,” returned Alick.

“Have you no brother?” asked Bessie.

“No.”

“Then you don’t know what detestable creatures they are,” but she looked so lovingly and saucily at her big brother, that Rachel, spite of herself, was absolutely fascinated by this novel form of endearment. An answer was spared her by Miss Keith’s rapture at the sight of some soldiers in the uniform of her father’s old regiment.

“Have a care, Bessie; Miss Curtis will despise you,” said her brother.

“Why should you think so?” exclaimed Rachel, not desirous of putting on a forbidding aspect to this bright creature.

“Have I not been withered by your scorn!”

“I—I—” Rachel was going to say something of her change of opinion with regard to military society, but a sudden consciousness set her cheeks in a flame and checked her tongue; while Bessie Keith, with ease and readiness, filled up the blank.

“What, Alick, you have brought the service into disrepute! I am ashamed of you!”

“Oh, no!” said Rachel, in spite of her intolerable blushes, feeling the necessity of delivering her confession, like a cannon-ball among skirmishers; “only we had been used to regard officers as necessarily empty and frivolous, and our recent experience has—has been otherwise.” Her period altogether failed her.

“There, Alick, is that the effect of your weight of wisdom? I shall be more impressed with it than ever. It has redeemed the character of your profession. Captain Keith and the army.”

“I am afraid I cannot flatter myself,” said Alick; and a sort of reflection of Rachel’s burning colour seemed to have lighted on his cheek, “its reputation has been in better hands.”

“O Colonel Colin! Depend upon it, he is not half as sage as you, Alick. Why, he is a dozen years older!—What, don’t you know, Miss Curtis, that the older people grow the less sage they get?”

“I hope not,” said Rachel.

“Do you! A contrary persuasion sustains me when I see people obnoxiously sage to their fellow-creatures.”

“Obnoxious sageness in youth is the token that there is stuff behind,” said Alick, with eagerness that set his sister laughing at him for fitting on the cap; but Rachel had a sort of odd dreamy perception that Bessie Keith had unconsciously described her (Rachel’s) own aspect, and that Alick was defending her, and she was silent and confused, and rather surprised at the assumption of the character by one who she thought could never even exert himself to be obnoxious. He evidently did not wish to dwell on the subject, but began to inquire after Avonmouth matters, and Rachel in return asked for Mr. Clare.

“Very well,” was the answer; “unfailing in spirits, every one agreed that he was the youngest man at the wedding.”

“Having outgrown his obnoxious sageness,” said Bessie.

“There is nothing he is so adroit at as guessing the fate of a croquet-ball by its sound.”

“Now Bessie,” exclaimed Alick.

“I have not transgressed, have I?” asked Bessie; and in the exclamations that followed, she said, “You see what want of confidence is. This brother of mine no sooner saw you in the carriage than he laid his commands on me not to ask after your croquet-ground all the way home, and the poor word cannot come out of my mouth without—”

“I only told you not to bore Miss Curtis with the eternal subject, as she would think you had no more brains than one of your mallets,” he said, somewhat energetically.

“And if we had begun to talk croquet, we should soon have driven him outside.”

“But suppose I could not talk it,” said Rachel, “and that we have no ground for it.”

“Why, then,”—and she affected to turn up her eyes,—“I can only aver that the coincidence of sentiments is no doubt the work of destiny.”

“Bessie!” exclaimed her brother.

“Poor old fellow! you had excuse enough, lying on the sofa to the tune of tap and click; but for a young lady in the advanced ranks of civilization to abstain is a mere marvel.”

“Surely it is a great waste of time,” said Rachel.

“Ah! when I have converted you, you will wonder what people did with themselves before the invention.”

“Woman’s mission discovered,” quoth her brother.

“Also man’s, unless he neglects it,” returned Miss Elizabeth; “I wonder, now, if you would play if Miss Curtis did.”

“Wisdom never pledges itself how it will act in hypothetical circumstances,” was the reply.

“Hypothetical,” syllabically repeated Bessie Keith; “did you teach him that word, Miss Curtis? Well, if I don’t bring about the hypothetical circumstances, you may call me hyperbolical.”

So they talked, Rachel in a state of bewilderment, whether she were teased or enchanted, and Alexander Keith’s quiet nonchalance not concealing that he was in some anxiety at his sister’s reckless talk, but, perhaps, he hardly estimated the effect of the gay, quaint manner that took all hearts by storm, and gave a frank careless grace to her nonsense. She grew graver and softer as she came nearer Avonmouth, and spoke tenderly of the kindness she had received at the time of her mother’s death at the Cape, when she had been brought to the general’s, and had there remained like a child of the house, till she had been sent home on the removal of the regiment to India.

“I remember,” she said, “Mrs. Curtis kept great order. In fact, between ourselves, she was rather a dragon; and Lady Temple, though she had one child then, seemed like my companion and playfellow. Dear little Lady Temple, I wonder if she is altered!”

“Not in the least,” returned both her companions at once, and she was quite ready to agree with them when the slender form and fair young face met her in the hall amid a cloud of eager boys. The meeting was a full renewal of the parting, warm and fond, and Bessie so comported herself on her introduction to the children, that they all became enamoured of her on the spot, and even Stephana relaxed her shyness on her behalf. That sunny gay good-nature could not be withstood, and Rachel, again sharing Fanny’s first dinner after an arrival, no longer sat apart despising the military atmosphere, but listening, not without amusement, to the account of the humours of the wedding, mingled with Alick Keith’s touches of satire.

“It was very stupid,” said Bessie, “of none of those girls to have Uncle George to marry them. My aunt fancied he would be nervous, but I know he did marry a couple when Mr. Lifford was away; I mean him to marry me, as I told them all.”

“You had better wait till you know whether he will,” observed Alick.

“Will? Oh, he is always pleased to feel he can do like other people,” returned Bessie, “and I’ll undertake to see that he puts the ring on the right—I mean the left finger. Because you’ll have to give me away, you know, Alick, so you can look after him.”

“You seem to have arranged the programme pretty thoroughly,” said Rachel.

“After four weddings at home, one can’t but lay by a little experience for the future,” returned Bessie; “and after all, Alick need not look as if it must be for oneself. He is quite welcome to profit by it, if he has the good taste to want my uncle to marry him.”

“Not unless I were very clear that he liked my choice,” said Alick, gravely.

“Oh, dear! Have you any doubts, or is that meant for a cut at poor innocent me, as if I could help people’s folly, or as if he was not gone to Rio Janeiro,” exclaimed Bessie, with a sort of meek simplicity and unconsciousness that totally removed all the unsatisfactoriness of the speech, and made even her brother smile while he looked annoyed; and Lady Temple quietly changed the conversation. Alick Keith was obliged to go away early, and the three ladies sat long in the garden outside the window, in the summer twilight, much relishing the frank-hearted way in which this engaging girl talked of herself and her difficulties to Fanny as to an old friend, and to Rachel as belonging to Fanny.

“I am afraid that I was very naughty,” she said, with a hand laid on Lady Temple’s, as if to win pardon; “but I never can resist plaguing that dear anxious brother of mine, and he did so dreadfully take to heart the absurdities of that little Charlie Carleton, as if any one with brains could think him good for anything but a croquet partner, that I could not help giving a little gentle titillation. I saw you did not like it, dear Lady Temple, and I am sorry for it.”

“I hope I did not vex you,” said Fanny, afraid of having been severe.

“Oh, no, indeed; a little check just makes one feel one is cared for,” and they kissed affectionately: “you see when one has a very wise brother, plaguing him is irresistible. How little Stephana will plague hers, in self-defence, with so many to keep her in order.”

“They all spoil her.”

“Ah, this is the golden age. See what it will be when they think themselves responsible for her! Dear Lady Temple, how could you send him home so old and so grave?”

“I am afraid we sent him home very ill. I never expected to see him so perfectly recovered. I could hardly believe my eyes when Colonel Keith brought him to the carriage not in the least lame.”

“Yes; and it was half against his will. He would have been almost glad to be a lay curate to Uncle George, only he knew if he was fit for service my father would have been vexed at his giving up his profession.”

“Then it was not his choice!” said Rachel.

“Oh, he was born a soldier, like all the rest of us, couldn’t help it. The —th is our home, and if he would only take my hint and marry, I could be with him there, now! Lady Temple, do pray send for all the eligible officers—I don’t know any of them now, except the two majors, and Alick suspects my designs, I believe, for he won’t tell me anything about them.”

“My dear!” said Fanny, bewildered, “how you talk; you know we are living a very quiet life here.”

“Oh, yes, so Alick has told me,” she said, with a pretty compunction in her tone; “you must be patient with me,” and she kissed Fanny’s fingers again and spoke in a gentler way. “I am used to be a great chatter-box, and nobody protested but Alick.”

CHAPTER IX. THE NEW SPORT

 
“‘Sire,’ I replied, ‘joys prove cloudlets,
   Men are the merest Ixions.’
   Here the King whistled aloud, ‘Let’s,
   Heigho, go look at our lions!’
   Such are the sorrowful chances
   If you talk fine to King Francis.”—
 

R. BROWNING.

The day after Rachel’s adventure with Don a card came into the drawing-room, and therewith a message that the gentleman had availed himself of Mrs. Curtis’s kind permission, and was sketching the Spinster’s Needles, two sharp points of red rock that stood out in the sea at the end of the peninsula, and were specially appropriated by Rachel and Grace.

The card was written, not engraved, the name “Rd. R. H. C. L. Mauleverer;” and a discussion ensued whether the first letters stood for Richard or for Reverend, and if he could be unconscionable enough to have five initials. The sisters had some business to transact at Villars’s, the Avonmouth deposit of literature and stationery, which was in the hands of a somewhat aspiring genius, who edited the weekly paper, and respected Miss Rachel Curtis in proportion to the number of periodicals she took in, and the abstruseness of the publications she inquired after. The paper in its Saturday’s dampness lay fresh on the counter, and glancing at the new arrivals, Grace had the desired opportunity of pointing to Mr. Mauleverer’s name, and asking when he had come. About a week since, said the obliging Mr. Villars, he appeared to be a gentleman of highly literary and artistic tastes, a philanthropist; indeed, Mr. Villars understood him to be a clerical gentlemen who had opinions—

“Oh, Rachel, I am very sorry,” said Grace.

“Sorry, what for?”

“Why, you and mamma seemed quite inclined to like him.”

“Well, and what have we heard?”

“Not much that is rational, certainly,” said Grace, smiling; “but we know what was meant.”

“Granting that we do, what is proved against him? No, I will not say proved, but alleged. He is one of the many who have thought for themselves upon the perplexing problems of faith and practice, and has been sincere, uncompromising, self-sacrificing, in avowing that his mind is still in that state of solution in which all earnest and original minds must be ere the crystallizing process sets in. Observe, Grace, I am not saying for an instant that he is in the right. All I do say is, that when depth of thought and candour have brought misfortune upon a man, it is ungenerous, therefore, to treat him as if he had the leprosy.”

“Indeed, Rachel, I think you have made more out of his opinions than I did.”

“I was only arguing on your construction of his opinions.”

“Take care—!” For they were at this moment reaching a gate of Myrtlewood, and the sound of hoofs came close behind them. They were those of the very handsome chestnut, ridden by Alexander Keith, who jumped off his horse with more alacrity than usual as they were opening the gate for him, and holding out his hand, eagerly said—

“Then I conclude there is nothing the matter?”

“Nothing at all,” said Grace. “What did you hear?”

“Only a little drowning, and a compound fracture or two,” said he, relapsing into his languid ease as he gave his bridle to a groom, and walked with them towards the house.

“There, how very annoying!” exclaimed Rachel, “though, of course, the smallest adventure does travel.”

“I may venture to hope that neither are you drowned, nor my sister’s leg broken, nor a celebrated professor and essayist ‘in a high fever wi’ pulling any of you out of the sea.’”

“There, Grace,” exclaimed Rachel; “I told you he was something distinguished.”

“My dear Rachel, if his celebrity be in proportion to the rest of the story.”

“Then there really was a rescue!” exclaimed Captain Keith, now with much more genuine anxiety; and Rachel recollecting her desire that the right version should have the precedence, quickly answered, “There was no danger, only Don slipped down into that curved cove where we walked one day with the boys. I went down after him, but he had broken his leg. I could not get up with him in my arms, and Bessie called some one to help me.”

“And why could not Bessie help you herself?”

“Oh! strangers can never climb on our slippery rocks as we can.”

“Moreover, it would have spoilt the predicament,” muttered the brother to himself; then turning round with a smile, “And is the child behaving herself?”

Grace and Rachel answered in a eager duet how she was charming every one, so helpful, so kind, so everything.

“Ah!” he said with real satisfaction, apparent in the eyes that were so pleasant when open wide enough to be visible; “I knew she always did better when I was not there.”

They were by this time entering the hall, which, in the confident fashion of the sea-side, stood open; and at the moment Fanny came tripping downstairs with her dress looped up, and a shady hat on her head, looking fearfully girlish, thought her cousins, though her attire was still rigidly black.

“Oh, I am so glad to see you; Don is so much better, Rachel, and Conrade wants to thank you. He went up yesterday, and was so sorry you were out. Might it not have been dreadful, Alick? I have been so wanting to tell you how very delightful that dear sister of yours is. All the boys are distracted about her. Come out please. She has been teaching the boys such a delightful game; so much nicer than cricket, for I can play with them.”

Alick and Rachel could not but exchange a glance, and at the same moment, emerging through the screen of shrubs on the lawn, Bessie Keith, Conrade, Francis, and Leoline, were seen each with a mallet in hand and a gay ball in readiness to be impelled through the hoops that beset the lawn.

“And you really are learning croquet!” exclaimed innocent Grace; “well, it makes a beautiful ground.”

“Croquet!” exclaimed poor Lady Temple, with startled eyes; “you don’t really mean that it is croquet! O Bessie, Bessie!”

“Ah! I didn’t mean you to have come so soon,” said the much amused Bessie, as she gave her hand in greeting. “I meant the prejudice to be first conquered. See, dear Lady Temple, I’m not ashamed; this whitey brown moustache is going to kiss me nevertheless and notwithstanding.”

And so it certainly did, and smiled into the bargain, while the boys came clamouring up, and after thanks for Don’s preservation, began loudly to beg mamma would come, they could not make up their sides without her, but mamma was distressed and unhappy.

“Not now, my dears—I must—I must. Indeed I did not know.”

“Now, Alick, I trust to your generosity,” said Bessie, finding that they must be pacified. “Coming, Con—Come, Grace, come and convince Lady Temple that the pastime is not too wicked for you.”

“Indeed, Alick,” Lady Temple was saying. “I am very sorry, I won’t allow it one moment if you think it is objectionable.”

“But I don’t,” said Alick, smiling. “Far from it. It is a capital game for you and your boys.”

“I thought—I thought you disapproved and could not bear it,” said Lady Temple, wondering and wistful.

“Can’t bear is not disapprove. Indeed,” seeing that gentle earnest alone could console her, “there is no harm in the game itself. It is a wholly personal distaste, arising from my having been bored with it when I was ill and out of spirits.”

“But is not there something about it in ‘Punch?’” she still asked, so anxiously, that it was impossible not to smile; but there was not a particle of that subdued mockery that was often so perplexing in him, as he replied, “Certainly there is about its abuse as an engine for flirtation, which, to tell you the truth, was what sickened me with the sight at Littleworthy; but that is not the line Con and Francie will take just yet. Why, my uncle is specially addicted to listening to croquet, and knows by the step and sound how each player is getting on, till he is quite an oracle in disputed hits.”

“So Bessie told me,” said Fanny, still feeling that she had been taken in and the brother unkindly used; “but I can’t think how she could, when you don’t like it.”

“Nobody is bound to respect foolish prejudices,” said Alick, still quite in earnest. “It would have been very absurd not to introduce it.”

“Come, Alick,” said Bessie, advancing, “have you absolved her, and may we begin? Would it not be a generous act of amnesty if all the present company united in a match?”

“Too many,” said Alick, “odd numbers. I shall go down and call on Miss Williams. May I come back, Lady Temple, and have a holiday from the mess?”

“I shall be very glad; only I am afraid there is no dinner.”

“So much the better. Only let me see you begin, or I shall never dare to express an opinion for the future.”

“Mamma, do pray, pray begin; the afternoon is wasting like nothing!” cried Conrade of the much-tried patience. “And Aunt Rachel,” he added, in his magnanimity, “you shall be my partner, and I’ll teach you.”

“Thank you, Conrade, but I can’t; I promised to be at home at four,” said Rachel, who had all this time been watching with curious interest which influence would prevail—whether Alick would play for Fanny’s sake, or Fanny abstain for Alick’s sake. She was best satisfied as it was, but she had still to parry Bessie Keith’s persuasive determination. Why would she go home? it certainly was to inspect the sketches of the landscape-painter. “You heard, Alick, of the interesting individual who acted the part of Rachel’s preserver,” she added.

The very force of Rachel’s resolution not to be put out of countenance served to cover her with the most uncomfortable blushes, all the more at the thought of her own unlucky exclamation. “I came here,” said Alick, coolly, “to assist in recovering the beloved remains from a watery grave;” and then, as Bessie insisted on hearing the Avoncester version, he gave it; while Grace added the intelligence that the hero was a clergyman, sinking the opinions, as too vague to be mentioned, even had not the company been too flighty for a subject she thought serious and painful. “And he is at this moment sketching the Spinster’s Needles!” said Bessie. “Well, I am consoled. With all your resolve to flatten down an adventure, fate is too strong for you. Something will come of it. Is not the very resolve that it shall not be an adventure a token?”

“If any one should wish to forget it, it is you, I think, Bessie,” said Alick. “Your admirable sagacity seems to have been at fault. I thought you prided yourself on your climbing.”

“Up a slippery perpendicular—”

“I know the place,” he gravely answered.

“Well,” exclaimed Bessie, recovering herself, “I am not a mermaid nor even a dear gazelle, and, in my humble opinion, there was far more grace in preventing heroism from being ‘unwept, unnoticed, and unsung,’ than in perilling my own neck, craning down and strangling the miserable beast, by pulling him up by the scrough of his neck! What an introduction would have been lost!”

“If you are going to play, Bessie,” said her brother, “it would be kind to take pity upon those boys.”

“One achievement is mine,” she said, dancing away backwards, her bright eyes beaming with saucy merriment, “the great Alexander has bidden me to croquet.”

“I am afraid,” said her brother, turning to Rachel as she departed, “that it was all her fault. Pray be patient with her, she has had many disadvantages.”

His incomprehensible irony had so often perplexed Rachel, that she did not know whether his serious apologetic tone were making game of her annoyance, and she answered not very graciously, “Oh, never mind, it did not signify.” And at the same time came another urgent entreaty from the boys that the two “aunts” would join the game, Conrade evidently considering that partnership with him would seal the forgiveness Aunt Rachel had won by the rescue of Don.

Grace readily yielded, but Rachel pleaded her engagement, and when the incorrigible Bessie declared that they perfectly understood that nothing could compete with the sketch of the Spinster’s Needles, she answered, “I promised to write a letter for my mother on business before post time. The Burnaby bargain,” she explained, to add further conviction.

“A business-like transaction indeed!” exclaimed Bessie, much diverted with the name.

“Only a bit of land in trust for apprenticing poor children,” said Rachel. “It was left by a Curtis many generations ago, in trust to the rector of the parish and the lord of the manor; and poor Mr. Linton is so entirely effete, that it is virtually in our hands. It is one of the vexations of my life that more good cannot be done with it, for the fees are too small for superior tradespeople, and we can only bind them to the misery of lacemaking. The system belongs to a worn-out state of things.”

The word system in Rachel’s mouth was quite sufficient to send Bessie to her croquet, and the poor boys were at length rewarded for their unusual patience. Their mother had been enduring almost as much as they did in her dislike to see them tantalised, and she now threw herself into the game with a relish that proved that as yet, at least, Conrade’s approbation was more to her than Captain Keith’s. It was very pretty to see her so pleased with her instructions, so eager about her own game, and yet so delighted with every hit of her boys; while Bessie was an admirable general, playing everybody’s game as well as her own, and with such life and spirit, such readiness and good nature, that a far duller sport would have been delicious under her management.

“Poor Alick,” said she, meeting him when he again strolled into the garden, while the boys were collecting the mallets and balls; “he did think he had one lawn in the world undefiled by those horrible hoops!” then as she met his smile of amusement and pardon, “but it was so exactly what they wanted here. It is so good for Lady Temple and her boys to have something they can do together.”

The pleased affectionate smile was gone.

“I object to nothing but its being for her good,” he said gravely.

“But now, does not it make her very happy, and suit her excellently?”

“May be so, but that is not the reason you introduced it.”

“You have a shocking habit of driving one up into corners, Alick, but it shall be purely, purely for my own selfish delight,” and she clasped her hands in so droll an affectation of remorse, that the muscles round his eyes quivered with diversion, though the hair on his lip veiled what the corners of his mouth were about; “if only,” she proceeded, “you won’t let it banish you. You must come over to take care of this wicked little sister, or who knows what may be the consequences.”

“I kept away partly because I was busy, and partly because I believe you are such a little ape as always to behave worse when you have the semblance of a keeper;” he said, with his arm fondly on her shoulder as they walked.

“And in the mean time fell out the adventure of the distinguished essayist.”

“I am afraid,” he returned, “that was a gratuitous piece of mischief, particularly annoying to so serious and thoughtful a person as Miss Rachel Curtis.”

“Jealousy?” exclaimed Bessie in an ecstatic tone. “You see what you lost by not trusting me, to behave myself under the provocation of your presence.”

“What! the pleasure of boxing your ears for a coward?”

“Of seizing the happy opening! I am very much afraid for you now, Alick,” she proceeded with mock gravity. “What hope can a poor Captain of Highlanders, even if he does happen to be a wounded hero or two, have against a distinguished essayist and landscape painter; if it were a common case indeed, but where Wisdom herself is concerned—”

“Military frivolity cannot hope,” returned Alick, with a shake of his head, and a calm matter-of-fact acquiescent tone.

“Ah, poor Alick,” pursued his sister, “you always were a discreet youth; but to be connected with such a union of learning, social science, and homeaopathy, soared beyond my utmost ambition. I suppose the wedding tour—supposing the happy event to take place—will be through a series of model schools and hospitals, ending in Hanwell.”

“No,” said Alick, equally coolly, “to the Dutch reformatory, and the Swiss cretin asylum.”

She was exceedingly tickled at his readiness, and proceeded in a pretended sentimental tone, “I am glad you have revealed the secrets of your breast. I saw there was a powerful attraction and that you were no longer your own, but my views were humbler. I thought the profound respect with which you breathed the name of Avonmouth, was due to the revival of the old predilection for our sweet little—”

“Hush, Bessie,” said her brother, roused for the first time into sternness, “this is more than nonsense. One word more of this, and you will cut me off from my greatest rest and pleasure.”

“From the lawn where croquet waits his approbation,” was on Bessie’s tongue, but she did not say it. There were moments when she stood in fear of her brother. He paused, and as if perceiving that his vehemence was in itself suspicious, added, “Remember, I never met her from seven years old till after her marriage. She has been the kindest of friends in right of our fathers’ old friendship. You know how her mother nursed me, and the sister she was to me. And Bessie, if your selfishness—I wish I could call it thoughtlessness—involves her innocent simplicity in any scrape, derogatory to what is becoming her situation, I shall find it very hard to forgive you, and harder still to forgive myself for letting you come here.”

Bessie pouted for a moment, but her sweetness and good humour were never away. “There, you have given your wicked little sister a screed,” she said, looking insinuatingly up at him. “Just as if I did not think her a darling, and would not for the world do anything to spoil her. Have not I been leading the most exemplary life, talking systems and visiting cottages with Rachel and playing with the boys, and singing with the clergyman; and here am I pounced on, as if I were come to be the serpent in this anti-croquet paradise.”

“Only a warning, Bessie.”

“You’ll be better now you have had it out. I’ve seen you suppressing it all this time, for fear of frightening me away.”

Every one knows how the afternoon croquet match on the Myrtlewood Lawn became an institution, though with some variation in the observers thereof, owing to the exigencies of calls, rides, and Ermine Williams’s drive, which Lady Temple took care should happen at least twice a week. The most constant votaries of the mallet and hoop were, of course, the two elder boys, the next pair being distant worshippers only now and then admitted by special favour, but the ardour of their mother even exceeded that of Bessie Keith, and it was always a disappointment to her if she were prevented from playing. Grace and Alison Williams frequently took their share with enjoyment, though not with the same devotion, and visitors, civil and military, also often did their part, but the most fervent of all these was Mr. Touchett. Ever since that call of his, when, after long impatience of his shy jerks of conversation and incapacity of taking leave, Miss Keith had exclaimed, “Did you ever play at croquet? do come, and we will teach you,” he had been its most assiduous student. The first instructions led to an appointment for more, one contest to another, and the curate was becoming almost as regular a croquet player as Conrade himself, not conversing much but sure to be in his place; and showing a dexterity and precision that always made Lady Temple pleased to have him on her side, and exclaim with delight at his hits as a public benefit to the cause, or thank him with real gratitude when he croqued her or one of her sons out of a difficulty.

Indeed that little lawn at Myrtlewood was a battle-field, of which Alison used to carry her sister amusing and characteristic sketches. The two leading players were Miss Keith and Mr. Touchett, who alone had any idea of tactics; but what she did by intuition, sleight of hand or experience, he effected by calculation and generalship, and even when Conrade claimed the command of his own side, the suggestions of the curate really guided the party. Conrade was a sort of Murat on the croquet field, bold, dashing, often making wonderful hits, but uncertain, and only gradually learning to act in combination. Alison was a sure-handed, skilful hitter, but did not aspire to leadership. Mamma tried to do whatever her boys commanded, and often did it by a sort of dainty dexterity, when her exultation, was a very pretty sight, nor was Grace’s lady-like skill contemptible, but having Francis as an ally was like giving a castle; and he was always placed on the other side from Conrade, as it was quite certain that he would do the very reverse of whatever his brother advised. Now and then invitations were given for Rose Williams to join the game, but her aunts never accepted them. Ermine had long ago made up her mind against intimacies between her niece and any pupils of Alison’s, sure that though starts of pleasure might result, they would be at the cost of ruffling, and, perhaps, perturbing the child’s even stream of happiness—even girl-friendships might have been of doubtful effect where circumstances were so unequal; but Lady Temple’s household of boys appeared to Ermine by no means a desirable sphere for her child to be either teased or courted in. Violetta, Colinette, and Augustus were safer comrades, and Rose continued to find them sufficient, varied with the rare delight of now and then sharing her aunt’s drive, and brightened by many a kind message in Colonel Keith’s letters to her aunt, nay, occasionally a small letter to herself, or an enclosure of some pretty photograph for her much-loved scrap book, or some article for Colinette’s use, sometimes even a new book! She was never forgotten in his letters, and Ermine smiled her strange pensive smile of amusement at his wooing of the unconscious Rose.

CHAPTER X. THE PHILANTHROPIST

 
“Scorn not the smallness of daily endeavour,
  Let the great meaning ennoble it ever,
  Droop not o’er efforts expended in vain,
  Work, as believing, that labour is gain.”
 

Queen Isabel, &c. by S. M.

The sturdy recusant against Myrtlewood croquet continued to be Rachel Curtis, and yet it was not a testimony against the game so much as real want of time for it. She was always full of occupation, even while her active mind craved for more definite and extended labour; and when she came upon the field of strategy, it was always either with some business before her, or else so late that the champions were only assisting their several lags to bring the battle to an end.

If there had been a will there would have been a way, but, as she said, she saw enough to perceive that proficiency could only be attained at the cost of much time and study, and she did not choose to be inferior and mediocre. Also, she found occupations open to her elsewhere that had long been closed or rendered unpleasant. Mr. Touchett had become wonderfully pacific and obliging of late, as if the lawn tactics absorbed his propensities for offence and defence, he really seemed obliged for one or two bits of parish work that she attended to; finding that between him and his staff of young ladies they were getting omitted. Somehow, too, an unaccountable blight was passing over the activity of those curatolatresses, as Rachel had been wont to call them; they were less frequently to be met with popping out of the schools and cottages, and Rachel, who knew well all the real poor, though refusing the bonds of a district, was continually detecting omissions which she more often supplied than reported. There was even a smaller sprinkling at the weekly services, and the odd thing was that the curate never seemed to remark or be distressed by the change, or if any one spoke of the thin congregation he would say, winter was the Avonmouth season, which was true enough, but the defaulters were mostly his own peculiar followers, the female youth of the professional and mercantile population.

Rachel did not trouble herself about the cause of all this, indeed she was too much occupied with the gradual gliding into somewhat of her original activity and importance in the field thus left open to her. None the less, however, did she feel the burden of life’s problems; the intercourse she had enjoyed with Colonel Keith had excited her for a time, but in the reaction, the old feelings returned painfully that the times were out of joint; the heavens above became obscure and misty as before, the dark places of the earth looked darker than ever, and those who lived at ease seemed to be employed either in sport upon the outside of the dungeon where the captives groaned, or in obstructing the way of those who would fain have plunged in to the rescue.

Her new acquaintance, Mr. Mauleverer, was an example of such prevention, which weighed much on her mind. He had been perfectly unobtrusive, but Mrs. Curtis meeting him on the second day of his sketching, had naturally looked at his drawing, and admired it so much that she brought her daughters to see it when in course of completion the next day. He had then asked whether there would be any objection to his making use of the sketches in the way of remunerative sale. Mrs. Curtis looked rather taken aback, it hardly agreed with her exclusive notions of privacy, and he at once apologized with such humility that she was touched, and felt herself doing him a wrong, whilst Rachel was angry at her scruple, yet uncomfortably thought of “that landscape painter,” then said in her decided way, “you did not mean to object, mother?”

“Oh, not for a moment, pray don’t think of it,” returned Mr. Mauleverer, in haste. “I would not think of the intrusion. It is only that these poor trifles are steps to one of the few means by which I can still hope to do even a little for my fellow creatures; the greatest solace that remains to me.”

“My mother did not mean to prevent anything,” said Rachel eagerly; “least of all any means of doing good.”

“Indeed, I cannot but be aware that Miss Curtis is the last individual who would do so, except indeed by the good works she herself absorbs.”

“You are too good, sir,” returned Mrs. Curtis; “I am sure I did not mean to object to anything for good. If it is for a charity, I am sure some of our friends would be very glad to take some sketches of our scenery; they have been begging me this long time to have it photographed. I should like to have that drawing myself, it would please your aunt so much, my dear, if we sent it to her.”

Mr. Mauleverer bowed, but Rachel was not sure whether he had not been insulted.

Next day he left at the door the drawing handsomely mounted, and looking so grand and meritorious that poor Mrs. Curtis became much troubled in mind whether its proper price might not be five or even ten guineas, instead of the one for which she had mentally bargained, or if this might not be the beginning of a series; “which would be quite another thing, you know, my dear.”

Rachel offered to go and talk to the artist, who was sketching in full view from the windows, and find out what value he set upon it.

“Perhaps, but I don’t know, my dear. Won’t it be odd? Had you not better wait till Grace comes in, or till I can come down with you?”

“No need at all, mother, I can do it much better alone, and at my age—”

So Rachel took a parasol and stepped out, looked at the outline newly produced, thanked and praised the drawing that had been received, adding that her mother would be glad to know what price Mr. Mauleverer set upon it. She was met by a profession of ignorance of its value, and of readiness to be contented with whatever might be conferred upon his project; the one way in which he still hoped to be of service to his fellow creatures, the one longing of his life.

“Ah!” said Rachel, greatly delighted with this congenial spirit, and as usual preferring the affirmative to the interrogative. “I heard you had been interesting yourself about Mrs Kelland’s lace school. What a miserable system it is!”

“My inquiries have betrayed me then? It is indeed a trying spectacle.”

“And to be helpless to alleviate it,” continued Rachel. “Over work, low prices and middle-men perfectly batten on the lives of our poor girls here. I have thought it over again and again, and it is a constant burden on my mind.”

“Yes, indeed. The effects of modern civilization are a constant burden on the compassion of every highly constituted nature.”

“The only means that seems to me likely to mitigate the evil,” continued Rachel, charmed at having the most patient listener who had ever fallen to her lot, “would be to commence an establishment where some fresh trades might be taught, so as to lessen the glut of the market, and to remove the workers that are forced to undersell one another, and thus oblige the buyers to give a fairly remunerative price.”

“Precisely my own views. To commence an establishment that would drain off the superfluous labour, and relieve the oppressed, raising the whole tone of female employment.”

“And this is the project you meant?”

“And in which, for the first time, I begin to hope for success, if it can only receive the patronage of some person of influence.”

“Oh, anything I can do!” exclaimed Rachel, infinitely rejoiced. “It is the very thing I have been longing for for years. What, you would form a sort of industrial school, where the children could be taught some remunerative labour, and it might soon be almost self-supporting?”

“Exactly; the first establishment is the difficulty, for which I have been endeavouring to put a few mites together.”

“Every one would subscribe for such a purpose!” exclaimed Rachel.

“You speak from your own generous nature, Miss Curtis; but the world would require patronesses to recommend.”

“There could be no difficulty about that!” exclaimed Rachel; but at this moment she saw the Myrtlewood pony carriage coming to the door, and remembering that she had undertaken to drive out Ermine Williams in it, she was obliged to break off the conversation, with an eager entreaty that Mr. Mauleverer would draw up an account of his plan, and bring it to her the next day, when she would give her opinion on it, and consider of the means.

“My dear,” said her mother, on her return, “how long you have been; and what am I to give for the water-colour?”

“Oh, I forgot all about the water-colour; but never mind what we give, mamma, it is all to go to an asylum for educating poor girls, and giving them some resource beyond that weary lace-making—the very thing I have always longed for. He is coming to settle it all with me to-morrow, and then we will arrange what to give.”

“Indeed, my dear, I hope it will be something well managed. I think if it were not for those middle-men, lace-making would not be so bad. But you must not keep poor Miss Williams waiting.”

Ermine had never seen Rachael in such high spirits as when they set out through the network of lanes, describing her own exceeding delight in the door thus opening for the relief of the suffering over which she had long grieved, and launching out into the details of the future good that was to be achieved. At last Ermine asked what Rachel knew of the proposer.

“Captain Keith, heard he was a distinguished professor and essayist.”

“Then I wonder we have not heard his name,” said Ermine. “It is a remarkable one; one might look in the ‘Clergy List’ at Villars’s.”

“Villars called him a clerical gentleman,” mused Rachel.

“Then you would be sure to be able to find out something about him before committing yourself.”

“I can see what he is,” said Rachel, “a very sensible, accomplished man, and a great deal more; not exactly a finished gentleman. But that is no objection to his doing a great work.”

“None at all,” said Ermine, smiling; “but please forgive me. We have suffered so much from trusting too implicitly, that I never can think it safe to be satisfied without thorough knowledge of a person’s antecedents.”

“Of course,” said Rachel, “I shall do nothing without inquiry. I will find out all about him, but I cannot see any opening for distrust. Schemes of charity are not compatible with self-seeking and dishonesty.”

“But did I not hear something about opinions?”

“Oh, as to that, it was only Villars. Besides, you are a clergyman’s daughter, and your views have a different colouring from mine. Modern research has introduced so many variations of thought, that no good work would be done at all if we required of our fellow-labourers perfect similarity of speculative belief.”

“Yet suppose he undertook to teach others?”

“The simple outlines of universal doctrine and morality which are required by poor children are not affected by the variations to which investigation conducts minds of more scope.”

“I am afraid such variations may often reach the foundation.”

“Now, Miss Williams, I am sure you must often have heard it observed how when it comes to real practical simple teaching of uninstructed people, villagers or may be heathens, the details of party difference melt away, and people find themselves in accordance.”

“True, but there I think party differences in the Church, and even the variations between Christian sects are concerned, both being different ways of viewing the same truth. These may, like the knights in the old fable, find that both were right about the shield, both have the same foundation. But where the foundation is not the same, the results of the teaching will not agree.”

“Every one agrees as to morality.”

“Yes, but do all give a motive sufficient to enforce the self-denial that morality entails? Nay, do they show the way to the spiritual strength needful to the very power of being moral?”

“That is begging the question. The full argument is whether the full church, say Christian system, exactly as you, as we hold it, is needful to the perfection of moral observance. I don’t say whether I assent, but the present question is whether the child’s present belief and practice need be affected by its teacher’s dogmatic or undogmatic system.”

“The system for life is generally formed in childhood. Harvest depends on seed time.”

“And after all,” added Rachel, “we have no notion whether this poor man be not precisely of your own opinions, and from their fruits I am sure you ought to claim them.”

“Their blossoms if you please,” laughed Ermine. “We have not seen their fruits yet.”

“And I shall take care the fruits are not nipped with the blight of suspicion,” said Rachel, good-humouredly.

However, after driving Ermine home, and seeing her lifted out and carried into the house by her sister, Rachel did send the carriage back by the groom and betake herself to Villars’s shop, where she asked for a sight of the “Clergy List.” The name of Mauleverer caught her eye, but only one instance of it appeared, and he was a cathedral canon, his presentation dated in 1832, the time at which, judging from appearances, the object of her search might have been born; besides, he rejoiced in the simple name of Thomas. But Rachel’s search was brought to an abrupt conclusion by the issue of Mr. Mauleverer himself from the reading-room within the shop. He bowed and passed by, but Rachel for the life of her could not hinder a burning colour from spreading to the very tips of her ears; so certain did she feel that she was insulting him by her researches, and that he perceived them. She felt absolutely ashamed to see him the next day, and even in her dreams was revolving speeches that might prove that though cautious and clear-sighted, she was neither suspicious nor narrow-minded.

He came when some morning visitors were at the Homestead, prosy neighbours whose calls were always a penance to Rachel, and the butler, either from the manner of the inquiry or not regarding him as drawing-room company, put him into the dining-room and announced, “Mr. Mauleverer to see Miss Rachel.” Up jumped Miss Rachel, with “You’ll excuse me, it is on business;” and went off highly satisfied that “the mother” was hindered by politeness from making any attempt at chaperonage either personally or through Grace, so unnecessary at her age, for since Colonel Keith’s departure, Rachel’s age had begun to grow on her again. She held out her hand as if to atone for her search, but she found at once that it had been remarked.

“You were doing me the honour to look for my name in the ‘Clergy List,’ Miss Curtis,” he said.

“Yes, one is apt—,” faltered Rachel, decidedly out of countenance.

“I quite appreciate the motive. It is exactly in accord with Miss Curtis’s prudence and good sense. I should wish to be fully explicit before any arrangements are made. I am unhappily not in orders, Miss Curtis. I know your liberality will regard the cause with leniency.”

“Indeed,” said Rachel, sufficiently restored to recall one of her premeditated reassurances. “I can fully appreciate any reluctance to become stringently bound to dogmatic enunciations, before the full powers of the intellect have examined into them.”

“You have expressed it exactly, Miss Curtis. Without denying an iota of them, I may be allowed to regret that our formularies are too technical for a thoughtful mind in the present age.”

“Many have found it so,” returned Rachel, thoughtfully, “who only needed patience to permit their convictions to ripen. Then I understand you, it was a rejection on negative not positive grounds?”

“Precisely; I do not murmur, but it has been the blight of my life.”

“And yet,” said Rachel, consolingly, “it may enable you to work with more freedom.”

“Since you encourage me to believe so, Miss Curtis, I will hope it, but I have met with much suspicion.”

“I can well believe it,” said Rachel; “even some of the most superior persons refuse to lay their hands to any task unless they are certified of the religious opinions of their coadjutors, which seems to me like a mason’s refusing to work at a wall with a man who liked Greek architecture when he preferred Gothic!”

If Rachel had been talking to Ermine she might have been asked whether the dissimilarity might not be in the foundations, or in the tempering of the mortar, but Mr. Mauleverer only commended her liberal spirit, and she thought it high time to turn from this subject to the immediate one in hand. He had wished to discuss the plan with her, he said, before drawing it up, and in effect she had cogitated so much upon it that her ideas came forth with more than her usual fluency and sententiousness. The scheme was that an asylum should be opened under the superintendence of Mr. Mauleverer himself, in which young girls might be placed to learn handicrafts that might secure their livelihood, in especial, perhaps, wood engraving and printing. It might even be possible, in time, to render the whole self-supporting, suppose by the publication of a little illustrated periodical, the materials for which might be supplied by those interested in the institution.

If anything could add to Rachel’s delight it was this last proposition. In all truth and candour, the relief to the victims to lace-making was her primary object, far before all besides, and the longing desire of her heart for years seemed about to be fulfilled; but a domestic magazine, an outlet to all the essays on Curatocult, on Helplessness, on Female Folly, and Female Rights, was a development of the plan beyond her wildest hopes! No dull editor to hamper, reject or curtail! She should be as happy, and as well able to expand as the Invalid herself.

Mr. Mauleverer had brought a large packet of letters with him, in all manner of hands. There were some testimonials from a German university, and letters from German professors in a compromise between English and German hand, looking impossible to read, also the neat writing and thin wavy water-marked paper of American professors and philanthropists in high commendation of his ability and his scheme, and a few others that he said were of too private a nature to do more than show Miss Curtis in confidence, but on which she recognised some distinguished names of persons interested in Social Science. She would not wound his feelings by too close an inquiry, but she felt armed at all points against cavillers. Really, she began to think, it was a great pity Colonel Keith should cross her path again, she had so much on her hands that it would be a public misfortune if any one man’s private domestic love should monopolize her; and yet, such was this foolish world, the Honourable Mrs. Colin Keith would be a more esteemed lady patroness than Miss Rachel Curtis, though the Curtises had been lords of the soil for many generations, and Colonel Keith was a mere soldier of fortune.

One disappointment Rachel had, namely, that Mr. Mauleverer announced that he was about to return to St. Herbert’s, the very large and fashionable watering-place in the next indentation of the coast. He had duties there, he said, and he had only come to Avonmouth for a brief holiday, a holiday that was to result in such happy effects. He lived in an exceedingly retired way, he said, being desirous of saving his small private means for his great object, and he gave Rachel his address at the chief printseller’s of the place, where his letters were left for him, while he made excursions from time to time to study the picturesque, and to give lectures on behalf of philanthropical subjects. He offered such a lecture at Avonmouth, but Mr. Touchett would not lend either school-room, and space was nowhere else available. In the meantime a prospectus was drawn up, which Rachel undertook to get printed at Villars’s, and to send about to all her friends, since a subscription in hand was the first desideratum.

Never since she had grown up to be a thinking woman had Rachel been so happy as with this outlet to her activity and powers of managing, “the good time coming at last.” Eagerly she claimed sympathy, names and subscriptions. Her own immediate circle was always easily under her influence, and Lady Temple, and Mrs. Curtis supplied the dignity of lady patronesses; Bessie Keith was immensely diverted at the development of “that landscape painter,” and took every opportunity of impressing on Rachel that all was the result of her summons to the rescue. Ermine wished Rachel had found out who was the bishop’s chaplain who rejected him, but allowed that it would have been an awkward question to ask, and also she wondered if he were a university man; but Mr. Touchett had been at a Hall, and never knew anybody, besides being so firmly convinced that Mr. Mauleverer was a pestiferous heretic, that no one, except Lady Temple, could have obtained a patient answer from him on that head—and even with her he went the length of a regret that she had given the sanction of her name to an undertaking by a person of whose history and principles nothing satisfactory was known. “Oh!” said Fanny, with her sweet look of asking pardon, “I am so sorry you think so; Rachel wished it so much, and it seems such a nice thing for the poor children.”

“Indeed,” said Mr. Touchett, well nigh disarmed by the look, “I am quite sensible of the kindness of all you do, I only ventured to wish there had been a little more delay, that we were more certain about this person.”

“When Colonel Keith comes back he will find out all about him, I am sure,” said Fanny, and Mr. Touchett, to whom seemed to have been transferred Rachel’s dislike to the constant quoting of Colonel Keith, said no more.

The immediate neighbourhood did not very readily respond to the appeal to it in behalf of the lace-makers. People who did not look into the circumstances of their neighbours thought lace furnished a good trade, and by no means wished to enhance its price; people who did care for the poor had charities of their own, nor was Rachel Curtis popular enough to obtain support for her own sake; a few five-pound notes, and a scanty supply of guineas and half-guineas from people who were ready at any cost to buy off her vehement eyes and voice was all she could obtain, and with a subscription of twenty pounds each from her mother, Lady Temple, and Grace, and all that she could scrape together of her own, hardly seemed sufficient to meet the first expenses, and how would the future be provided for? She calculated how much she could spare out of her yearly income, and actually, to the great horror of her mother and the coachman, sold her horse.

Bessie Keith was the purchaser. It was an expense that she could quite afford, for she and her brother had been left very well off by their father—a prudent man, who, having been a widower during his Indian service, had been able to live inexpensively, besides having had a large amount of prize money. She had always had her own horse at Littleworthy, and now when Rachel was one day lamenting to her the difficulty of raising money for the Industrial Asylum, and declaring that she would part with her horse if she was sure of its falling into good hands, Bessie volunteered to buy it, it was exactly what would suit her, and she should delight in it as a reminder of dear Avonmouth. It was a pang, Rachel loved the pretty spirited creature, and thought of her rides with the Colonel; but how weigh the pleasure of riding against the welfare of one of those hard-worked, half-stifled little girls, and besides, it might be best to have done with Colonel Keith now that her mission had come to find her. So the coachman set a purposely unreasonable value upon poor Meg, and Rachel reduced the sum to what had been given for it three years before; but Bessie begged her brother to look at the animal and give his opinion.

“Is that what you are after?” he exclaimed.

“Indeed, Alick, I thought it was the greatest kindness I could do her; she is so very eager about this plan, and so anxious to find poor Meg a good home.”

“Purely to oblige her?”

“Of course, Alick, it was much more convenient to her than if she had had to send about to horse-dealers or to advertise. I doubt if she could have done it at all; and it is for her asylum, you know.”

“Then give the coachman’s sixty guineas at once.”

“Ah, Alick, that’s your infatuation!” and she put on a droll gesture of pity. “But excuse me, where would be the fine edge of delicacy in giving a manifestly fancy price? Come and look at her.”

“I never meddle with horse-dealing.”

“Stuff, as if you weren’t the best-mounted man in the regiment. I shall send a note to Captain Sykes if you won’t; he knows how to drive a bargain.”

“And give a fancy price the other way. Well, Bessie, on one condition I’ll go, and that is, that Meg goes to Bishopsworthy the day she is yours. I won’t have her eating Lady Temple’s corn, and giving her servants trouble.”

“As if I should think of such a thing.”

Captain Keith’s estimate of the value of the steed precisely agreed with Rachel’s demand of the original price. Bessie laughed, and said there was collusion.

“Now seriously, Alick, do you think her worth so much? Isn’t it a pity, when you know what a humbug poor Rachel is going to give it to?” and she looked half comical, half saucy.

“If she were going to throw it into the sea, I don’t see what difference that would make.”

“Ah! you are far too much interested. Nothing belonging to her can bear a vulgar price.”

“Nothing belonging to me is to gain profit by her self-denial,” said Alick, gravely. “You cannot do less than give her what she gave for it, if you enter on the transaction at all.”

“You mean that it would look shabby. You see we womankind never quite know the code of the world on such matters,” she said, candidly.

“There is something that makes codes unnecessary, Bessie,” he said.

“Ah! I can make allowances. It is a cruel stroke. I don’t wonder you can’t bear to see any one else on her palfrey; above all as a sacrifice to the landscape painter.”

“Then spare my feelings, and send the mare to Bishopsworthy,” said Alick, as usual too careless of the imputation to take the trouble to rebut it or to be disconcerted.

Bessie was much tickled at his acceptance, and laughed heartily.

“To be sure,” she said, “it is past concealment now. You must have been very far gone, indeed, to have been taken in to suppose me to be making capital of her ‘charitable purposes.’”

“Your acting is too like life,” he said, not yet induced to laugh, and she rattled on with her droll, sham sentimental air. “Is it the long words, Alick, or is it ‘the great eyes, my dear;’ or is it—oh, yes, I know what is the great attraction—that the Homestead doesn’t possess a single spot where one could play at croquet!”

“Quite irresistible!” replied Alick, and Bessie retreated from the colloquy still not laughing at but with him; that is, if the odd, quaint, inward mirth which only visibly lengthened his sleepy eyes, could be called a laugh.

Next time Captain Keith rode to Avonmouth he met the riding party on the road, Bessie upon Rachel’s mare, and it appeared that Lady Temple had considered it so dreadful that Meg should not share her hospitality, that it had been quite impossible to send her away. “So, Alick, your feelings must endure the dreadful spectacle.”

Meanwhile Rachel was hard at work with the subscribers to the “Christian Knowledge Society.” Beginning with the A’s, and working down a page a day, she sent every member a statement of the wrongs of the lacemakers, and the plans of the industrial establishment, at a vast expense of stamps; but then, as she calculated, one pound thus gained paid for two hundred and forty fruitless letters.

“And pray,” said Alick, who had ridden on to call at the Homestead, “how do you reconcile yourself to the temptation to the postmen?”

“They don’t see what my letters are about?”

“They must be dull postmen if they don’t remark on the shower of envelopes that pass through their hands—ominous money-letters, all with the same address, and no detection remember. You don’t know who will answer and who will not.”

“I never thought of that,” said Rachel; “but risks must be run when any great purpose is in hand.”

“The corruption of one postman versus the rescue of—how many children make a postman?” asked Captain Keith, with his grave, considering look.

“The postman would be corrupt already,” said Grace, as Rachel thought the last speech too mocking to be worthy of reply, and went on picking up her letters.

“There is another objection,” added Captain Keith, as he watched her busy fingers. “Have you considered how you are frightening people out of the society? It is enough to make one only subscribe as Michael Miserly or as Simon Skinflint, or something equally uninviting to applications.”

“I shall ask you to subscribe by both names!” said Rachel, readily. “How much for Simon Skinflint?”

“Ten pounds. Stop—when Mr. Mauleverer gives him a reference.”

“That’s ungenerous. Will Michael Miserly make up for it?”

“Yes, when the first year’s accounts have been audited.”

“Ah! those who have no faith to make a venture can never effect any good.”

“You evidently build on a great amount of faith from the public. How do you induce them to believe—do you write in your own name?”

“No, it makes mamma unhappy. I was going to put R. C., but Grace said people would think it meant Roman Catholic. Your sister thought I had better put the initials of Female Union for Lacemaker’s Employment.”

“You don’t mean that Bessie persuaded you to put that?” exclaimed Alick Keith, more nearly starting up than Rachel had ever seen him.

“Yes. There is no objection, is there?”

“Oh, Rachel, Rachel, how could we have helped thinking of it?” cried Grace, nearly in a state of suffocation.

Rachel held up her printed appeal, where subscriptions were invited to the address of F. U. L. E., the Homestead, Avonmouth.

“Miss Curtis, though you are not Scottish, you ought to be well read in Walter Scott.”

“I have thought it waste of time to read incorrect pictures of pseudo-chivalry since I have been grown up,” said Rachel. “But that has nothing to do with it.”

“Ah, Rachel, if we had been more up in our Scotch, we should have known what F. U. L. E. spells,” sighed Grace.

A light broke in upon Rachel. “I am sure Bessie never could have recollected it,” was her first exclamation. “But there,” she continued, too earnest to see or stumble at straws, “never mind. It cannot be helped, and I dare say not one person in ten will be struck by it.”

“Stay,” said Grace, “let it be Englishwoman’s Employment. See, I can very easily alter the L into an E.”

Rachel would hardly have consented, but was forced to yield to her mother’s entreaties. However, the diligent transformation at L’s did not last long, for three days after a parcel was left at the Homestead containing five thousand printed copies of the appeal, with the E rightly inserted. Bessie laughed, and did not disavow the half reluctant thanks for this compensation for her inadvertence or mischief, whichever it might be, laughing the more at Rachel’s somewhat ungrateful confession that she had rather the cost had gone into a subscription for the F. U. E. E. As Bessie said to herself, it was much better and more agreeable for all parties that it should so stand, and she would consider herself in debt to Alick for the amount. Indeed, she fully expected him to send her in the bill, but in the meantime not one word was uttered between the brother and sister on the subject. They understood one another too well to spend useless words.

Contrary to most expectation, there was result enough from Rachel’s solicitations to serve as justification for the outlay in stamps. The very number of such missives that fly about the world proves that there must be a great amount of uninquiring benevolence to render the speculation anything but desperate, and Rachel met with very tolerable success. Mr. Mauleverer called about once a week to report progress on his side, and, in his character of treasurer, to take charge of the sums that began to accumulate. But Rachel had heard so much on all sides of the need of caution in dealing with one so entirely a stranger, that she resolved that no one should blame her for imprudence, and therefore retained in her own name, in the Avoncester Bank, all the sums that she received. Mr. Mauleverer declared himself quite contented with this arrangement, and eagerly anticipated the apologies that Rachel was ashamed even to make to him.

Enough was collected to justify a beginning on a small scale. A house was to be taken where Mr. Mauleverer and a matron would receive the first pupils, teach them wood engraving, and prepare the earlier numbers of the magazine. When a little more progress had been made, the purchase of a printing-press might be afforded, and it might be struck off by the girls themselves, but in the meantime they must be dependent on the regular printer. On this account Mr. Mauleverer thought it best to open the establishment, not at Avonmouth, but at St. Herbert’s, where he had acquaintance that would facilitate the undertaking.

Rachel was much disappointed. To be in and out constantly, daily teaching and watching the girls, and encouraging them by learning the employment herself, had been an essential portion of her vision. She had even in one of her most generous moods proposed to share the delight with the Williamses, and asked Ermine if she would not, if all things suited, become the resident matron. However, Mr. Mauleverer said that there was an individual of humbler rank, the widow of a National Schoolmaster, so anxious to devote herself to the work, that he had promised she should share it whenever he was in a condition to set the asylum on foot; and he assured Rachel that she would find this person perfectly amenable to all her views, and ready to work under her. He brought letters in high praise of the late school master, and recommendations of his widow from the clergyman of the parish where they had lived; and place and name being both in the “Clergy List,” even Ermine and Alison began to feel ashamed of their incredulity, whilst as to Grace, she had surrendered herself completely to the eager delight of finding a happy home for the little children in whom she was interested. Grace might laugh a little at Rachel, but in the main her trust in her sister’s superiority always led her judgment, and in the absence of Colonel Keith, Fanny was equally willing to let Rachel think for her when her own children were not concerned.

Rachel did not give up her hopes of fixing the asylum near her till after a considerable effort to get a house for it at Avonmouth, but this was far from easy. The Curtises’ unwillingness to part with land for building purposes enhanced the price of houses, and in autumn and winter the place was at its fullest, so that she could not even rent a house but at a ruinous price. It would be the best way to build on Homestead land, but this would be impracticable until spring, even if means were forthcoming, as Rachel resolved they should be, and in the meantime she was obliged to acquiesce in Mr. Mauleverer’s assurance that a small house in an overbuilt portion of St. Norbert’s would be more eligible than one in some inland parish. Anything was better than delay. Mr. Mauleverer was to superintend from his lodgings.

Rachel went with Grace and her mother to St. Norbert’s, and inspected the house, an ordinary cheap one, built to supply lodgings for the more economical class of visitors. It was not altogether what Rachel wished, but must serve till she could build, and perhaps it would be best to form her experience before her plans. Mr. Mauleverer’s own lodgings were near at hand, and he could inspect progress. The furniture was determined upon—neat little iron beds for the dormitories, and all that could serve for comfort and even pleasure, for both Mr. Mauleverer and Rachel were strong against making the place bare and workhouse-like, insulting poverty and dulling the spirit.

Grace suggested communication with the clergyman of the parish; but the North Hill turned out not to belong to St. Norbert’s proper, being a part of a great moorland parish, whose focus was twelve miles off. A district was in course of formation, and a church was to be built; but in the meantime the new houses were practically almost pastorless, and the children and their matron must take their chance on the free seats of one of the churches of St. Norbert’s. The staff of clergy there were so busy that no one liked to add extra parochial work to their necessary duties, and there was not sufficient acquaintance with them to judge how they would view Mr. Mauleverer’s peculiarities. Clerical interference was just what Rachel said she did not want; it was an escape that she did not call it meddling.

One bit of patronage at least she could exercise; a married pair of former Homestead servants had set up a fuel store at St. Norbert’s, receiving coal from the ships, and retailing it. They were to supply the F. U. E. E. with wood, coal, and potatoes; and this was a great ingredient in Mrs. Curtis’s toleration. The mother liked anything that brought custom to Rossitur and Susan.

The establishment was at present to consist of three children: the funds were not sufficient for more. One was the child of the matron, and the other two were Lovedy Kelland and the daughter of a widow in ill health, whose family were looking very lean and ill cared for. Mrs. Kelland was very unwilling to give Lovedy up, she had always looked to receiving the apprentice fee from the Burnaby bargain for her as soon as the child was fourteen, and she had a strong prejudice against any possible disturbance to the lace trade; but winter would soon come and her sale was uncertain; her best profit was so dependent on Homestead agency that it was impolitic to offend Miss Curtis; and, moreover, Lovedy was so excited by the idea of learning to make pictures to books that she forgot all the lace dexterity she had ever learnt, and spoilt more than she made, so that Mrs. Kelland was reduced to accept the kind proposal that Lovedy should be Lady Temple’s nominee, and be maintained, by her at the F. U. E. E. at seven shillings a week.

Fanny, however, asked the clergyman’s consent first, telling him, with her sweet, earnest smile, how sorry she was for the little girl, and showing him the high testimonials to Mrs. Rawlins. He owned that they were all that could be wished, and even said at her request that he would talk to Mr. Mauleverer. What the talk amounted to they never knew; but when Fanny said “she hoped he had found nothing unsatisfactory, the poor man must be so glad to be of use;” Mr. Touchett replied with, “Indeed, it is an unfortunate situation;” and his opposition might therefore be considered as suspended.

“Of course,” cried Bessie, “we know by what witchery!” But Alison Williams, her listener, turned on her such great eyes of wilful want of comprehension, that she held her peace.

Rachel and Grace united in sending Mary Morris, the other child; they really could do nothing more, so heavily had their means been drawn upon for the first expenses; but Rachel trusted to do more for the future, and resolved that her dress should henceforth cost no more than Alison Williams’s; indeed, she went through a series of assertions by way of examining Alison on the expenses of her wardrobe.

The house was taken from Michaelmas, and a few days after, the two little victims, as Bessie laughingly called them, were taken over to St. Norbert’s in the Homestead carriage, Lady Temple chaperoning the three young ladies to see the inauguration, and the height of Rachel’s glory.

They were received by Mr. Mauleverer at the door, and slightly in the rear saw the matron, Mrs. Rawlins, a handsome pale woman, younger than they expected, but whose weeds made Fanny warm to her directly; but she was shy and retiring, and could not be drawn into conversation; and her little Alice was only three years old, much younger than Rachel had expected as a pupil, but a very pretty creature with great black eyes.

Tea and cake were provided by way of an inauguration feast, and the three little girls sat up in an atmosphere of good cheer, strongly suggestive of school feasts, and were left in the midst, with many promises of being good, a matter that Lovedy seemed to think would be very easy in this happy place, with no lace to make.

Mrs. Rawlins, whose husband had been a trained schoolmaster, was to take the children to church, and attend to their religious instruction; indeed, Mr. Mauleverer was most anxious on this head, and as Rachel already knew the scruples that withheld him from ordination were only upon the absolute binding himself to positive belief in minor technical points, that would never come in the way of young children.

Altogether, the neat freshness of the room, the urbanity of Mr. Mauleverer, the shy grief of the matron, all left a most pleasant impression. Rachel was full of delight and triumph, and Grace and Fanny quite enthusiastic; the latter even to the being sure that the Colonel would be delighted, for the Colonel was already beginning to dawn on the horizon, and not alone. He had written, in the name of his brother, to secure a cottage of gentility of about the same calibre as Myrtlewood, newly completed by a speculator on one of the few bits of ground available for building purposes. A name was yet wanting to it; but the day after the negotiation was concluded, the landlord paid the delicate compliment to his first tenant by painting “Gowanbrae” upon the gate-posts in letters of green. “Go and bray,” read Bessie Keith as she passed by; “for the sake of the chief of my name, I hope that it is not an omen of his occupations here.”

The two elder boys were with her; and while Francis, slowly apprehending her meaning in part, began to bristle up with the assurance that “Colonel Keith never brayed in his life,” Conrade caught the point with dangerous relish, and dwelt with colonial disrespect, that alarmed his mother, on the opinion expressed by some unguarded person in his hearing, that Lord Keith was little better than an old donkey. “He is worse than Aunt Rachel,” said Conrade, meditatively, “now she has saved Don, and keeps away from the croquet.”

Meantime Rachel studied her own feelings. A few weeks ago her heart would have leapt at the announcement; but now her mission had found her out, and she did not want to be drawn aside from it. Colonel Keith might have many perfections, but alike as Scotsman, soldier, and High-Churchman, he was likely to be critical of the head of the F. U. E. E., and matters had gone too far now for her to afford to doubt, or to receive a doubting master. Moreover, it would be despicable to be diverted from a great purpose by a courtship like any ordinary woman; nor must marriage settlements come to interfere with her building and endowment of the asylum, and ultimate devotion of her property thereunto. No, she would school herself into a system of quiet discouragement, and reserve herself and her means as the nucleus of the great future establishment for maintaining female rights of labour.

CHAPTER XI. LADY TEMPLE’S TROUBLES

 
“The pheasant in the falcon’s claw,
  He scarce will yield, to please a daw.”
 

—SCOTT.

Early in the afternoon of a warm October day, the brothers arrived at Avomnouth, and ten minutes after both were upon the lawn at Myrtlewood, where croquet was still in progress. Shouts of delight greeted the Colonel, and very gracefully did Bessie Keith come to meet him, with the frank confiding sweetness befitting his recent ward, the daughter of his friend. A reassuring smile and monosyllable had scarcely time to pass between him and the governess before a flood of tidings was poured on him by the four elder boys, while their mother was obliged to be mannerly, and to pace leisurely along with the elder guest, and poor Mr. Touchett waited a little aloof, hammering his own boot with his mallet, as if he found the enchanted ground failing him. But the boys had no notion of losing their game, and vociferated an inquiry whether the Colonel knew croquet. Yes, he had several times played with his cousins in Scotland. “Then,” insisted Conrade, “he must take mamma’s place, whilst she was being devoured, and how surprised she would be at being so helped on!”

“Not now, not to-day,” he answered. “I may go to your sister, Ailie? Yes, boys, you must close up your ranks without me.”

“Then please,” entreated Hubert, “take him away,” pointing to the engrosser of their mother.

“Do you find elder brothers so easily disposed of, Hubert?” said the Colonel. “Do you take Conrade away when you please?”

“I should punch him,” returned Francis.

“He knows better,” quoth Conrade in the same breath, both with infinite contempt for Hubert.

“And I know better,” returned Colonel Keith; “never mind, boys, I’ll come back in—in reasonable time to carry him off,” and he waved a gay farewell.

“Surely you wish to go too,” said Bessie to Alison, “if only to relieve them of the little girl! I’ll take care of the boys. Pray go.”

“Thank you,” said Alison, surprised at her knowledge of the state of things, “but they are quite hardened to Rose’s presence, and I think would rather miss her.”

And in fact Alison did not feel at all sure that, when stimulated by Bessie’s appreciation of their mischief, her flock might not in her absence do something that might put their mother in despair, and make their character for naughtiness irretrievable; so Leoline and Hubert were summoned, the one from speculations whether Lord Keith would have punched his brother, the other from amaze that there was anything our military secretary could not do, and Conrade and Francis were arrested in the midst of a significant contraction of the nostrils and opening of the mouth, which would have exploded in an “eehaw” but for Bessie’s valiant undertaking to be herself and Lady Temple both at once.

Soon Colonel Keith was knocking at Ermine’s door, and Rose was clinging to him, glowing and sparkling with shy ecstasy; while, without sitting down again after her greeting, Rachel resolutely took leave, and walked away with firm steps, ruminating on her determination not to encourage meetings in Mackarel Lane.

“Better than I expected!” exclaimed Colonel Keith, after having ushered her to the door in the fulness of his gratitude. “I knew it was inevitable that she should be here, but that she should depart so fast was beyond hope!”

“Yes,” said Ermine, laughing, “I woke with such a certainty that she would be here and spend the first half hour in the F. U. E, E. that I wasted a great deal of resignation. But how are you, Colin? You are much thinner! I am sure by Mrs. Tibbie’s account you were much more ill than you told me.”

“Only ill enough to convince me that the need of avoiding a northern winter was not a fallacy, and likewise to make Tibbie insist on coming here for fear Maister Colin should not be looked after. It is rather a responsibility to have let her come, for she has never been farther south than Edinburgh, but she would not be denied. So she has been to see you! I told her you would help her to find her underlings. I thought it might be an opening for that nice little girl who was so oppressed with lace-making.”

“Ah! she has gone to learn wood-cutting at the F. U. E. E.; but I hope we have comfortably provided Tibbie with a damsel. She made us a long visit, and told us all about Master Colin’s nursery days. Only I am afraid we did not understand half.”

“Good old body,” said the Colonel, in tones almost as national as Tibbie’s own. “She was nursery girl when I was the spoilt child of the house, and hers was the most homelike face that met me. I wish she may be happy here. And you are well, Ermine?”

“Very well, those drives are so pleasant, and Lady Temple so kind! It is wonderful to think how many unlooked-for delights have come to us; how good every one is;” and her eyes shone with happy tears as she looked up at him, and felt that he was as much her own as ever. “And you have brought your brother,” she said; “you have been too useful to him to be spared. Is he come to look after you or to be looked after!”

“A little of both I fancy,” said the Colonel, “but I suspect he is giving me up as a bad job. Ermine, there are ominous revivifications going on at home, and he has got himself rigged out in London, and had his hair cut, so that he looks ten years younger.”

“Do you think he has any special views!”

“He took such pains to show me the charms of the Benorchie property that I should have thought it would have been Jessie Douglas, the heiress thereof, only coming here does not seem the way to set about it, unless be regards this place as a bath of youth and fashion. I fancy he has learnt enough about my health to make him think me a precarious kind of heir, and that his views are general. I hope he may not be made a fool of, otherwise it is the best thing that could happen to us.”

“It has been a dreary uncomfortable visit, I much fear,” said Ermine.

“Less so than you think. I am glad to have been able to be of use to him, and to have lived on something like brotherly terms. We know and like each other much better than we had a chance of doing before, and we made some pleasant visits together, but at home there are many things on which we can never be of one mind, and I never was well enough at Gowanbrae to think of living there permanently.”

“I was sure you had been very unwell! You are better though?”

“Well, since I came into Avonmouth air,” said he, “I fear nothing but cold. I am glad to have brought him with me, since he could not stay there, for it is very lonely for him.”

“Yet you said his daughter was settled close by.”

“Yes; but that makes it the worse. In fact, Ermine, I did not know before what a wretched affair he had made of his daughters’ marriages. Isabel he married when she was almost a child to this Comyn Menteith, very young too at the time, and who has turned out a good-natured, reckless, dissipated fellow, who is making away with his property as fast as he can, and to whom Keith’s advice is like water on a duck’s back. It is all rack and ruin and extravagance, a set of ill-regulated children, and Isabel smiling and looking pretty in the midst of them, and perfectly impervious to remonstrance. He is better out of sight of them, for it is only pain and vexation, an example of the sort of match he likes to make. Mary, the other daughter, was the favourite, and used to her own way, and she took it. Keith was obliged to consent so as to prevent an absolute runaway wedding, but he has by no means forgiven her husband, and they are living on very small means on a Government appointment in Trinidad. I believe it would be the bitterest pill to him that either son-in-law should come in for any part of the estate.”

“I thought it was entailed.”

“Gowanbrae is, but as things stand at present that ends with me, and the other estates are at his disposal.”

“Then it would be very hard on the daughters not to have them.”

“So hard that the death of young Alexander may have been one of the greatest disasters of my life, as well as of poor Keith’s. However, this is riding out to meet perplexities. He is most likely to outlive me; and, moreover, may marry and put an end to the difficulty. Meantime, till my charge is relieved, I must go and see after him, and try if I can fulfil Hubert’s polite request that I would take him away. Rosie, my woman, I have hardly spoken to you. I have some hyacinth roots to bring you to-morrow.”

In spite of these suspicions, Colonel Keith was not prepared for what met him on his return to Myrtlewood. On opening the drawing-room door, he found Lady Temple in a low arm-chair in an agony of crying, so that she did not hear his approach till he stood before her in consternation. Often had he comforted her before, and now, convinced that something dreadful must have befallen one of the children, he hastily, though tenderly, entreated her to tell him which, and what he could do.

“Oh, no, no!” she exclaimed, starting up, and removing her handkerchief, so that he saw her usually pale cheeks were crimson—“Oh, no,” she cried, with panting breath and heaving chest. “It is all well with them as yet. But—but—it’s your brother.”

He was at no loss now as to what his brother could have done, but he stood confounded, with a sense of personal share in the offence, and his first words were—“I am very sorry. I never thought of this.”

“No, indeed,” she exclaimed, “who could? It was too preposterous to be dreamt of by any one. At his age, too, one would have thought he might have known better.”

A secret sense of amusement crossed the Colonel, as he recollected that the disparity between Fanny Curtis and Sir Stephen Temple had been far greater than that between Lady Temple and Lord Keith, but the little gentle lady was just at present more like a fury than he had thought possible, evidently regarding what had just passed as an insult to her husband and an attack on the freedom of all her sons. In answer to a few sympathising words on the haste of his brother’s proceeding, she burst out again with indignation almost amusing in one so soft—“Haste! Yes! I did think that people would have had some respect for dear, dear Sir Stephen,” and her gush of tears came with more of grief and less of violence, as if she for the first time felt herself unprotected by her husband’s name.

“I am very much concerned,” he repeated, feeling sympathy safer than reasoning. “If I could have guessed his intentions, I would have tried to spare you this; at least the suddenness of it. I could not have guessed at such presumptuous expectations on so short an acquaintance.”

“He did not expect me to answer at once,” said Fanny. “He said he only meant to let me know his hopes in coming here. And, oh, that’s the worst of it! He won’t believe me, though I said more to him than I thought I could have said to anybody! I told him,” said Fanny, with her hands clasped over her knee to still her trembling, “that I cared for my dear, dear husband, and always shall—always—and then he talked about waiting, just as if anybody could leave off loving one’s husband! And then when he wanted me to consider about my children, why then I told him”—and her voice grew passionate again—“the more I considered, the worse it would be for him, as if I would have my boys know me without their father’s name; and, besides, he had not been so kind to you that I should wish to let him have anything to do with them! I am afraid I ought not to have said that,” she added, returning to something of her meek softness; “but indeed I was so angry, I did not know what I was about. I hope it will not make him angry with you.”

“Never mind me,” said Colonel Keith, kindly. “Indeed, Lady Temple, it is a wonderful compliment to you that he should have been ready to undertake such a family.”

“I don’t want such compliments! And, oh!” and here her eyes widened with fright, “what shall I do? He only said my feelings did me honour, and he would be patient and convince me. Oh, Colonel Keith, what shall I do?” and she looked almost afraid that fate and perseverance would master her after all, and that she should be married against her will.

“You need do nothing but go on your own way, and persist in your refusal,” he said in the calm voice that always reassured her.

“Oh, but pray, pray never let him speak to me about it again!”

“Not if I can help it, and I will do my best. You are quite right, Lady Temple. I do not think it would be at all advisable for yourself or the children, and hardly for himself,” he added, smiling. “I think the mischief must all have been done by that game at whist.”

“Then I’ll never play again in my life! I only thought he was an old man that wanted amusing—.” Then as one of the children peeped in at the window, and was called back—“O dear! how shall I ever look at Conrade again, now any one has thought I could forget his father?”

“If Conrade knew it, which I trust he never will, he ought to esteem it a testimony to his mother.”

“Oh, no, for it must have been my fault! I always was so childish, and when I’ve got my boys with me, I can’t help being happy,” and the tears swelled again in her eyes. “I know I have not been as sad and serious as my aunt thought I ought to be, and now this comes of it.”

“You have been true, have acted nothing,” said Colonel Keith, “and that is best of all. No one who really knew you could mistake your feelings. No doubt that your conduct agrees better with what would please our dear Sir Stephen than if you drooped and depressed the children.”

“Oh, I am glad you say that,” she said, looking up, flushed with pleasure now, and her sweet eyes brimming over. “I have tried to think what he would like in all I have done, and you know I can’t help being proud and glad of belonging to him still; and he always told me not to be shy and creeping into the nursery out of every one’s way.”

The tears were so happy now that he felt that the wound was healed, and that he might venture to leave her, only asking first, “And now what would you like me to do? Shall I try to persuade my brother to come away from this place?”

“Oh, but then every one would find out why, and that would be dreadful! Besides, you are only just come. And Miss Williams—”

“Do not let that stand in your way.”

“No, no. You will be here to take care of me. And his going now would make people guess; and that would be worse than anything.”

“It would. The less disturbance the better; and if you upset his plans now, he might plead a sort of right to renew the attempt later. Quiet indifference will be more dignified and discouraging. Indeed, I little thought to what I was exposing you. Now I hope you are going to rest, I am sure your head is aching terribly.”

She faintly smiled, and let him give her his arm to the foot of the stairs.

At first he was too indignant for any relief save walking up and down the esplanade, endeavouring to digest the unfairness towards himself of his brother’s silence upon views that would have put their joint residence at Avonmouth on so different a footing; above all, when the Temple family were his own peculiar charge, and when he remembered how unsuspiciously he had answered all questions on the money matters, and told how all was left in the widow’s own power. It was the more irritating, as he knew that his displeasure would be ascribed to interested motives, and regarded somewhat as he had seen Hubert’s resentment treated when Francis teased his favourite rabbit. Yet not only on principle, but to avoid a quarrel, and to reserve to himself such influence as might best shield Lady Temple from further annoyance, he must school himself to meet his brother with coolness and patience. It was not, however, without strong effort that he was able to perceive that, from the outer point of view, one who, when a mere child, had become the wife of an aged general, might, in her early widowhood, be supposed open to the addresses of a man of higher rank and fewer years, and the more as it was not in her nature to look crushed and pathetic. He, who had known her intimately throughout her married life and in her sorrow, was aware of the quiet force of the love that had grown up with her, so entirely a thread in her being as to crave little expression, and too reverent to be violent even in her grief. The nature, always gentle, had recovered its balance, and the difference in years had no doubt told in the readiness with which her spirits had recovered their cheerfulness, though her heart remained unchanged. Still, retired as her habits were, and becoming as was her whole conduct, Colin began to see that there had been enough of liveliness about her to lead to Lord Keith’s mistake, though not to justify his want of delicacy in the precipitation of his suit.

These reflections enabled him at length to encounter his brother with temper, and to find that, after all, it had been more like the declaration of an intended siege than an actual summons to surrender. Lord Keith was a less foolish and more courteous man than might have been gathered from poor Fanny’s terrified account; and all he had done was to intimate his intention of recommending himself to her, and the view with which he had placed himself at Avonmouth; nor was he in the slightest degree disconcerted by her vehemence, but rather entertained by it, accepting her faithfulness to her first husband’s memory as the best augury of her affection for a second. He did not even own that he had been precipitate.

“Let her get accustomed to the idea,” he said with a shrewd smile. “The very outcry she makes against it will be all in my favour when the turn comes.”

“I doubt whether you will find it so.”

“All the world does not live on romance like you, man. Look on, and you will see that a pretty young widow like her cannot fail to get into scrapes; have offers made to her, or at least the credit of them. I’d lay you ten pounds that you are said to be engaged to her yourself by this time, and it is no one’s fault but your own that you are not. It is in the very nature of things that she will be driven to shelter herself from the persecution, with whoever has bided his time.”

“Oh, if you prefer being accepted on such terms—”

He smiled, as if the romance of the exclamation were beneath contempt, and proceeded—“A pretty, gracious, ladylike woman, who has seen enough of the world to know how to take her place, and yet will be content with a quiet home. It is an introduction I thank you for, Colin.”

“And pray,” said Colin, the more inwardly nettled because he knew that his elder brother enjoyed his annoyance, “what do you think of those seven slight encumbrances?”

“Oh, they are your charge,” returned Lord Keith, with a twinkle in his eye. “Besides, most of them are lads, and what with school, sea, and India, they will be easily disposed of.”

“Certainly it has been so in our family,” said Colin, rather hoarsely, as he thought of the four goodly brothers who had once risen in steps between him and the Master.

“And,” added Lord Keith, still without direct answer, “she is so handsomely provided for, that you see, Colin, I could afford to give you up the Auchinvar property, that should have been poor Archie’s, and what with the farms and the moor, it would bring you in towards three hundred a year for your housekeeping.”

Colin restrained himself with difficulty, but made quiet answer. “I had rather see it settled as a provision on Mary and her children.”

Lord Keith growled something about minding his own concerns.

“That is all I desire,” responded the Colonel, and therewith the conference ended. Nor was the subject recurred to. It was observable, however, that Lord Keith was polite and even attentive to Ermine. He called on her, sent her grouse, and though saying nothing, seemed to wish to make it evident that his opposition was withdrawn, perhaps as no longer considering his brother’s affairs as his own, or else wishing to conciliate him. Lady Temple was not molested by any alarming attentions from him. But for the proclamation, the state of siege might have been unsuspected. He settled himself at the southern Gowanbrae as if he had no conquest to achieve but that of the rheumatism, and fell rapidly into sea-side habits—his morning stroll to see the fishing-boats come in, his afternoon ride, and evening’s dinner party, or whist-club, which latter institution disposed of him, greatly to Colin’s relief. The brothers lived together very amicably, and the younger often made himself helpful and useful to the elder, but evidently did not feel bound to be exclusively devoted to his service and companionship. All the winter residents and most of the neighbouring gentry quickly called at Gowanbrae, and Lord Keith, in the leisure of his present life, liked society where he was the man of most consequence, and readily accepted and gave invitations. Colin, whose chest would not permit him to venture out after sunset, was a most courteous assistant host, but necessarily made fewer acquaintances, and often went his own way, sometimes riding with his brother, but more frequently scarcely seeing him between breakfast and twilight, and then often spending a solitary evening, which he much preferred either to ecarte or to making talk.

The summer life had been very different from the winter one. There was much less intercourse with the Homestead, partly from Rachel being much engrossed with the F. U. E. E., driving over whenever the coachman would let her, to inspect progress, and spending much of her time in sending out circulars, answering letters, and writing a tale on the distresses of Woman, and how to help them, entitled “Am I not a Sister?” Tales were not much in Bachel’s line; she despised reading them, and did not love writing them, but she knew that she must sugar the cup for the world, and so she diligently applied herself to the piece de resistance for the destined magazine, heavily weighting her slender thread of story with disquisitions on economy and charity, and meaning to land her heroines upon various industrial asylums where their lot should be far more beatific than marriage, which was reserved for the naughty one to live unhappy in ever after. In fact, Rachel, in her stern consistency, had made up her mind to avoid and discourage the Colonel, and to prevent her own heart from relenting in his favour, or him from having any opportunity of asking an explanation, and with this determination she absented herself both from Ermine’s parlour and Lady Temple’s croquet ground; and if they met on the esplanade or in a morning call, took care never to give the chance of a tete-a-tete, which he was evidently seeking.

The croquet practice still survived. In truth, Fanny was afraid to ride lest Lord Keith should join her, and was glad to surround herself with companions. She could not see the enemy without a nervous trepidation, and was eager to engross herself with anybody or thing that came to hand so as to avoid the necessity of attending to him. More than once did she linger among her boys “to speak to Mr. Touchett,” that she might avoid a ten minutes’ walk with his lordship; and for nothing was she more grateful than for the quiet and ever ready tact with which Bessie Keith threw herself into the breach. That bright damsel was claimed by Lord Keith as a kinswoman, and, accepting the relationship, treated him with the pretty playfulness and coquetry that elderly men enjoy from lively young girls, and thus often effected a diversion in her friend’s favour, to the admiration both of the Colonel and of Lady Temple herself; all, however, by intuition, for not a word had been hinted to her of what had passed during that game at croquet. She certainly was a most winning creature; the Colonel was charmed with her conversation in its shades between archness and good sense, and there was no one who did not look forward with dread to the end of her visit, when after a short stay with one of her married cousins, she must begin her residence with the blind uncle to whose establishment she, in her humility, declared she should be such a nuisance. It was the stranger that she should think so, as she had evidently served her apprenticeship to parish work at Bishopsworthy; she knew exactly how to talk to poor people, and was not only at home in clerical details herself, but infused them into Lady Temple; so that, to the extreme satisfaction of Mr. Touchett, the latter organized a treat for the school-children, offered prizes for needlework, and once or twice even came to listen to the singing practice when anything memorable was going forward. She was much pleased at being helped to do what she felt to be right and kind, though hitherto she had hardly known how to set about it, and had been puzzled and perplexed by Rachel’s disapproval, and semi-contempt of “scratching the surface” by the commonplace Sunday-school system.

CHAPTER XII. A CHANGE AT THE PARSONAGE

 
“What could presumptuous hope inspire.”
 

—Rokeby.

There had been the usual foretaste of winter, rather sharp for Avonmouth, and though a trifle to what it was in less sheltered places, quite enough to make the heliotropes sorrowful, strip the fig-trees, and shut Colonel Keith up in the library. Then came the rain, and the result was that the lawn of Myrtlewood became too sloppy for the most ardent devotees of croquet; indeed, as Bessie said, the great charm of the sport was that one could not play it above eight months in the year.

The sun came back again, and re-asserted the claim of Avonmouth to be a sort of English Mentone; but drying the lawn was past its power, and Conrade and Francis were obliged to console themselves by the glory of taking Bessie Keith for a long ride. They could not persuade their mother to go with them, perhaps because she had from her nursery-window sympathized with Cyril’s admiration of the great white horse that was being led round to the door of Gowanbrae.

She said she must stay at home, and make the morning calls that the charms of croquet had led her to neglect, and in about half an hour from that time she was announced in Miss Williams’ little parlour, and entered with a hurried, panting, almost pursued look, a frightened glance in her eyes, and a flush on her cheek, such as to startle both Ermine and the Colonel.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, as if still too much perturbed to know quite what she was saying, “I—I did not mean to interrupt you.”

“I’m only helping Rose to change the water of her hyacinths,” said Colonel Keith, withdrawing his eyes and attention to the accommodation of the forest of white roots within the purple glass.

“I did not know you were out to-day,” said Lady Temple, recovering herself a little.

“Yes, I came to claim my walking companion. Where’s your hat, Rosie?”

And as the child, who was already equipped all but the little brown hat, stood by her aunt for the few last touches to the throat of her jacket, he leant down and murmured, “I thought he was safe out riding.”

“Oh no, no, it is not that,” hastily answered Lady Temple, a fresh suffusion of crimson colour rustling over her face, and inspiring an amount of curiosity that rendered a considerable effort of attention necessary to be as supremely charming a companion as Rose generally found him in the walks that he made it his business to take with her.

He turned about long before Rose thought they had gone far enough, and when he re-entered the parlour there was such an expectant look on his face that Ermine’s bright eyes glittered with merry mischief, when she sent Rose to take off her walking dress. “Well!” he said.

“Well? Colin, have you so low an opinion of the dignity of your charge as to expect her to pour out her secrets to the first ear in her way?”

“Oh, if she has told you in confidence.”

“No, she has not told me in confidence; she knew better.”

“She has told you nothing?”

“Nothing!” and Ermine indulged in a fit of laughter at his discomfiture, so comical that he could not but laugh himself, as he said, “Ah! the pleasure of disappointing me quite consoles you.”

“No; the proof of the discretion of womanhood does that! You thought, because she tells all her troubles to you, that she must needs do so to the rest of the world.”

“There is little difference between telling you and me.”

“That’s the fault of your discretion, not of hers.”

“I should like to know who has been annoying her. I suspect—”

“So do I. And when you get the confidence at first hand, you will receive it with a better grace than if you had had a contraband foretaste.”

He smiled. “I thought yours a more confidence-winning face, Ermine.”

“That depends on my respect for the individual. Now I thought Lady Temple would much prefer my looking another way, and talking about Conrade’s Latin grammar, to my holding out my arms and inviting her to pour into my tender breast what another time she had rather not know that I knew.”

“That is being an honourable woman,” he said, and Rose’s return ended the exchange of speculations; but it must be confessed that at their next meeting Ermine’s look of suppressed inquiry quite compensated for her previous banter, more especially as neither had he any confidence to reveal or conceal, only the tidings that the riders, whose coalition had justified Lady Temple’s prudence, had met Mr. Touchett wandering in the lanes in the twilight, apparently without a clear idea of what he was doing there. And on the next evening there was quite an excitement, the curate looked so ill, and had broken quite down when he was practising with the choir boys before church; he had, indeed, gone safely through the services, but at school he had been entirely at a loss as to what Sunday it was, and had still more unfortunately forgotten that to be extra civil to Miss Villars was the only hope of retaining her services, for he had walked by her with less attention than if she had been the meanest scholar. Nay, when his most faithful curatolatress had offered to submit to him a design for an illumination for Christmas, he had escaped from her with a desperate and mysterious answer that he had nothing to do with illumination, he hoped it would be as sombre as possible.

No wonder Avonmouth was astonished, and that guesses were not confined to Mackarel Lane.

“Well, Colin,” said Ermine, on the Tuesday, “I have had a first-hand confidence, though from a different quarter. Poor Mr. Touchett came to announce his going away.”

“Going!”

“Yes. In the very nick of time, it seems, Alick Keith has had a letter from his uncle’s curate, asking him to see if he could meet with a southern clergyman to exchange duties for the winter with a London incumbent who has a delicate wife, and of course. Mr. Touchett jumped at it.”

“A very good thing—a great relief.”

“Yes. He said he was very anxious for work, but he had lost ground in this place within the last few months, and he thought that he should do better in a fresh place, and that a fresh person would answer better here, at least for a time. I am very sorry for him, I have a great regard for him.”

“Yes; but he is quite right to make a fresh beginning. Poor man! he has been quite lifted off his feet, and entranced all this time, and his recovery will be much easier elsewhere. It was all that unlucky croquet.”

“I believe it was. I think there was at first a reverential sort of distant admiration, too hopeless to do any one any harm, and that really might have refined him, and given him a little of the gentleman-like tone he has always wanted. But then came the croquet, and when it grew to be a passion it was an excuse for intimacy that it would have taken a stronger head than his to resist.”

“Under the infection of croquet fever.”

“It is what my father used to say of amusements—the instant they become passions they grow unclerical and do mischief. Now he used, though not getting on with the Curtises, to be most successful with the second-rate people; but he has managed to offend half of them during this unhappy mania, which, of course, they all resent as mercenary, and how he is ever to win them back I don’t know. After all, curatocult is a shallow motive—Rachel Curtis might triumph!”

“The higher style of clergyman does not govern by curatocult. I hope this one may be of that description, as he comes through Mr. Clare. I wonder if this poor man will return?”

“Perhaps,” said Ermine, with a shade of mimicry in her voice, “when Lady Temple is married to the Colonel. There now, I have gone and told you! I did try to resolve I would not.”

“And what did you say?”

“I thought it due to Lady Temple to tell him exactly how she regarded you.”

“Yes, Ermine, and it is due to tell others also. I cannot go on on these terms, either here or at Myrtlewood, unless the true state of the case is known. If you will not let me be a married man, I must be an engaged one, either to you or to the little Banksia.”

This periphrasis was needful, because Rose was curled up in a corner with a book, and her accessibility to outward impressions was dubious. It might be partly for that reason, partly from the tone of fixed resolve in his voice, that Ermine made answer, “As you please.”

It was calmly said, with the sweet, grave, confiding smile that told how she trusted to his judgment, and accepted his will. The look and tone brought his hand at once to press hers in eager gratitude, but still she would not pursue this branch of the subject; she looked up to him and said gently, but firmly, “Yes, it may be better that the true state of the case should be known,” and he felt that she thus conveyed that he must not press her further, so he let her continue, “At first I thought it would do him good, he began pitying us so vehemently; but when he found I did not pity myself, he was as ready to forget our troubles as—you are to forget his,” she added, catching Colin’s fixed eye, more intent on herself than on her narrative.

“I beg his pardon, but there are things that come more home.”

“So thought he,” said Ermine.

“Did you find out,” said Colin, now quite recalled, “what made him take courage?”

“When he had once come to the subject, it seemed to be a relief to tell it all out, but he was so faltering and agitated that I did not always follow what he said. I gather, though, that Lady Temple has used him a little as a defence from other perils.”

“Yes, I have seen that.”

“And Miss Keith’s fun has been more encouragement than she knew; constantly summoning him to the croquet-ground, and giving him to understand that Lady Temple liked to have him there. Then came that unlucky day, it seems, when he found Bessie mounting her horse at the door, and she called out that it was too wet for croquet, but Lady Temple was in the garden, and would be glad to see him. She was going to make visits, and he walked down with her, and somehow, in regretting the end of the croquet season, he was surprised into saying how much it had been to him. He says she was exceedingly kind, and regretted extremely that anything should have inspired the hope, said she should never marry again, and entreated him to forget it, then I imagine she fled in here to put an end to it.”

“She must have been much more gentle this time than she was with Keith. I had never conceived her capable of being so furious as she was then. I am very sorry, I wish we could spare her these things.”

“I am afraid that can only be done in one way, which you are not likely at present to take,” said Ermine with a serious mouth, but with light dancing in her eyes.

“I know no one less likely to marry again,” he continued, “yet no one of whom the world is so unlikely to believe it. Her very gentle simplicity and tenderness tell against her! Well, the only hope now is that the poor man has not made his disappointment conspicuous enough for her to know that it is attributed to her. It is the beginning of the fulfilment of Keith’s prediction that offers and reports will harass her into the deed!”

“There is nothing so fallacious as prophecies against second marriages, but I don’t believe they will. She is too quietly dignified for the full brunt of reports to reach her, and too much concentrated on her children to care about them.”

“Well, I have to see her to-morrow to make her sign some papers about her pension, so I shall perhaps find out how she takes it.”

He found Fanny quite her gentle composed self, as usual uncomprehending and helpless about her business affairs, and throwing the whole burthen on him of deciding on her investments; but in such a gracious, dependent, grateful way that he could not but take pleasure in the office, and had no heart for the lesson he had been meditating on the need of learning to act for herself, if she wished to do without a protector. It was not till she had obediently written her “Frances Grace Temple” wherever her prime minister directed, that she said with a crimson blush, “Is it true that poor Mr. Touchett is going away for the winter?”

“I believe he is even going before Sunday.”

“I am very glad—I mean I am very sorry. Do you think any one knows why it is?”

“Very few are intimate enough to guess, and those who are, know you too well to think it was otherwise than very foolish on his part.”

“I don’t know,” said Fanny, “I think I must have been foolish too, or he never could have thought of it. And I was so sorry for him, he seemed so much distressed.”

“I do not wonder at that, when he had once allowed himself to admit the thought.”

“Yes, that is the thing. I am afraid I can’t be what I ought to be, or people would never think of such nonsense,” said Fanny, with large tears welling into her eyes. “I can’t be guarding that dear memory as I ought, to have two such things happening so soon.”

“Perhaps they have made you cherish it all the more.”

“As if I wanted that! Please will you tell me how I could have been more guarded. I don’t mind your knowing about this; indeed you ought, for Sir Stephen trusted me to you, but I can’t ask my aunt or any one else. I can’t talk about it, and I would not have them know that Sir Stephen’s wife can’t get his memory more respected.”

She did not speak with anger as the first time, but with most touching sadness.

“I don’t think any one could answer,” he said.

“I did take my aunt’s advice about the officers being here. I have not had them nearly as much as Bessie would have liked, not even Alick. I have been sorry it was so dull for her, but I thought it could not be wrong to be intimate with one’s clergyman, and Rachel was always so hard upon him.”

“You did nothing but what was kind and right. The only possible thing that could have been wished otherwise was the making a regular habit of his playing croquet here.”

“Ah! but the boys and Bessie liked it so much. However, I dare say it was wrong. Alick never did like it.”

“Not wrong, only a little overdone. You ladies want sometimes to be put in mind that, because a clergyman has to manage his own time, he is not a whit more really at liberty than a soldier or a lawyer, whose hours are fixed for him. You do not do him or his parish any kindness by engrossing him constantly in pastimes that are all very well once in a way, but which he cannot make habitual without detriment to his higher duties.”

“But I thought he would have known when he had time.”

“I am afraid curates are but bits of human nature after all.”

“And what ought I to have done?”

“If you had been an exceedingly prudent woman who knew the world, you would have done just as you did about the officers, been friendly, and fairly intimate, but instead of ratifying the daily appointments for croquet, have given a special invitation now and then, and so shown that you did not expect him without one.”

“I see. Oh, if I had only thought in time, I need not have driven him away from his parish! I hope he won’t go on being unhappy long! Oh, I wish there may be some very nice young lady where he is going. If he only would come back married!”

“We would give him a vote of thanks.”

“What a wedding present I would make her,” proceeded Fanny, brightening perceptibly; “I would give her my best Indian table, only I always meant that for Ermine. I think she must have the emu’s egg set in Australian gold.”

“If she were to be induced by the bribe,” said Colonel Keith, laughing, “I think Ermine would be sufficiently provided for by the emu’s egg. Do you know,” he added, after a pause, “I think I have made a great step in that direction.”

She clasped her hands with delighted sympathy. “She has given me leave to mention the matter,” he continued, “and I take that as a sign that her resistance will give way.”

“Oh, I am very glad,” said Fanny, “I have so wished them to know at the Homestead,” and her deepened colour revealed, against her will, that she had not been insensible to the awkwardness of the secrecy.

“I should rather like to tell your cousin Rachel myself,” said the Colonel; “she has always been very kind to Ermine, and appreciated her more than I should have expected. But she is not easily to be seen now.”

“Her whole heart is in her orphan asylum,” said Fanny. “I hope you will soon go with us and see it; the little girls look so nice.”

The brightening of his prospects seemed to have quite consoled her for her own perplexities.

That Avonmouth should have no suspicion of the cause of the sudden change of pastor could hardly be hoped; but at least Lady Temple did not know how much talk was expended upon her, how quietly Lord Keith hugged himself, how many comical stories Bessie detailed in her letters to her Clare cousins, nor how Mrs. Curtis resented the presumption; and while she shrank from a lecture, more especially as she did not see how dear Fanny was to blame, flattered herself and Grace that, for the future, Colonel Keith and Rachel would take better care of her.

Rachel did not dwell much on the subject, it was only the climax of conceit, croquet, and mere womanhood; and she was chiefly anxious to know whether Mr. Mitchell, the temporary clergyman, would support the F. U. E. E., and be liberal enough to tolerate Mr. Mauleverer. She had great hopes from a London incumbent, and, besides, Bessie Keith knew him, and spoke of him as a very sensible, agreeable, earnest man.

“Earnest enough for you, Rachel,” she said, laughing.

“Is he a party man?”

“Oh, parties are getting obsolete! He works too hard for fighting battles outside.”

The Sunday showed a spare, vigorous face, and a voice and pronunciation far more refined than poor Mr. Touchett’s; also the sermons were far more interesting, and even Rachel granted that there were ideas in it. The change was effected with unusual celerity, for it was as needful to Mrs. Mitchell to be speedily established in a warm climate, as it was desirable to Mr. Touchett to throw himself into other scenes; and the little parsonage soon had the unusual ornaments of tiny children with small spades and wheelbarrows.

The father and mother were evidently very shy people, with a great deal beneath their timidity, and were much delighted to have an old acquaintance like Miss Keith to help them through their introductions, an office which she managed with all her usual bright tact. The discovery that Stephana Temple and Lucy Mitchell had been born within two days of one another, was the first link of a warm friendship between the two mammas; and Mr. Mitchell fell at once into friendly intercourse with Ermine Williams, to whom Bessie herself conducted him for his first visit, when they at once discovered all manner of mutual acquaintance among his college friends; and his next step was to make the very arrangement for Ermine’s church-going, for which she had long been wishing in secret, but which never having occurred to poor Mr. Touchett, she had not dared to propose, lest there should be some great inconvenience in the way.

Colonel Keith was the person, however, with whom the new comers chiefly fraternized, and he was amused with their sense of the space for breathing compared with the lanes and alleys of their own district. The schools and cottages seemed to them so wonderfully large, the children so clean, even their fishiness a form of poetical purity, the people ridiculously well off, and even Mrs. Kelland’s lace-school a palace of the free maids that weave their thread with bones. Mr. Mitchell seemed almost to grudge the elbow room, as he talked of the number of cubic feet that held a dozen of his own parishioners; and needful as the change had been for the health of both husband and wife, they almost reproached themselves for having fled and left so many pining for want of pure air, dwelling upon impossible castles for the importation of favourite patients to enjoy the balmy breezes of Avonmouth.

Rachel talked to them about the F. U. E. E., and was delighted by the flush of eager interest on Mrs. Mitchell’s thin face. “Objects” swarmed in their parish, but where were the seven shillings per week to come from? At any rate Mr. Mitchell would, the first leisure day, come over to St. Herbert’s with her, and inspect. He did not fly off at the first hint of Mr. Mauleverer’s “opinions,” but said he would talk to him, and thereby rose steps untold in Rachel’s estimation. The fact of change is dangerously pleasant to the human mind; Mr. Mitchell walked at once into popularity, and Lady Temple had almost conferred a public benefit by what she so little liked to remember. At any rate she had secured an unexceptionable companion, and many a time resorted to his wing, leaving Bessie to amuse Lord Keith, who seemed to be reduced to carry on his courtship to the widow by attentions to her guest.

CHAPTER XIII. THE FOX AND THE CROW

 
“She just gave one squall,
  When the cheese she let fall,
  And the fox ran away with his prize.”
 

JANE TAYLOR.

“My dear,” said Mrs. Curtis, one Monday morning, “I offered Colonel Keith a seat in the carriage to go to the annual book-club meeting with us. Mr. Spicer is going to propose him as a member of the club, you know, and I thought the close carriage would be better for him. I suppose you will be ready by eleven; we ought to set out by that time, not to hurry the horses.”

“I am not going,” returned Rachel, an announcement that electrified her auditors, for the family quota of books being quite insufficient for her insatiable appetite, she was a subscriber on her own account, and besides, this was the grand annual gathering for disposing of old books, when she was relied on for purchasing all the nuts that nobody else would crack. The whole affair was one of the few social gatherings that she really tolerated and enjoyed, and her mother gazed at her in amazement.

“I wrote to Mrs. Spicer a month ago to take my name off. I have no superfluous money to spend on my selfish amusement.”

“But Rachel,” said Grace, “did you not particularly want—oh! that fat red book which came to us uncut?”

“I did, but I must do without it.”

“Poor Mr. Spicer, he reckoned on you to take it; indeed, he thought you had promised him.”

“If there is anything like a promise, I suppose it must be done, but I do not believe there is. I trust to you, Grace, you know I have nothing to waste.”

“You had better go yourself, my dear, and then you would be able to judge. It would be more civil by the society, too.”

“No matter, indeed I cannot; in fact, Mr. Mauleverer is coming this morning to give his report and arrange our building plans. I want to introduce him to Mr. Mitchell, and fix a day for going over.”

Mrs. Curtis gave up in despair, and consulted her eldest daughter in private whether there could have been any misunderstanding with Colonel Keith to lead Rachel to avoid him in a manner that was becoming pointed. Grace deemed it nothing but absorption into the F. U. E. E., and poor Mrs. Curtis sighed over this fleeting away of her sole chance of seeing Rachel like other people. Of Mr. Mauleverer personally she had no fears, he was in her eyes like a drawing or music-master, and had never pretended to be on equal terms in society with her daughters, and she had no doubts or scruples in leaving Rachel to her business interview with him, though she much regretted this further lapse from the ordinary paths of sociability.

Rachel, on the other hand, felt calmly magnanimous in the completion of a veritable sacrifice, for those books had afforded her much enjoyment, and she would much like to have possessed many of those that would be tossed aside at a cheap rate. But the constant small expenses entailed by the first setting on foot such an establishment as the F. U. E. E. were a heavy drain on her private purse, as she insisted on all accounts being brought to her, and then could not bear that these small nondescript matters should be charged upon the general fund, which having already paid the first half-year’s rent in advance, and furnished the house, must be recruited by some extraordinary supply before she could build. The thing could not be done at all but by rigid economy, and she was ready to exercise it, and happy in so doing. And the Colonel? She thought the pain of her resolution was passing. After all, it was not so dreadful as people would have one believe, it was no such wrench as novels described to make up one’s mind to prefer a systematically useful life to an agreeable man.

Mr. Mauleverer came, with a good report of the children’s progress, and talking quite enthusiastically of Lovedy’s sweetness and intelligence. Perhaps she would turn out a superior artist, now that chill penury no longer repressed her noble rage, and he further brought a small demand for drawing materials and blocks for engraving, to the amount of five pounds, which Rachel defrayed from the general fund, but sighed over its diminution.

“If I could only make the Barnaby bargain available,” she said; “it is cruel to have it tied up to mere apprenticeships, which in the present state of things are absolutely useless, or worse.”

“Can nothing be done?”

“You shall hear. Dame Rachel Curtis, in 1605, just when this place was taking up lace-making, an art learnt, I believe, from some poor nuns that were turned out of St. Mary’s, at Avoncester, thought she did an immense benefit to the place by buying the bit of land known as Burnaby’s Bargain, and making the rents go yearly to apprentice two poor girls born of honest parents. The rent is fourteen pounds, and so the fees are so small that only the small lace-makers here will accept them. I cannot get the girls apprenticed to anything better in the towns except for a much larger premium.”

“Do I understand you that such a premium is at present to be bestowed?”

“No, not till next June. The two victims for this year have been sacrificed. But perhaps another time it might be possible to bind them to you as a wood engraver or printer!” cried Rachel, joyfully.

“I should be most happy. But who would be the persons concerned?”

“The trustees are the representative of our family and the rector of the parish—not Mr. Touchett (this is only a district), but poor old Mr. Linton at Avonbridge, who is barely able to sign the papers, so that practically it all comes to me.”

“Extremely fortunate for the objects of the charity.”

“I wish it were so; but if it could only be made available in such a cause as ours, I am sure my good namesake’s intentions would be much better carried out than by binding these poor girls down to their cushions. I did once ask about it, but I was told it could only be altered by Act of Parliament.”

“Great facilities have of late been given,” said Mr. Mauleverer, “many old endowments have most beneficially extended their scope. May I ask where the land in question is?”

“It is the level bit of meadow just by the river, and all the slope down to the mouth; it has always been in our hands, and paid rent as part of the farm. You know how well it looks from the garden-seat, but it always grieves me when people admire it, for I feel as if it were thrown away.”

“Ah! I understand. Perhaps if I could see the papers I could judge of the feasibility of some change.”

Rachel gladly assented, and knowing where to find the keys of the strong box, she returned in a short space with a parcel tied up with, red tape, and labelled “Barnaby’s Bargain.”

“I have been thinking,” she exclaimed, as she came in, “that that piece of land must have grown much more valuable since this rent was set on it! Fourteen pounds a year, why we never thought of it; but surely in such a situation, it would be worth very much more for building purposes.”

“There can be no doubt. But your approach, Miss Curtis?”

“If it is a matter of justice to the charity, of course that could not be weighed a moment. But we must consider what is to be done. Get the land valued, and pay rent for it accordingly? I would give it up to its fate, and let it for what it would bring, but it would break my mother’s heart to see it built on.”

“Perhaps I had better take the papers and look over them. I see they will need much consideration.”

“Very well, that will be the best way, but we will say nothing about it till we have come to some conclusion, or we shall only startle and distress my mother. After all, then, I do believe we have the real income of the F. U. E. E. within our very hands! It might be ten times what it is now.”

Rachel was in higher spirits than ever. To oblige the estate to pay £140 a year to the F. U. E. E. was beyond measure delightful, and though it would be in fact only taking out of the family pocket, yet that was a pocket she could not otherwise get at. The only thing for which she was sorry was that Mr. Mauleverer had an appointment, and could not come with her to call on Mr. Mitchell; but instead of this introduction, as she had sworn herself to secrecy rather than worry her mother till the ways and means were matured, she resolved, by way of compensation, upon going down to impart to Ermine Williams this grave reformation of abuses, since this was an afternoon when there was no chance of meeting the Colonel.

Very happy did she feel in the hope that had come to crown her efforts at the very moment when she had actually and tangibly given up a pleasure, and closed a door opening into worldly life, and she was walking along with a sense of almost consecrated usefulness, to seek her companion in the path of maiden devotion, when in passing the gates of Myrtlewood, she was greeted by Captain Keith and his bright-eyed sister, just coming forth together.

A few words told that they were all bound for Mackarel Lane, actuated by the same probability of finding Miss Williams alone, the Colonel being absent.

“Wonderfully kind to her he is,” said Rachel, glad to praise him to convince herself that she did not feel bitter; “he takes that little girl out walking with him every morning.”

“I wonder if his constancy will ever be rewarded?” said Bessie, lightly; then, as Rachel looked at her in wonder and almost rebuke for so direct and impertinent a jest, she exclaimed, “Surely you are not in ignorance! What have I done? I thought all the world knew—all the inner world, that is, that revels in a secret.”

“Knew what?” said Rachel, unavoidable intolerable colour rushing into her face.

“Why the romance of Colin and Ermine! To live on the verge of such a—a tragi-comedy, is it? and not be aware of it, I do pity you.”

“The only wonder is how you knew it,” said her brother, in a tone of repression.

“I! Oh, it is a fine thing to be a long-eared little pitcher when one’s elders imagine one hears nothing but what is addressed to oneself. There I sat, supposed to be at my lessons, when the English letters came in, and I heard papa communicating to mamma how he had a letter from old Lord Keith—not this one but one older still—the father of him—about his son’s exchange—wanted papa to know that he was exemplary and all that, and hoped he would be kind to him, but just insinuated that leave was not desirable—in fact it was to break off an affair at home. And then, while I was all on fire to see what a lover looked like, comes another letter, this time to mamma, from Lady Alison something, who could not help recommending to her kindness her dear nephew Colin, going out broken-hearted at what was feared would prove a fatal accident, to the dearest, noblest girl in the world, for so she must call Ermine Williams. Ermine was a name to stick in one’s memory if Williams was not, and so I assumed sufficient certainty to draw it all out of dear Lady Temple.”

“She knows then?” said Rachel, breathlessly, but on her guard.

“Know? Yes, or she could hardly make such a brother of the Colonel. In fact, I think it is a bit of treachery to us all to keep such an affair concealed, don’t you?” with a vivid flash out of the corner of her eyes.

“Treachery not to post up a list of all one’s—”

“One’s conquests?” said Bessie, snatching the word out of her brother’s mouth. “Did you ever hear a more ingenious intimation of the number one has to boast?”

“Only in character,” calmly returned Alick.

“But do not laugh,” said Rachel, who had by this time collected herself; “if this is so, it must be far too sad and melancholy to be laughed about.”

“So it is,” said Alick, with a tone of feeling. “It has been a mournful business from the first, and I do not see how it is to end.”

“Why, I suppose Colonel Colin is his own master now,” said Bessie; “and if he has no objection I do not see who else can make any.”

“There are people in the world who are what Tennyson calls ‘selfless,’” returned Alick.

“Then the objection comes from her?” said Rachel, anxiously.

“So saith Lady Temple,” returned Bessie.

They were by this time in Mackarel Lane. Rachel would have given much to have been able to turn back and look this strange news in the face, but consciousness and fear of the construction that might be put on her change of purpose forced her on, and in a few moments the three were in the little parlour, where Ermine’s station was now by the fire. There could be no doubt, as Rachel owned to herself instantly, that there was a change since she first had studied that face. The bright colouring, and far more, the active intellect and lively spirit, had always obviated any expression of pining or invalidism; but to the air of cheerfulness was added a look of freshened health and thorough happiness, that rendered the always striking features absolutely beautiful; more so, perhaps, than in their earliest bloom; and the hair and dress, though always neat, and still as simply arranged as possible, had an indescribable air of care and taste that added to the effect of grace and pleasantness, and made Rachel feel convinced in a moment that the wonder would have been not in constancy to such a creature but in inconstancy. The notion that any one could turn from that brilliant, beaming, refined face to her own, struck her with a sudden humiliation. There was plenty of conversation, and her voice was not immediately wanted; indeed, she hardly attended to what was passing, and really dreaded outstaying the brother and sister. When Ermine turned to her, and asked after Lovedy Kelland in her new home, she replied like one in a dream, then gathered herself up and answered to the point, but feeling the restraint intolerable, soon rose to take leave.

“So soon?” said Ermine; “I have not seen you for a long time.”

“I—I was afraid of being in the way,” said Rachel, the first time probably that such a fear had ever suggested itself to her, and blushing as Ermine did not blush.

“We are sure to be alone after twilight,” said Ermine, “if that is not too late for you, but I know you are much occupied now.”

Somehow that invalid in her chair had the dignity of a queen appointing her levee, and Rachel followed the impulse of thanking and promising, but then quickly made her escape to her own thoughts.

“Her whole soul is in that asylum,” said Ermine, smiling as she went. “I should like to hear that it is going on satisfactorily, but she does not seem to have time even to talk.”

“The most wonderful consummation of all,” observed Bessie.

“No,” said Ermine, “the previous talk was not chatter, but real effervescence from the unsatisfied craving for something to do.”

“And has she anything to do now?” said Bessie.

“That is exactly what I want to know. It would be a great pity if all this real self-devotion were thrown away.”

“It cannot be thrown away,” said Alick.

“Not on herself,” said Ermine, “but one would not see it misdirected, both for the waste of good energy and the bitter disappointment.”

“Well,” said Bessie, “I can’t bear people to be so dreadfully in earnest!”

“You are accountable for the introduction, are not you?” said Ermine.

“I’m quite willing! I think a good downfall plump would be the most wholesome thing that could happen to her; and besides, I never told her to take the man for her almoner and counsellor! I may have pointed to the gulf, but I never bade Curtia leap into it.”

“I wish there were any one to make inquiries about this person,” said Ermine; “but when Colonel Keith came it was too late. I hoped she might consult him, but she has been so much absorbed that she really has never come in his way.”

“She would never consult any one,” said Bessie.

“I am not sure of that,” replied Ermine. “I think that her real simplicity is what makes her appear so opinionated. I verily believe that there is a great capability of humility at the bottom.”

“Of the gulf,” laughed Bessie; but her brother said, “Quite true. She has always been told she is the clever woman of the family, and what can she do but accept the position?”

“Exactly,” said Ermine; “every one has given way to her, and, of course, she walks over their bodies, but there is something so noble about her that I cannot but believe that she will one day shake herself clear of her little absurdities.”

“That is contrary to the usual destiny of strong-minded women,” said Bessie.

“She is not a strong-minded woman, she only has been made to believe herself one,” said Ermine, warmly.

With this last encounter, Bessie and her brother took leave, and the last at once exclaimed, in sentimental tones, “Generous rivals! I never saw so good a comedy in all my days! To disclose the fatal truth, and then bring the rival fair ones face to face!”

“If that were your belief, Bessie, the demon of teasing has fuller possession of you than I knew.”

“Ah! I forgot,” exclaimed Bessie, “it is tender ground with you likewise. Alas! Alick, sisterly affection cannot blind me to the fact of that unrequited admiration for your honourable rival.”

“What, from the strong-minded Curtia?”

“Ah! but have we not just heard that this is not the genuine article, only a country-made imitation? No wonder it was not proof against an honourable colonel in a brown beard.”

“So much the better; only unluckily there has been a marked avoidance of him.”

“Yes; the Colonel was sacrificed with all other trivial incidents at the shrine of the F. U. L. E.—E. E., I mean. And only think of finding out that one has been sacrificing empty air after all—and to empty air!”

“Better than to sacrifice everything to oneself,” said Alick.

“Not at all. The latter practice is the only way to be agreeable! By-the-bye, Alick, I wonder if she will deign to come to the ball?”

“What ball?”

“Your ball at Avoncester. It is what I am staying on for! Major McDonald all but promised me one; and you know you must give one before you leave this place.”

“Don’t you know that poor Fraser has just been sent for home on his sister’s death?”

“But I conclude the whole regiment does not go into mourning?”

“No, but Fraser is the one fellow to whom this would be real enjoyment. Indeed, I particularly wish no hints may be given about it. Don’t deny, I know you have ways of bringing about what you wish, and I will not have them used here. I know something of the kind must be done before we leave Avoncester, but to give one this autumn would be much sooner than needful. I believe there is hardly an officer but myself and Fraser to whom the expense would not be a serious consideration, and when I tell you my father had strong opinions about overdoing reciprocities of gaiety, and drawing heavily on the officers’ purses for them, I do not think you will allow their regard for him to take that manifestation towards you.”

“Of course not,” said Bessie, warmly; “I will not think of it again. Only when the fate does overtake you, you will have me here for it, Alick?”

He readily promised, feeling gratified at the effect of having spoken to his sister with full recognition of her good sense.

Meantime Rachel was feeling something of what Bessie ascribed to her, as if her sacrifice had been snatched away, and a cloud placed in its stead. Mortification was certainly present, and a pained feeling of having been made a fool of, whether by the Colonel or herself, her candid mind could hardly decide; but she was afraid it was by herself. She knew she had never felt sure enough of his attentions to do more than speculate on what she would do if they should become more pointed, and yet she felt angry and sore at having been exposed to so absurd a blunder by the silence of the parties concerned. “After all,” she said to herself, “there can be no great harm done, I have not been weak enough to commit my heart to the error. I am unscathed, and I will show it by sympathy for Ermine. Only—only, why could not she have told me?”

An ordeal was coming for which Rachel was thus in some degree prepared. On the return of the party from the book club, Mrs. Curtis came into Rachel’s sitting-room, and hung lingering over the fire as if she had something to say, but did not know how to begin. At last, however, she said, “I do really think it is very unfair, but it was not his fault, he says.”

“Who?” said Rachel, dreamily.

“Why, Colonel Keith, my dear,” said good Mrs. Curtis, conceiving that her pronominal speech had “broken” her intelligence; “it seems we were mistaken in him all this time.”

“What, about Miss Williams?” said Rachel, perceiving how the land lay; “how did you hear it?”

“You knew it, my dear child,” cried her mother in accents of extreme relief.

“Only this afternoon, from Bessie Keith.”

“And Fanny knew it all this time,” continued Mrs. Curtis. “I cannot imagine how she could keep it from me, but it seems Miss Williams was resolved it should not be known. Colonel Keith said he felt it was wrong to go on longer without mentioning it, and I could not but say that it would have been a great relief to have known it earlier.”

“As far as Fanny was concerned it would,” said Rachel, looking into the fire, but not without a sense of rehabilitating satisfaction, as the wistful looks and tone of her mother convinced her that this semi-delusion had not been confined to herself.

“I could not help being extremely sorry for him when he was telling me,” continued Mrs. Curtis, as much resolved against uttering the idea as Rachel herself could be. “It has been such a very long attachment, and now he says he has not yet been able to overcome her scruples about accepting him in her state. It is quite right of her, I can’t say but it is, but it is a very awkward situation.”

“I do not see that,” said Rachel, feeling the need of decision in order to reassure her mother; “it is very sad and distressing in some ways, but no one can look at Miss Williams without seeing that his return has done her a great deal of good; and whether they marry or not, one can only be full of admiration and respect for them.”

“Yes, yes,” faltered Mrs. Curtis; “only I must say I think it was due to us to have mentioned it sooner.”

“Not at all, mother. Fanny knew it, and it was nobody’s concern but hers. Pray am I to have Owen’s ‘Palaeontology’?”

“No, Colonel Keith bought that, and some more of the solid books. My dear, he is going to settle here; he tells me he has actually bought that house he and his brother are in.”

“Bought it!”

“Yes; he says, any way, his object is to be near Miss Williams. Well, I cannot think how it is to end, so near the title as he is, and her sister a governess, and then that dreadful business about her brother, and the little girl upon her hands. Dear me, I wish Fanny had any one else for a governess.”

“So do not I,” said Rachel. “I have the greatest possible admiration for Ermine Williams, and I do not know which I esteem most, her for her brave, cheerful, unrepining unselfishness, or him for his constancy and superiority to all those trumpery considerations. I am glad to have the watching of them. I honour them both.”

Yes, and Rachel honoured herself still more for being able to speak all this freely and truly out of the innermost depths of her candid heart.

CHAPTER XIV. THE GOWANBRAE BALL

 
              “Your honour’s pardon,
I’d rather have my wounds to heal again,
Than hear say how I got them.”
 

—Coriolanus.

“Yes, I go the week after next.”

“So soon? I thought you were to stay for our ball.”

“Till this time next year! No, no, I can’t quite do that, thank you.”

“This very winter.”

“Oh, no—no such thing! Why, half the beauty and fashion of the neighbourhood is not come into winter quarters yet. Besides, the very essence of a military ball is that it should be a parting—the brightest and the last. Good morning.”

And Meg’s head, nothing loth, was turned away from the wide view of the broad vale of the Avon, with the Avoncester Cathedral towers in the midst, and the moors rising beyond in purple distance. The two young lieutenants could only wave their farewells, as Bessie cantered merrily over the soft smooth turf of the racecourse, in company with Lord Keith, the Colonel, and Conrade.

“Do you not like dancing?” inquired Lord Keith, when the canter was over, and they were splashing through a lane with high hedges.

“I’m not so unnatural,” returned Bessie, with a merry smile, “but it would never do to let the Highlanders give one now. Alick has been telling me that the expense would fall seriously on a good many of them.”

“True,” said Colonel Keith, “too many fetes come to be a heavy tax.”

“That is more consideration than is common in so young a lad,” added Lord Keith.

“Yes, but dear Alick is so full of consideration,” said the sister, eagerly. “He does not get half the credit for it that he deserves, because, you know, he is so quiet and reserved, and has that unlucky ironical way with him that people don’t like; especially rattlepates like those,” pointing with her whip in the direction of the two young officers.

“It is a pity,” said the Colonel, “it lessens his influence. And it is strange I never perceived it before his return to England.”

“Oh! there’s much owing to the habitual languor of that long illness. That satirical mumble is the only trouble he will take to lift up his testimony, except when a thing is most decidedly his duty, and then he does it as England expects.”

“And he considered it his duty to make you decline this ball?” said Lord Keith.

“Oh, not his more than mine,” said Bessie. “I don’t forget that I am the Colonel’s daughter.”

No more was said on that occasion, but three days after cards were going about the county with invitations from Lord Keith to an evening party, with “Dancing.” Lord Keith averred, with the full concurrence of his brother, that he owed many civilities to the ladies of the neighbourhood, and it was a good time to return them when he could gratify the young kinswoman who had showed such generous forbearance about the regimental ball. It was no unfavourable moment either, when he had his brother to help him, for the ordering of balls had been so much a part of Colin’s staff duties, that it came quite naturally to him, especially with Coombe within reach to assist. There was some question whether the place should be the public rooms or Gowanbrae, but Bessie’s vote decided on the latter, in consideration of the Colonel’s chest. She was rather shocked, while very grateful, at the consequences of the little conversation on the hill top, but she threw herself into all the counsels with bright, ardent pleasure, though carefully refraining from any presumption that she was queen of the evening.

Lady Temple received an invitation, but never for one moment thought of going, or even supposed that any one could imagine she could. Indeed, if she had accepted it, it would have been a decisive encouragement to her ancient suitor, and Colin saw that he regarded her refusal, in its broad black edges, as a further clenching of the reply to his addresses.

Bessie was to be chaperoned by Mrs. Curtis. As to Rachel, she had resolved against youthful gaieties for this winter and all others, but she felt that to show any reluctance to accept the Keith invitation might be a contradiction to her indifference to the Colonel, and so construed by her mother, Grace, and Bessie. So all she held out for was, that as she had no money to spend upon adornments, her blue silk dinner dress, and her birthday wreath, should and must do duty; and as to her mother’s giving her finery, she was far too impressive and decided for Mrs. Curtis to venture upon such presumption. She was willing to walk through her part for an evening, and indeed the county was pretty well accustomed to Miss Rachel Curtis’s ball-room ways, and took them as a matter of course.

Gowanbrae had two drawing-rooms with folding doors between, quite practicable for dancing, and the further one ending in a conservatory, that likewise extended along the end of the entrance hall and dining-room. The small library, where Colonel Keith usually sat, became the cloak-room, and contained, when Mrs. Curtis and her daughters arrived, so large a number of bright cashmere cloaklets, scarlet, white, and blue, that they began to sigh prospectively at the crowd which, Mrs. Curtis would have encountered with such joyful valour save for that confidence on the way home from the book club.

They were little prepared for the resources of a practised staff-officer. Never had a ball even to them looked so well arranged, or in such thorough style, as a little dexterous arrangement of flowers, lights, and sofas, and rendered those two rooms. The two hosts worked extremely well. Lord Keith had shaken off much of his careless stoop and air of age, and there was something in his old-world polish and his Scotch accent that gave a sort of romance to the manner of his reception. His brother, with his fine brow, and thoughtful eyes, certainly appeared to Rachel rather thrown away as master of the ceremonies, but whatever he did, he always did in the quietest and best way, and receptions had been a part of his vocation, so that he infused a wonderful sense of ease, and supplied a certain oil of good breeding that made everything move suavely. Young ladies in white, and mothers in all the colours of the rainbow, were there in plenty, and, by Bessie’s special command, the scene was enlivened by the Highland uniform, with the graceful tartan scarf fastened across the shoulder with the Bruce brooch.

Rachel had not been long in the room before she was seized on by Emily Grey, an enthusiastic young lady of the St. Norbert’s neighbourhood, whom she met seldom, but was supposed to know intimately.

“And they say you have the hero here—the Victoria Cross man—and that you know him. You must show him to me, and get me introduced.”

“There is no Victoria Cross man here,” said Rachel, coldly. “Colonel Keith did not have one.”

“Oh, no, I don’t mean Colonel Keith, but Captain Alexander Keith, quite a young man. Oh, I am sure you remember the story—you were quite wild about it—of his carrying the lighted shell out of the hospital tent; and they told me he was always over here, and his sister staying with Lady Temple.”

“I know Captain Alexander Keith,” said Rachel, slowly; “but you must be mistaken, I am certain I should know if he had a Victoria Cross.”

“It is very odd; Charlie told me it was the same,” said Miss Grey, who, like all others, was forced to bend to Rachel’s decisive manner.

“Scottish names are very common,” said Rachel, and at that moment a partner came and carried Emily off.

But as Rachel stood still, an odd misgiving seized her, a certain doubt whether upon the tall lazy figure that was leaning against a wall nearly opposite to her, talking to another officer, she did not see something suspiciously bronze and eight-pointed that all did not wear. There was clearly a medal, though with fewer clasps than some owned; but what else was there? She thought of the lecture on heroism she had given to him, and felt hot all over. Behold, he was skirting the line of chaperons, and making his way towards their party. The thing grew more visible, and she felt more disconcerted than ever had been her lot before; but escape there was none, here he was shaking hands.

“You don’t polk?” he said to her. “In fact, you regard all this as a delusion of weak minds. Then, will you come and have some tea?”

Rachel took his arm, still bewildered, and when standing before him with the tea-cup in her hand, she interrupted something he was saying, she knew not what, with, “That is not the Victoria Cross?”

“Then it is, like all the rest, a delusion,” he answered, in his usual impassive manner.

“And gained,” she continued, “by saving the lives of all those officers, the very thing I told you about!”

“You told me that man was killed.”

“Then it was not you!”

“Perhaps they picked up the pieces of the wrong one.”

“But if you would only tell me how you gained it.”

“By the pursuit of conchology.”

“Then it was yourself?” again said Rachel, in her confusion.

“If I be I as I suppose I be,” he replied, giving her his arm again, and as they turned towards the conservatory, adding, “Many such things have happened, and I did not know whether you meant this.”

“That was the reason you made so light of it.”

“What, because I thought it was somebody else?”

“No, the contrary reason; but I cannot understand why you let me go on without telling me.”

“I never interfere when a story is so perfect in itself.”

“But is my story perfect in itself?” said Rachel, “or is it the contrary?”

“No one knows less of the particulars than I do,” he answered. “I think your version was that it was an hospital tent that the shell came into. It was not that, but a bungalow, which was supposed to be out of range. It stood on a bit of a slope, and I thought I should have been able to kick the shell down before it had time to do mischief.”

“But you picked it up, and took it to the door—I mean, did you?” said Rachel, who was beginning to discover that she must ask Alick Keith a direct question, if she wished to get an answer, and she received a gesture of assent.

“I was very blind,” she said, humbly, “and now I have gone and insisted to poor Emily Grey that you never did any such thing.”

“Thank you,” he said; “it was the greatest kindness you could do me.”

“Ah! your sister said you had the greatest dislike to hero worship.”

“A natural sense of humbug,” he said. “I don’t know why they gave me this,” he added, touching his cross, “unless it was that one of the party in the bungalow had a turn for glorifying whatever happened to himself. Plenty of more really gallant things happened every day, and were never heard of, and I, who absolutely saw next to nothing of the campaign, have little right to be decorated.”

“Ah!” said Rachel, thoughtfully, “I have always wondered whether one would be happier for having accomplished an act of heroism.”

“I do not know,” said Alick, thoughtfully; then, as Rachel looked up with a smile of amazement, “Oh, you mean this; but it was mere self-preservation. I could hardly even have bolted, for I was laid up with fever, and was very shaky on my legs.”

“I suppose, however,” said Rachel, “that the vision of one’s life in entering the army would be to win that sort of distinction, and so young.”

“Win it as some have done,” said Alick, “and deserve what is far better worth than distinction. That may be the dream, but, after all, it is the discipline and constant duty that make the soldier, and are far more really valuable than exceptional doings.”

“People must always be ready for them, though,” said Rachel.

“And they are,” said Alick, with grave exultation in his tone.

Then, after a pause, she led back the conversation to its personal character, by saying. “Do you mean that the reception of this cross was no gratification to you?”

“No, I am not so absurd,” he replied, but he added sadly, “That was damped quite otherwise. The news that I was named for it came almost in the same breath with that of my father’s death, and he had not heard I was to receive it.”

“Ah! I can understand.”

“And you can see how intolerable was the fuss my good relations made with me just when the loss was fresh on me, and with that of my two chief friends, among my brother officers, fellows beside whom I was nobody, and there was my uncle’s blindness getting confirmed. Was not that enough to sicken one with being stuck up for a lion, and constantly poked up by the showwoman, under pretext of keeping up one’s spirits!”

“And you were—I mean were you—too ill to escape?”

“I was less able to help myself than Miss Williams is. There had been a general smash of all the locomotive machinery on this side, and the wretched monster could do nothing but growl at his visitors.”

“Should you growl very much if I introduced you to Emily Grey? You see it is a matter of justice and truth to tell her now, after having contradicted her so flatly. I will wait to let you get out of the way first if you like, but I think that would be unkind to her; and if you ever do dance, I wish you would dance with her.”

“With all my heart,” he answered.

“Oh, thank you,” said Rachel, warmly.

He observed with some amusement Rachel’s utter absence of small dexterities, and of even the effort to avoid the humiliation of a confession of her error. Miss Grey and a boy partner had wandered into the conservatory, and were rather dismally trying to seem occupied with the camellias when Rachel made her way to them, and though he could not actually hear the words, he knew pretty well what they were. “Emily, you were right after all, and I was mistaken,” and then as he drew near, “Miss Grey, Captain Keith wishes to be introduced to you.”

It had been a great shock to Rachel’s infallibility, and as she slowly began working her way in search of her mother, after observing the felicity of Emily’s bright eyes, she fell into a musing on the advantages of early youth in its indiscriminating powers of enthusiasm for anything distinguished for anything, and that sense of self-exaltation in any sort of contact with a person who had been publicly spoken of. “There is genuine heroism in him,” thought Rachel, “but it is just in what Emily would never appreciate—it is in the feeling that he could not help doing as he did; the half-grudging his reward to himself because other deeds have passed unspoken. I wonder whether his ironical humour would allow him to see that Mr. Mauleverer is as veritable a hero in yielding hopes of consideration, prospects, honours, to his sense of truth and uprightness. If he would only look with an unprejudiced eye, I know he would be candid.”

“Are you looking for Mrs. Curtis?” said Colonel Keith. “I think she is in the other room.”

“Not particularly, thank you,” said Rachel, and she was surprised to find how glad she was to look up freely at him.

“Would it be contrary to your principles or practice to dance with me?”

“To my practice,” she said smilingly, “so let us find my mother. Is Miss Alison Williams here? I never heard whether it was settled that she should come,” she added, resolved both to show him her knowledge of his situation, and to let her mother see her at her ease with him.

“No, she was obstinate, though her sister and I did our utmost to persuade her, and the boys were crazy to make her go.”

“I can’t understand your wishing it.”

“Not as an experience of life? Alison never went to anything in her girlhood, but devoted herself solely to her sister, and it would be pleasant to see her begin her youth.”

“Not as a mere young lady!” exclaimed Rachel.

“That is happily not possible.”

An answer that somewhat puzzled Rachel, whose regard for him was likely to be a good deal dependent upon his contentment with Alison’s station in life.

“I must say young ladyhood looks to the greatest advantage there,” Rachel could not help exclaiming, as at that moment Elizabeth Keith smiled at them, as she floated past, her airy white draperies looped with scarlet ribbons; her dark hair turned back and fastened by a snood of the same, an eagle’s feather clasped in it by a large emerald, a memory of her father’s last siege—that of Lucknow.

“She is a very pretty creature,” said the Colonel, under the sparkle of her bright eyes.

“I never saw any one make the pursuits of young ladyhood have so much spirit and meaning,” added Rachel. “Here you see she has managed to make herself sufficiently like other people, yet full of individual character and meaning.”

“That is the theory of dress, I suppose,” said the Colonel.

“If one chooses to cultivate it.”

“Did you ever see Lady Temple in full dress?”

“No; we were not out when we parted as girls.”

“Then you have had a loss. I think it was at our last Melbourne ball, that when she went to the nursery to wish the children good night, one of them—Hubert, I believe—told her to wear that dress when she went to heaven, and dear old Sir Stephen was so delighted that he went straight upstairs to kiss the boy for it.”

“Was that Lady Temple?” said Alick Keith, who having found Miss Grey engaged many deep, joined them again, and at his words came back a thrill of Rachel’s old fear and doubt as to the possible future.

“Yes,” said the Colonel; “I was recollecting the gracious vision she used to be at all our chief’s parties.”

“Vision, you call her, who lived in the house with her? What do you think she was to us—poor wretches—coming up from barracks where Mrs. O’Shaughnessy was our cynosure? There was not one of us to whom she was not Queen of the East, and more, with that innocent, soft, helpless dignity of hers!”

“And Sir Stephen for the first of her vassals,” said the Colonel.

“What a change it has been!” said Alick.

“Yes; but a change that has shown her to have been unspoilable. We were just agreeing on the ball-room perfections of her and your sister in their several lines.”

“Very different lines,” said Alick, smiling.

“I can’t judge of Fanny’s,” said Rachel, “but your sister is almost enough to make one believe there can be some soul in young lady life.”

“I did not bring Bessie here to convert you,” was the somewhat perplexing answer.

“Nor has she,” said Rachel, “except so far as I see that she can follow ordinary girls’ pursuits without being frivolous in them.” Alick bowed at the compliment.

“And she has been a sunbeam,” added Rachel, “we shall all feel graver and cloudier without her.”

“Yes,” said Colonel Keith, “and I am glad Mr. Clare has such a sunbeam for his parsonage. What a blessing she will be there!” he added, as he watched Bessie’s graceful way of explaining to his brother some little matter in behalf of the shy mother of a shy girl. Thinking he might be wanted, Colonel Keith went forward to assist, and Rachel continued, “I do envy that power of saying the right thing to everybody!”

“Don’t—it is the greatest snare,” was his answer, much amazing her, for she had her mind full of the two direct personal blunders she had made towards him.

“It prevents many difficulties and embarrassments.”

“Very desirable things.”

“Yes; for those that like to laugh, but not for those that are laughed at,” said Rachel.

“More so; the worst of all misfortunes is to wriggle too smoothly through life.”

This was to Rachel the most remarkable part of the evening; as to the rest, it was like all other balls, a weariness: Grace enjoying herself and her universal popularity, always either talking or dancing, and her mother comfortable and dutiful among other mothers; the brilliant figure and ready grace of Bessie Keith being the one vision that perpetually flitted in her dreams, and the one ever-recurring recollection that Captain Keith, the veritable hero of the shell, had been lectured by her on his own deed! In effect Rachel had never felt so beaten down and ashamed of herself; so doubtful of her own most positive convictions, and yet not utterly dissatisfied, and the worst of it was that Emily Grey was after all carried off without dancing with the hero; and Rachel felt as if her own opinionativeness had defrauded the poor girl.

Other balls sent her home in a state of weariness, disgust, and contempt towards every one, but this one had resulted in displeasure with herself, yet in much interest and excitement; and, oh, passing strange! through that same frivolous military society.

Indeed the military society was soon in better odour with her than the clerical. She had been making strenuous efforts to get to St. Herbert’s, with Mr. Mitchell, for some time past, but the road was in a state of being repaired, and the coachman was determined against taking his horses there. As to going by train, that was equally impossible, since he would still less have driven her to the station, finally, Rachel took the resolute stop of borrowing Fanny’s pony carriage, and driving herself and the clergyman to the station, where she was met by Mrs. Morris, the mother of one of the girls, to whom she had promised such a visit, as it had been agreed that it would be wisest not to unsettle the scholars by Christmas holidays.

The F. U. E. E. was in perfect order; the little girls sat upon a bench with their copies before them, Mrs. Rawlins in the whitest of caps presided over them, and Mr. Mauleverer was very urbane, conducting the visitors over the house himself, and expatiating on his views of cleanliness, ventilation, refinement, and equality of cultivation, while Mrs. Rawlins remained to entertain Mrs. Morris. Nothing could be more practical and satisfactory; some admirable drawings of the children’s were exhibited, and their conduct was said to be excellent; except, Mr. Mauleverer remarked unwillingly, that there was a tendency about little Mary to fancy herself injured, and he feared that she was not always truthful; but these were childish faults, that he hoped would pass away with further refinement, and removal from the lower influences of her home.

After this, Rachel was not surprised that poor, ignorant, and always deplorable Mrs. Morris did not seem in raptures with the state of her child, but more inclined to lament not having seen more of her, and not having her at home. That was quite in accordance with peasant shortsightedness and ingratitude, but it was much more disappointing that Mr. Mitchell said little or nothing of approbation; asked her a few questions about her previous knowledge of Mr. Mauleverer and Mrs. Rawlins, and when she began to talk of arranging for some one or two of his London orphans, thanked her rather shortly, but said there was no way of managing it. It was evident that he was quite as prejudiced as others of his clerical brethren, and the more Rachel read of current literature, the more she became convinced of their bondage to views into which they durst not examine, for fear honesty should compel them to assert their conclusions.

She had hoped better things from the stranger, but she began to be persuaded that all her former concessions to the principles infused in her early days were vain entanglements, and that it was merely weakness and unwillingness to pain her mother that prevented her from breaking through them.

She could not talk this out with anybody, except now and then an utterance to the consenting Mr. Mauleverer, but in general she would have been shocked to put these surging thoughts into words, and Bessie was her only intimate who would avow that there could be anything to be found fault with in a clergyman. When alone together, Bessie would sometimes regretfully, sometimes in a tone of amusement, go over bits of narrow-minded folly that had struck her in the clergy, and more especially in her uncle’s curate, Mr. Lifford, whose dryness was, she owned, very repulsive to her.

“He is a good creature,” she said, “and most necessary to my uncle, but how he and I are to get through life together, I cannot tell. It must soon be tried, though! After my visit at Bath will come my home at Bishopsworthy!” And then she confided to Rachel all the parish ways, and took counsel on the means of usefulness that would not clash with the curate and pain her uncle. She even talked of a possible orphan for the F. U. E. E., only that unlucky prejudice against Mr. Mauleverer was sure to stand in the way.

So acceptable had Bessie Keith made herself everywhere, that all Avonmouth was grieved at her engagement to spend the winter at Bath with her married cousin, to whom she was imperatively necessary in the getting up of a musical party.

“And I must go some time or other,” she said to Colonel Keith, “so it had better be when you are all here to make Myrtlewood cheerful, and I can be of most use to poor Jane! I do think dear Lady Temple is much more full of life and brightness now!”

Everybody seemed to consider Bessie’s departure as their own personal loss: the boys were in despair for their playfellow, Ermine would miss those sunny visits; Colonel Keith many a pleasant discussion, replete with delicate compliments to Ermine, veiled by tact; and Lord Keith the pretty young clanswoman who had kept up a graceful little coquetry with him, and even to the last evening, went on walking on the esplanade with him in the sunset, so as to set his brother free to avoid the evening chill.

And, above all, Lady Temple regretted the loss of the cheery companion of her evenings. True, Bessie had lately had a good many small evening gaieties, but she always came back from them so fresh and bright, and so full of entertaining description and anecdote, that Fanny felt as if she had been there herself, and, said Bessie, “it was much better for her than staying at home with her, and bringing in no novelty.”

“Pray come to me again, dearest! Your stay has been the greatest treat. It is very kind in you to be so good to me.”

“It is you who are good to me, dearest Lady Temple.”

“I am afraid I shall hardly get you again. Your poor uncle will never be able to part with you, so I won’t ask you to promise, but if ever you can—”

“If ever I can! This has been a very happy time, dear Lady Temple,” a confidence seemed trembling on her lips, but she suppressed it. “I shall always think of you as the kindest friend a motherless girl ever had! I will write to you from Bath. Good-bye—”

And there were all the boys in a row, little affectionate Hubert absolutely tearful, and Conrade holding up a bouquet, on which he had spent all his money, having persuaded Coombe to ride with him to the nursery garden at Avoncester to procure it. He looked absolutely shy and blushing, when Bessie kissed him and promised to dry the leaves and keep them for ever.

CHAPTER XV. GO AND BRAY

 
“Come, come, elder brother, you are too young in this!”—
 

As You Like It

“Alick, I have something to say to you.”

Captain Keith did not choose to let his sister travel alone, when he could help it, and therefore was going to Bath with her, intending to return to Avoncester by the next down train. He made no secret that he thought it a great deal of trouble, and had been for some time asleep, when, at about two stations from Bath, Bessie having shut the little door in the middle of the carriage, thus addressed him, “Alick, I have something to say to you, and I suppose I may as well say it now.”

She pressed upon his knee, and with an affected laziness, he drew his eyes wide open.

“Ah, well, I’ve been a sore plague to you, but I shall be off your hands now.”

“Eh! whose head have you been turning?”

“Alick, what do you think of Lord Keith?”

Alick was awake enough now! “The old ass!” he exclaimed. “But at least you are out of his way now.”

“Not at all. He is coming to Bath to-morrow to see my aunt.”

“And you want me to go out to-morrow and stop him?”

“No, Alick, not exactly. I have been cast about the world too long not to be thankful.”

“Elizabeth!”

“Do not look so very much surprised,” she said, in her sweet pleading way. “May I not be supposed able to feel that noble kindness and gracious manner, and be glad to have some one to look up to?”

“And how about Charlie Carleton?” demanded Alick, turning round full on her.

“For shame, Alick!” she exclaimed hotly; “you who were the one to persecute me about him, and tell me all sorts of things about his being shallow and unprincipled, and not to be thought of, you to bring him up against me now.”

“I might think all you allege,” returned Alick, gravely, “and yet be much amazed at the new project.”

Bessie laughed. “In fact you made a little romance, in which you acted the part of sapient brother, and the poor little sister broke her heart ever after! You wanted such an entertainment when you were lying on the sofa, so you created a heroine and a villain, and thundered down to the rescue.”

“Very pretty, Bessie, but it will not do. It was long after I was well again, and had joined.”

“Then it was the well-considered effect of the musings of your convalescence! When you have a sister to take care of, it is as well to feel that you are doing it.”

“Now, Elizabeth,” said her brother, with seriousness not to be laughed aside, and laying his hand on hers, “before I hear another word on this matter, look me in the face and tell me deliberately that you never cared for Carleton.”

“I never thought for one moment of marrying him,” said Bessie, haughtily. “If I ever had any sort of mercy on him, it was all to tease you. There, are you satisfied?”

“I must be, I suppose,” he replied, and he sighed heavily. “When was this settled?”

“Yesterday, walking up and down the esplanade. He will tell his brother to-day, and I shall write to Lady Temple. Oh, Alick, he is so kind, he spoke so highly of you.”

“I must say,” returned Alick, in the same grave tone, “that if you wished for the care of an old man, I should have thought my uncle the more agreeable of the two.”

“He is little past fifty. You are very hard on him.”

“On the contrary, I am sorry for him. You will always find it good for him to do whatever suits yourself.”

“Alick?” said his sister mournfully, “you have never forgotten or forgiven my girlish bits of neglect after your wound.”

“No, Bessie,” he said, holding her hand kindly, “it is not the neglect or the girlishness, but the excuses to me, still more to my uncle, and most of all to yourself. They are what make me afraid for you in what you are going to take upon yourself.”

She did not answer immediately, and he pursued—“Are you driven to this by dislike to living at Bishopsworthy? If so, do not be afraid to tell me. I will make any arrangement, if you would prefer living with Jane. We agreed once that it would be too expensive, but now I could let you have another hundred a year.”

“As if I would allow that, Alick! No, indeed! Lord Keith means you to have all my share.”

“Does he? There are more words than one to that question. And pray is he going to provide properly for his poor daughter in the West Indies?”

“I hope to induce him to take her into favour.”

“Eh? and to make him give up to Colin Keith that Auchinvar estate that he ought to have had when Archie Keith died?”

“You may be sure I shall do my best for the Colonel. Indeed, I do think Lord Keith will consent to the marriage now.”

“You have sacrificed yourself on that account?” he said, with irony in his tone, that he could have repented the next moment, so good-humoured was her reply, “That is understood, so give me the merit.”

“The merit of, for his sake, becoming a grandmother. You have thought of the daughters? Mrs. Comyn Menteith must be older than yourself.”

“Three years,” said Bessie, in his own tone of acceptance of startling facts, “and I shall have seven grandchildren in all, so you see you must respect me.”

“Do you know her sentiments?”

“I know what they will be when we have met. Never fear, Alick. If she were not married it might be serious, being so, I have no fears.”

Then came a silence, till a halt at the last station before Bath roused Alick again.

“Bessie,” he said, in the low voice the stoppage permitted, “don’t think me unkind. I believe you have waited on purpose to leave me no time for expostulation, and what I have said has sounded the more harsh in consequence.”

“No, Alick,” she said, “you are a kind brother in all but the constructions you put upon my doings. I think it would be better if there were more difference between our ages. You are a young guardian, over anxious, and often morbidly fanciful about me during your illness. I think we shall be happier together when you no longer feel yourself responsible.”

“The tables turned,” muttered Alick.

“I am prepared for misconstruction,” added Bessie. “I know it will be supposed to be the title; the estate it cannot be, for you know how poor a property it is; but I do not mean to care for the world. Your opinion is a different thing, and I thought you would have seen that I could not be insensible to such dignified kindness, and the warmth of a nature that many people think cold.”

“I don’t like set speeches, Bessie.”

“Then believe me, Alick. May I not love the fine old man that has been so kind to me?”

“I hope you do,” said Alick, slowly.

“And you can’t believe it? Not with Lady Temple before you and hers was really an old man.”

“Do not talk of her or Sir Stephen either. No, Bessie,” he added more calmly after a time, “I may be doing great injustice to you both, but I must speak what it is my duty to say. Lord Keith is a hard, self-seeking man, who has been harsh and grasping towards his family, and I verily believe came here bent on marriage, only because his brother was no longer under his tyranny. He may not be harsh to you, because he is past his vigour, and if he really loves you, you have a power of governing; but from what I know of you, I cannot believe in your loving him enough to make such management much better than selfish manoeuvring. Therefore I cannot think this marriage for your real welfare, or be other than bitterly grieved at it. Do not answer, Bessie, but think this over, and if at any time this evening you feel the least doubt of your happiness in this matter, telegraph to me, and I will stop him.”

“Indeed, Alick,” she answered, without anger, “I believe you are very anxious for my good.”

It will readily be believed that Captain Keith received no telegram.

Nevertheless, as soon as his time was his own the next morning, he rode to Avonmouth and sought out the Colonel, not perhaps with very defined hopes of making any change in his sister’s intentions, but feeling that some attempt on his own part must be made, if only to free himself from acquiescence, and thinking that Colin, as late guardian to the one party, and brother to the other, was the most proper medium.

Colonel Keith was taken by surprise at the manner in which his cordial greeting was met. He himself had been far from displeased at his brother’s communication; it was a great relief to him personally, as well as on Lady Temple’s account, and he had been much charmed at Bessie’s good sense and engaging graces. As to disparity of years, Lord Keith had really made himself much younger of late, and there was much to excite a girl’s romance in the courtesy of an elderly man, the chief of her clan; moreover, the perfect affection and happiness Colin had been used to witness in his general’s family disposed him to make light of that objection; and he perceived that his brother was sufficiently bewitched to be likely to be kind and indulgent to his bride.

He had not expected Alexander Keith to be as well pleased as he was himself, but he was not prepared for his strong disapprobation, and earnest desire to find some means of prevention, and he began to reassure him upon the placability of Mrs. Comyn Menteith, the daughter, as well as upon his brother’s kindness to the objects of his real affection.

“Oh, I am not afraid of that. She will manage him fast enough.”

“Very likely, and for his good. Nor need you question his being a safe guide for her in higher matters. Perhaps you are prejudiced against him because his relations with me have not been happy, but candidly, in them you know the worst of him; and no doubt he thought himself purely acting for my welfare. I know much more of him now that I have been at home with him, and I was greatly struck with his real consideration for the good of all concerned with him.”

“No, I am not thinking of Lord Keith. To speak it out, I cannot believe that my sister has heart enough in this to justify her.”

“Young girls often are more attracted by elderly men than by lads.”

“You do not know Bessie as, I am sorry to say, I do,” said Alick, speaking slowly and sadly, and with a flush of shame on his cheek. “I do not say that she says anything untrue, but the truth is not in her. She is one of those selfish people who are infinitely better liked than those five hundred times their worth, because they take care to be always pleased.”

“They give as much pleasure as they take.”

“Yes, they take every one in. I wish to my heart I could be taken in too, but I have seen too much of her avoidance of every service to my uncle that she did not like. I verily believe, at this moment, that one great inducement with her is to elude the care of him.”

“Stern judgments, Alick. I know you would not speak thus without warrant; but take it into account that marriage makes many a girl’s selfishness dual, and at last drowns the self.”

“Yes, when it is a marriage of affection. But the truth must be told, Colonel. There was a trumpery idle fellow always loitering at Littleworthy, and playing croquet. I set my face against it with all my might, and she always laughed to scorn the notion that there was anything in it, nor do I believe that she has heart enough to wish to marry him. I could almost say I wish she had, but I never saw her show the same pleasure in any one’s attentions, and I believe he is gone out to Rio in hopes of earning means to justify his addresses.”

Colonel Keith sat gravely considering what he knew would not be spoken lightly. “Do you mean that there was attachment enough to make it desirable that you should tell my brother?”

“No, I could say nothing that she could not instantly contradict with perfect truth, though not with perfect sincerity.”

“Let me ask you one question, Alick—not a flattering one. May not some of these private impressions of yours have been coloured by your long illness!”

“That is what Bessie gives every one to understand,” said Alick, calmly. “She is right, to a certain degree, that suffering sharpened my perceptions, and helplessness gave me time to draw conclusions. If I had been well, I might have been as much enchanted as other people; and if my uncle had not needed her care, and been neglected, I could have thought that I was rendered exacting by illness. But I imagine all I have said is not of the slightest use, only, if you think it right to tell your brother to talk to me, I would rather stand all the vituperation that would fall on me than allow this to take place.”

Colonel Keith walked up and down the room considering, whilst Alick sat in a dejected attitude, shading his face, and not uttering how very bitter it had been to him to make the accusation, nor how dear the sister really was.

“I see no purpose that would be answered,” said Colonel Keith, coming to a pause at last; “you have nothing tangible to mention, even as to the former affair that you suspect. I see a great deal in your view of her to make you uneasy, but nothing that would not be capable of explanation, above all to such a man as my brother. It would appear like mere malevolence.”

“Never mind what it would appear,” said Alick, who was evidently in such a ferment as his usually passive demeanour would have seemed incapable of.

“If the appearance would entirely baffle the purpose, it must be considered,” said the Colonel; “and in this case it could only lead to estrangement, which would be a lasting evil. I conclude that you have remonstrated with your sister.”

“As much as she gave me time for; but of course that is breath spent in vain.”

“Your uncle had the same means of judging as yourself.”

“No, Colonel, he could do nothing! In the first place, there can be no correspondence with him; and next, he is so devotedly fond of Bessie, that he would no more believe anything against her than Lady Temple would. I have tried that more than once.”

“Then, Alick, there is nothing for it but to let it take its course; and even upon your own view, your sister will be much safer married than single.”

“I had very little expectation of your saying anything else, but in common honesty I felt bound to let you know.”

“And now the best thing to be done is to forget all you have said.”

“Which you will do the more easily as you think it an amiable delusion of mine. Well, so much the better. I dare say you will never think otherwise, and I would willingly believe that my senses went after my fingers’ ends.”

The Colonel almost believed so himself. He was aware of the miserably sensitive condition of shattered nerve in which Alick had been sent home, and of the depression of spirits that had ensued on the news of his father’s death; and he thought it extremely probable that his weary hours and solicitude for his gay young sister might have made molehills into mountains, and that these now weighed on his memory and conscience. At least, this seemed the only way of accounting for an impression so contrary to that which Bessie Keith made on every one else, and, by his own avowal, on the uncle whom he so much revered. Every other voice proclaimed her winning, amiable, obliging, considerate, and devoted to the service of her friends, with much drollery and shrewdness of perception, tempered by kindness of heart and unwillingness to give pain; and on that sore point of residence with the blind uncle, it was quite possibly a bit of Alick’s exaggerated feeling to imagine the arrangement so desirable—the young lady might be the better judge.

On the whole, the expostulation left Colonel Keith more uncomfortable on Alick’s account than on that of his brother.

CHAPTER XVI. AN APPARITION

 
“And there will be auld Geordie Tanner,
  Who coft a young wife wi’ his gowd.”
 

JOANNA BAILLIE.

“Mamma,” quoth Leoline, “I thought a woman must not marry her grandfather. And she called him the patriarch of her clan.”

“He is a cross old man,” added Hubert. “He said children ought not to be allowed on the esplanade, because he got into the way as I was pushing the perambulator.”

“This was the reason,” said Francis, gravely, “that she stopped me from braying at him. I shall know what people are at, when they talk of disrespect another time.”

“Don’t talk of her,” cried Conrade, flinging himself round; “women have no truth in them.”

“Except the dear, darling, delightful mammy!” And the larger proportion of boys precipitated themselves headlong upon her, so that any one but a mother would have been buffeted out of breath in their struggles for embracing ground; and even Lady Temple found it a relief when Hubert, having been squeezed out, bethought himself of extending the honourable exception to Miss Williams, and thus effected a diversion. What would have been the young gentlemen’s reception of his lordship’s previous proposal!

Yet in the fulness of her gladness the inconsistent widow, who had thought Lord Keith so much too old for herself, gave her younger friend heartfelt congratulations upon the blessing of being under fatherly direction and guidance. She was entrusted with the announcement to Rachel, who received it with a simple “Indeed!” and left her cousin unmolested in her satisfaction, having long relegated Fanny to the class of women who think having a friend about to be married the next best thing to being married themselves, no matter to whom.

“Aspirations in women are mere delusions,” was her compensating sigh to Grace. “There is no truer saying, than that a woman will receive every man.”

“I have always been glad that is aprocryphal,” said Grace, “and Eastern women have no choice.”

“Nor are Western women better than Eastern,” said Rachel. “It is all circumstances. No mental power or acuteness has in any instance that I have yet seen, been able to balance the propensity to bondage. The utmost flight is, that the attachment should not be unworthy.”

“I own that I am very much surprised,” said Grace.

“I am not at all,” said Rachel. “I have given up hoping better things. I was beginning to have a high opinion of Bessie Keith’s capabilities, but womanhood was at the root all the time; and, as her brother says, she has had great disadvantages, and I can make excuses for her. She had not her heart filled with one definite scheme of work and usefulness, such as deters the trifling and designing.”

“Like the F. U. E. E.?”

“Yes, the more I see of the fate of other women, the more thankful I am that my vocation has taken a formed and developed shape.”

And thus Rachel could afford to speak without severity of the match, though she abstained from congratulation. She did not see Captain Keith for the next few days, but at last the two sisters met him at the Cathedral door as they were getting into the carriage after a day’s shopping at Avoncester; and Grace offered her congratulations, in accordance with her mother’s old fashioned code.

“Thank you,” he said; then turning to Rachel, “Did she write to you?”

“No.”

“I thought not.”

There was something marked in his tone, but his sister’s silence was not of long duration, for a letter arrived containing orders for lace, entreating that a high pressure might be put on Mrs. Kelland, and containing beauteous devices for the veil, which was to be completed in a fearfully short time, since the wedding was to be immediate, in order that Lord Keith might spend Christmas and the ensuing cold months abroad. It was to take place at Bath, and was to be as quiet as possible; “or else,” wrote Miss Keith, “I should have been enchanted to have overcome your reluctance to witness the base surrender of female rights. I am afraid you are only too glad to be let off, only don’t thank me, but circumstances.”

Rachel’s principles revolted at the quantity of work demanded of the victims to lace, and Grace could hardly obtain leave to consult Mrs. Kelland. But she snapped at the order, for the honour and glory of the thing, and undertook through the ramifications of her connexion to obtain the whole bridal array complete. “For such a pleasant-spoken lady as Miss Keith, she would sit up all night rather than disappoint her.”

The most implacable person of all was the old housekeeper, Tibbie. She had been warmly attached to Lady Keith, and resented her having a successor, and one younger than her daughters; and above all, ever since the son and heir had died, she had reckoned on her own Master Colin coming to the honours of the family, and regarded this new marriage as a crossing of Providence. She vainly endeavoured to stir up Master Colin to remonstrate on his brother’s “makin’ siccan a fule’s bargain wi’ yon glaikit lass. My certie, but he’ll hae the warst o’t, honest man; rinnin’ after her, wi’ a’ her whigmaleries an’ cantrips. He’ll rue the day that e’er he bowed his noble head to the likes o’ her, I’m jalousin.”

It was to no purpose to remind her that the bride was a Keith in blood; her great grandfather a son of the house of Gowanbrae; all the subsequent descendants brave soldiers.

“A Keith ca’ ye her! It’s a queer kin’ o’ Keiths she’s comed o’, nae better nor Englishers that haena sae muckle’s set fit in our bonny Scotland; an’ sic scriechin’, skirlin’ tongues as they hae, a body wad need to be gleg i’ the uptak to understan’ a word they say. Tak’ my word for’t, Maister Colin, it’s no a’thegither luve for his lordship’s grey hairs that gars yon gilpy lassock seek to become my Leddy Keith.”

“Nay, Tibbie, if you find fault with such a sweet, winning young creature, I shall think it is all because you will not endure a mistress at Gowanbrae over you.”

“His lordship’ll please himsel’ wi’ a leddy to be mistress o’ Gowanbrae, but auld Tibbie’ll never cross the doorstane mair.”

“Indeed you will, Tibbie; here are my brother’s orders that you should go down, as soon as you can conveniently make ready, and see about the new plenishing.”

“They may see to the plenishing that’s to guide it after han, an’ that’ll no be me. My lord’ll behove to tak’ his orders aff his young leddy ance he’s married on her, may be a whilie afore, but that’s no to bind ither folk, an’ it’s no to be thought that at my years I’m to be puttin’ up wi’ a’ ther new fangled English fykes an’ nonsense maggots. Na, na, Maister Colin, his lordship’ll fend weel aneugh wantin’ Tibbie; an’ what for suld I leave yerself, an’ you settin’ up wi’ a house o’ yer ain? Deed an’ my mind’s made up, I’ll e’en bide wi’ ye, an’ nae mair about it.”

“Stay, stay,” cried Colin, a glow coming into his cheeks, “don’t reckon without your host, Tibbie. Do you think Gowanbrae the second is never to have any mistress but yourself?”

“Haud awa’ wi’ ye, laddie, I ken fine what ye’ra ettlin’ at, but yon’s a braw leddy, no like thae English folk, but a woman o’ understandin’, an’ mair by token I’m thinkin’ she’ll be gleg aneugh to ken a body that’ll serve her weel, an’ see to the guidin’ o’ thae feckless queens o’ servant lasses, for bad’s the best o’ them ye’ll fin’ hereawa’. Nae fear but her an’ me’ll put it up weel thegither, an’ a’ gude be wi’ ye baith.”

After this Colin resigned himself and his household to Tibbie’s somewhat despotic government, at least for the present. To Ermine’s suggestion that her appellation hardly suited the dignity of her station, he replied that Isabel was too romantic for southern ears, and that her surname being the same as his own, he was hardly prepared to have the title of Mrs. Keith pre-occupied. So after Mrs. Curtis’s example, the world for the most part knew the colonel’s housekeeper as Mrs. Tibbs.

She might be a tyrant, but liberties were taken with her territory; for almost the first use that the colonel made of his house was to ask a rheumatic sergeant, who had lately been invalided, to come and benefit by the Avonmouth climate. Scottish hospitality softened Tibbie’s heart, and when she learnt that Sergeant O’Brien had helped to carry Master Colin into camp after his wound, she thought nothing too good for him. The Colonel then ventured to add to the party an exemplary consumptive tailor from Mr. Mitchell’s parish, who might yet be saved by good living and good air. Some growls were elicited, but he proved to be so deplorably the ninetieth rather than the ninth part of a man, that Tibbie made it her point of honour to fatten him; and the sergeant found him such an intelligent auditor of the Indian exploits of the —th Highlanders that mutual respect was fully established, and high politeness reigned supreme, even though the tailor could never be induced to delight in the porridge, on which the sergeant daily complimented the housekeeper in original and magnificent metaphors.

Nor had the Colonel any anxieties in leaving the representatives of the three nations together while he went to attend his brother’s wedding. He proposed that Tibbie should conduct Rose for the daily walk of which he had made a great point, thinking that the child did not get exercise enough, since she was so averse to going alone upon the esplanade that her aunt forbore to press it. She manifested the same reluctance to going out with Tibbie, and this the Colonel ascribed to her fancying herself too old to be under the charge of a nurse. It was trying to laugh her out of her dignity, but without eliciting an answer, when, one afternoon just as they were entering together upon the esplanade, he felt her hand tighten upon his own with a nervous frightened clutch, as she pressed tremulously to his side.

“What is it, my dear? That dog is not barking at you. He only wants to have a stick thrown into the sea for him.”

“Oh not the dog! It was—”

“Was, what?”

“HIM!” gasped Rose.

“Who?” inquired the Colonel, far from prepared for the reply, in a terrified whisper,—

“Mr. Maddox.”

“My dear child! Which, where?”

“He is gone! he is past. Oh, don’t turn back! Don’t let me see him again.”

“You don’t suppose he could hurt you, my dear.”

“No,” hesitated Rose, “not with you.”

“Nor with any one.”

“I suppose not,” said Rose, common sense reviving, though her grasp was not relaxed.

“Would it distress you very much to try to point him out to me?” said the Colonel, in his irresistibly sweet tone.

“I will. Only keep hold of my hand, pray,” and the little hand trembled so much that he felt himself committing a cruel action in leading her along the esplanade, but there was no fresh start of recognition, and when they had gone the whole length, she breathed more freely, and said, “No, he was not there.”

Recollecting how young she had been at the time of Maddox’s treason, the Colonel began to doubt if her imagination had not raised a bugbear, and he questioned her, “My dear, why are you so much afraid, of this person? What do you know about him?”

“He told wicked stories of my papa,” said Rose, very low.

“True, but he could not hurt you. You don’t think he goes about like Red Ridinghood’s wolf?”

“No, I am not so silly now.”

“Are you sure you know him? Did you often see him in your papa’s house?”

“No, he was always in the laboratory, and I might not go there.”

“Then you see, Rose, it must be mere fancy that you saw him, for you could not even know him by sight.”

“It was not fancy,” said Rose, gentle and timid as ever, but still obviously injured at the tone of reproof.

“My dear child,” said Colonel Keith, with some exertion of patience, “you must try to be reasonable. How can you possibly recognise a man that you tell me you never saw?”

“I said I never saw him in the house,” said Rose with a shudder; “but they said if ever I told they would give me to the lions in the Zoological Gardens.”

“Who said so?”

“He, Mr. Maddox and Maria,” she answered, in such trepidation that he could scarcely hear her.

“But you are old and wise enough now to know what a foolish and wicked threat that was, my dear.”

“Yes, I was a little girl then, and knew no better, and once I did tell a lie when mamma asked me, and now she is dead, and I can never tell her the truth.”

Colin dreaded a public outbreak of the sobs that heaved in the poor child’s throat, but she had self-control enough to restrain them till he had led her into his own library, where he let her weep out her repentance for the untruth, which, wrested from her by terror, had weighed so long on her conscience. He felt that he was sparing Ermine something by receiving the first tempest of tears, in the absolute terror and anguish of revealing the secret that had preyed on her with mysterious horror.

“Now tell me all about it, my dear little girl. Who was this Maria?”

“Maria was my nurse when I lived at home. She used to take me out walking,” said Rose, pressing closer to his protecting breast, and pausing as though still afraid of her own words.

“Well,” he said, beginning to perceive, “and was it than that you saw this Maddox?”

“Yes, he used to come and walk with us, and sit under the trees in Kensington Gardens with her. And sometimes he gave me lemon-drops, but they said if ever I told, the lions should have me. I used to think I might be saved like Daniel; but after I told the lie, I knew I should not. Mamma asked me why my fingers were sticky, and I did say it was from a lemon-drop, but there were Maria’s eyes looking at me; oh, so dreadful, and when mamma asked who gave it to me, and Maria said, ‘I did, did not I, Miss Rose?’ Oh, I did not seem able to help saying ‘yes.’”

“Poor child! And you never dared to speak of it again?”

“Oh, no! I did long to tell; but, oh, one night it was written up in letters of fire, ‘Beware of the Lions.’”

“Terror must have set you dreaming, my dear.”

“No,” said Rose, earnestly. “I was quite awake. Papa and mamma were gone out to dine and sleep, and Maria would put me to bed half an hour too soon. She read me to sleep, but by-and-by I woke up, as I always did at mamma’s bed time, and the candle was gone, and there were those dreadful letters in light over the door.”

She spoke with such conviction that he became persuaded that all was not delusion, and asked what she did.

“I jumped up, and screamed, and opened the door; but there they were growling in papa’s dressing-room.”

“They, the lions? Oh, Rose, you must know that was impossible.”

“No, I did not see any lions, but I heard the growl, and Mr. Maddox coughed, and said, ‘Here they come,’ and growled again.”

“And you—?”

“I tumbled into bed again, and rolled up my head in the clothes, and prayed that it might be day, and it was at last!”

“Poor child! Indeed, Rose, I do not wonder at your terror, I never heard of a more barbarous trick.”

“Was it a trick?” said Rose, raising a wonderfully relieved and hopeful face.

“Did you never hear of writing in phosphorus, a substance that shines at night as the sea sometimes does?”

“Aunt Ailie has a book with a story about writing in fiery letters, but it frightened me so much that I never read to the end.”

“Bring it to me, and we will read it together, and then you will see that such a cruel use can be made of phosphorus.”

“It was unkind of them,” said Rose, sadly, “I wonder if they did it for fun?”

“Where did you sleep?”

“I had a little room that opened into mamma’s.”

“And where was all this growling?”

“In papa’s room. The door was just opposite to mine, and was open. All the light was there, you know. Mamma’s room was dark, but there was a candle in the dressing-room.”

“Did you see anything?”

“Only the light. It was such a moment. I don’t think I saw Mr. Maddox, but I am quite certain I heard him, for he had an odd little cough.”

“Then, Rose, I have little doubt that all this cruelty to you, poor inoffensive little being, was to hide some plots against your father.”

She caught his meaning with the quickness of a mind precocious on some points though childish on others. “Then if I had been brave and told the truth, he might never have hurt papa.”

“Mind, I do not know, and I never thought of blaming you, the chief sufferer! No, don’t begin to cry again.”

“Ah! but I did tell a lie. And I never can confess it to mamma,” she said, recurring to the sad lament so long suppressed.

She found a kind comforter, who led her to the higher sources of consolation, feeling all the time the deep self-accusation with which the sight of sweet childish penitence must always inspire a grown person.

“And now you will not fear to tell your aunt,” he added, “only it should be when you can mention it without such sad crying.”

“Telling you is almost as good as telling her,” said Rose, “and I feel safe with you,” she added, caressingly drawing his arm round her. “Please tell Aunt Ermine, for my crying does give her such a headache.”

“I will, then, and I think when we all know it, the terrors will leave you.”

“Not when I see Mr. Maddox. Oh, please now you know why, don’t make me walk without you. I do know now that he could not do anything to me, but I can’t help feeling the fright. And, oh! if he was to speak to me!”

“You have not seen him here before?”

“Yes I have, at least I think so. Once when Aunt Ermine sent me to the post-office, and another time on the esplanade. That is why I can’t bear going out without you or Aunt Ailie. Indeed, it is not disliking Tibbie.”

“I see it is not, my dear, and we will say no more about it till you have conquered your alarm; but remember, that he is not likely to know you again. You must be more changed in these three years than he is.”

This consideration seemed to reassure Rose greatly, and her next inquiry was, “Please, are my eyes very red for going home?”

“Somewhat mottled—something of the York and Lancaster rose. Shall I leave you under Tibbie’s care till the maiden blush complexion returns, and come back and fetch you when you have had a grand exhibition of my Indian curiosities?”

“Have you Indian curiosities! I thought they were only for ladies?”

“Perhaps they are. Is Tibbie guard enough? You know there’s an Irish sergeant in the house taller than I am, if you want a garrison?”

“Oh, I am not afraid, only these eyes.”

“I will tell her you have been frightened, and she shall take no notice.”

Tibbie was an admirer of Rose and gladly made her welcome, while the Colonel repaired to Ermine, and greatly startled her by the disclosure of the miseries that had been inflicted on the sensitive child.

It had indeed been known that there had been tyranny in the nursery, and to this cause the aunts imputed the startled wistful expression in Rose’s eyes; but they had never questioned her, thinking that silence would best wear out the recollection. The only wonder was that her senses had not been permanently injured by that night of terror, which accounted for her unconquerable dread of sleeping in the dark; and a still more inexplicable horror of the Zoological Gardens, together with many a nervous misery that Ermine had found it vain to combat. The Colonel asked if the nurse’s cruelty had been the cause of her dismissal?

“No, it was not discovered till after her departure. Her fate has always been a great grief to us, though we little thought her capable of using Rose in this way. She was one of the Hathertons. You must remember the name, and the pretty picturesque hovel on the Heath.”

“The squatters that were such a grievance to my uncle. Always suspected of poaching, and never caught.”

“Exactly. Most of the girls turned out ill, but this one, the youngest, was remarkably intelligent and attractive at school. I remember making an excuse for calling her into the garden for you to see and confess that English beauty exceeded Scottish, and you called her a gipsy and said we had no right to her.”

“So it was those big black eyes that had that fiendish malice in them!”

“Ah! if she fell into Maddox’s hands, I wonder the less. She showed an amount of feeling about my illness that won Ailie’s heart, and we had her for a little handmaid to help my nurse. Then, when we broke up from home, we still kept her, and every one used to be struck with her looks and manner. She went on as well as possible, and Lucy set her heart on having her in the nursery. And when the upper nurse went away, she had the whole care of Rose. We heard only of her praises till, to our horror, we found she had been sent away in disgrace at a moment’s warning. Poor Lucy was young, and so much shocked as only to think of getting her out of the house, not of what was to become of her, and all we could learn was that she never went home.”

“How long was this before the crash?”

“It was only a few weeks before the going abroad, but they had been absent nearly a year. No doubt Maddox must have made her aid in his schemes. You say Rose saw him?”

“So she declares, and there is an accuracy of memory about her that I should trust to. Should you or Alison know him?”

“No, we used to think it a bad sign that Edward never showed him to us. I remember Alison being disappointed that he was not at the factory the only time she saw it.”

“I do not like going away while he may be lurking about. I could send a note to-night, explaining my absence.”

“No, no,” exclaimed Ermine, “that would be making me as bad as poor little Rose. If he be here ever so much he has done his worst, and Edward is out of his reach. What could he do to us? The affairs were wound up long ago, and we have literally nothing to be bullied out of. No, I don’t think he could make me believe in lions in any shape.”

“You strong-minded woman! You want to emulate the Rachel.”

“You have brought her,” laughed Ermine at the sound of the well-known knock, and Rachel entered bag in hand.

“I was in hopes of meeting you,” she said to the Colonel. “I wanted to ask you to take charge of some of these;” and she produced a packet of prospectuses of a “Journal of Female Industry,” an illustrated monthly magazine, destined to contain essays, correspondence, reviews, history, tales, etc., to be printed and illustrated in the F. U. E. E.

“I hoped,” said Rachel, “to have begun with the year, but we are not forward enough, and indeed some of the expenses require a subscription in advance. A subscriber in advance will have the year’s numbers for ten shillings, instead of twelve; and I should be much obliged if you would distribute a few of these at Bath, and ask Bessie to do the same. I shall set her name down at the head of the list, as soon as she has qualified it for a decoy.”

“Are these printed at the F. U. E. E.?”

“No, we have not funds as yet. Mr. Mauleverer had them done at Bristol, where he has a large connexion as a lecturer, and expects to get many subscribers. I brought these down as soon as he had left them with me, in hopes that you would kindly distribute them at the wedding. And I wished,” added she to Ermine, “to ask you to contribute to our first number.”

“Thank you,” and the doubtful tone induced Rachel to encourage her diffidence.

“I know you write a great deal, and I am sure you must produce something worthy to see the light. I have no scruple in making the request, as I know Colonel Keith agrees with me that womanhood need not be an extinguisher for talent.”

“I am not afraid of him,” Ermine managed to say without more smile than Rachel took for gratification.

“Then if you would only entrust me with some of your fugitive reflections, I have no doubt that something might be made of them. A practised hand,” she added with a certain editorial dignity, “can always polish away any little roughnesses from inexperience.”

Ermine was choking with laughter at the savage pulls that Colin was inflicting on his moustache, and feeling silence no longer honest, she answered in an odd under tone, “I can’t plead inexperience.”

“No!” cried Rachel. “You have written; you have not published!”

“I was forced to do whatever brought grist to the mill,” said Ermine. “Indeed,” she added, with a look as if to ask pardon; “our secrets have been hardly fair towards you, but we made it a rule not to spoil our breadwinner’s trade by confessing my enormities.”

“I assure you,” said the Colonel, touched by Rachel’s appalled look, “I don’t know how long this cautious person would have kept me in the dark if she had not betrayed herself in the paper we discussed the first day I met you.”

“The ‘Traveller,’” said Rachel, her eyes widening like those of a child. “She is the ‘Invalid’!”

“There, I am glad to have made a clean breast of it,” said Ermine.

“The ‘Invalid’!” repeated Rachel. “It is as bad as the Victoria Cross.”

“There is a compliment, Ermine, for which you should make your bow,” said Colin.

“Oh, I did not mean that,” said Rachel; “but that it was as great a mistake as I made about Captain Keith, when I told him his own story, and denied his being the hero, till I actually saw his cross,” and she spoke with a genuine simplicity that almost looked like humour, ending with, “I wonder why I am fated to make such mistakes!”

“Preconceived notions,” said Ermine, smiling; “your theory suffices you, and you don’t see small indications.”

“There may be something in that,” said Rachel, thoughtfully, “it accounts for Grace always seeing things faster than I did.”

“Did Mr.—, your philanthropist, bring you this today?” said the Colonel, taking up the paper again, as if to point a practical moral to her confession of misjudgments.

“Mr. Mauleverer? Yes; I came down as soon as he had left me, only calling first upon Fanny. I am very anxious for contributions. If you would only give me a paper signed by the ‘Invalid,’ it would be a fortune to the institution.”

Ermine made a vague answer that she doubted whether the ‘Invalid’ was separable from the ‘Traveller,’ and Rachel presently departed with her prospectus, but without having elicited a promise.

“Intolerable!” exclaimed the Colonel. “She was improving under Bessie’s influence, but she has broken out worse than ever. ‘Journal of Female Industry!’ ‘Journal of a Knight of Industry,’ might be a better title. You will have nothing to do with it, Ermine?”

“Certainly not as the ‘Invalid,’ but I owe her something for having let her run into this scrape before you.”

“As if you could have hindered her! Come, don’t waste time and brains on a companion for Curatocult.”

“You make me so idle and frivolous that I shall be expelled from the ‘Traveller,’ and obliged to take refuge in the ‘Female Industry Journal.’ Shall you distribute the prospectuses?”

“I shall give one to Bessie! That is if I go at all.”

“No, no, there is no valid reason for staying away. Even if we were sure that Rose was right, nothing could well come of it, and your absence would be most invidious.”

“I believe I am wanted to keep Master Alick in order, but if you have the least feeling that you would be more at ease with me at home—”

“That is not a fair question,” said Ermine, smiling. “You know very well that you ought to go.”

“And I shall try to bring back Harry Beauchamp,” added the Colonel. “He would be able to identify the fellow.”

“I do not know what would be gained by that.”

“I should know whom to watch.”

Ermine had seen so much of Rose’s nervous timidity, and had known so many phantoms raised by it, that she attached little importance to the recognition, and when she went over the matter with her little niece, it was with far more thought of the effect of the terror, and of the long suppressed secret, upon the child’s moral and physical nature, than with any curiosity as to the subject of her last alarm. She was surprised to observe that Alison was evidently in a state of much more restlessness and suspense than she was conscious of in herself, during Colin’s absence, and attributed this to her sister’s fear of Maddox’s making some inroad upon her in her long solitary hours, in which case she tried to reassure her by promises to send at once for Mr. Mitchell or for Coombe.

Alison let these assurances be given to her, and felt hypocritical for receiving them in silence. Her grave set features had tutored themselves to conceal for ever one page in the life that Ermine thought was entirely revealed to her. Never had Ermine known that brotherly companionship had once suddenly assumed the unwelcome aspect of an affection against which Alison’s heart had been steeled by devotion to the sister whose life she had blighted. Her resolution had been unswerving, but its full cost had been unknown to her, till her adherence to it had slackened the old tie of hereditary friendship towards others of her family; and even when marriage should have obliterated the past, she still traced resentment in the hard judgment of her brother’s conduct, and even in the one act of consideration that it galled her to accept.

There had been no meeting since the one decisive interview just before she had left her original home, and there were many more bitter feelings than could be easily assuaged in looking forward to a renewal of intercourse, when all too late, she knew that she should soon be no longer needed by her sister. She tried to feel it all just retribution, she tried to rejoice in Ermine’s coming happiness; she tried to believe that the sight of Harry Beauchamp, as a married man, would be the best cure for her; she blamed and struggled with herself: and after all, her distress was wasted, Harry Beauchamp had not chosen to come home with his cousin, who took his unwillingness to miss a hunting-day rather angrily and scornfully. Alison put her private interpretation on the refusal, and held aloof, while Colin owned to Ermine his vexation and surprise at the displeasure that Harry Beauchamp maintained against his old schoolfellow, and his absolute refusal to listen to any arguments as to his innocence.

This seemed to have been Colin’s prominent interest in his expedition to Bath; the particulars of the wedding were less easily drawn from him. The bride had indeed been perfection, all was charming wherever she brought her ready grace and sweetness, and she had gratified the Colonel by her affectionate messages to Ermine, and her evident intention to make all straight between Lord Keith and his daughter Mary. But the Clare relations had not made a favourable impression; the favourite blind uncle had not been present, in spite of Bessie’s boast, and it was suspected that Alick had not chosen to forward his coming. Alick had devolved the office of giving his sister away upon the Colonel, as her guardian, and had altogether comported himself with more than his usual lazy irony, especially towards the Clare cousinhood, who constantly buzzed round him, and received his rebuffs as delightful jests and compliments, making the Colonel wonder all the more at the perfect good taste and good breeding of his new sister-in-law, who had spent among them all the most critical years of her life.

She had been much amused with the prospectus of the “Journal of Female Industry,” but she sent word to Rachel that she advised her not to publish any list of subscribers—the vague was far more impressive than the certain. The first number must be sent to her at Paris, and trust her for spreading its fame!

The Colonel did not add to his message her recommendation that the frontispiece should represent the Spinster’s Needles, with the rescue of Don as the type of female heroism. Nor did he tell how carefully he had questioned both her and Rachel as to the date of that interesting adventure.

CHAPTER XVII. THE SIEGE

 
“The counterfeit presentment.”
 

—Hamlet.

Christmas came, and Rachel agreed with Mr. Mauleverer that it was better not to unsettle the children at the F. U. E. E. by permitting them to come home for holidays, a decision which produced much discontent in their respective families. Alison, going to Mrs. Morris with her pupils, to take her a share of Christmas good cheer, was made the receptacle of a great lamentation over the child’s absence; and, moreover, that the mother had not been allowed to see her alone, when taken by Miss Rachel to the F. U. E. E.

“Some one ought to take it up,” said Alison, as she came home, in her indignation. “Who knows what may be done to those poor children? Can’t Mr. Mitchell do something?”

But Mr. Mitchell was not sufficiently at home to interfere. He was indeed negotiating an exchange with Mr. Touchett, but until this was effected he could hardly meddle in the matter, and he was besides a reserved, prudent man, slow to commit himself, so that his own impression of the asylum could not be extracted from him. Here, however, Colonel Keith put himself forward. He had often been asked by Rachel to visit the F. U. E. E., and he surprised and relieved Alison by announcing his intention of going over to St. Norbert’s alone and without notice, so as to satisfy himself as far as might be as to the treatment of the inmates, and the genuineness of Mauleverer’s pretensions. He had, however, to wait for weather that would not make the adventure one of danger to him, and he regarded the cold and rain with unusual impatience, until, near the end of January, he was able to undertake his expedition.

After much knocking and ringing the door was opened to him by a rude, slatternly, half-witted looking charwoman, or rather girl, who said “Master was not in,” and nearly shut the door in his face. However, he succeeded in sending in his card, backed by the mention of Lady Temple and Miss Curtis; and this brought out Mrs. Rawlins, her white streamers floating stiff behind her, full of curtsies and regrets at having to refuse any friend of Miss Curtis, but Mr. Mauleverer’s orders were precise and could not be infringed. He was gone to lecture at Bristol, but if the gentleman would call at any hour he would fix to morrow or next day, Mr. Mauleverer would be proud to wait on him.

When he came at the appointed time, all was in the normal state of the institution. The two little girls in white pinafores sat upon their bench with their books before them, and their matron presiding over them; Mr. Mauleverer stood near, benignantly attentive to the children and obligingly so to the visitor, volunteering information and answering all questions. Colonel Keith tried to talk to the children, but when he asked one of them whether she liked drawing better than lace-making her lips quivered, and Mrs. Rawlins replied for her, that she was never happy except with a pencil in her hand. “Show the gentleman, my dear,” and out came a book of studios of cubes, globes, posts, etc., while Mr. Mauleverer talked artistically of drawing from models. Next, he observed on a certain suspicious blackness of little Mary’s eye, and asked her what she had done to herself. But the child hung her head, and Mrs. Rawlins answered for her, “Ah! Mary is ashamed to tell: but the gentleman will think nothing of it, my dear. He knows that children will be children, and I cannot bear to check them, the dears.”

More briefly Mr. Mauleverer explained that Mary had fallen while playing on the stairs; and with this superficial inspection he must needs content himself, though on making inquiry at the principal shops, he convinced himself that neither Mr. Mauleverer nor the F. U. E. E. were as well known at St. Norbert’s as at Avonmouth. He told Rachel of his expedition, and his interest in her work gratified her, though she would have preferred being his cicerone. She assured him that he must have been very much pleased, especially with the matron.

“She is a handsome woman, and reminds me strongly of a face I saw in India.”

“There are some classes of beauty and character that have a remarkable sameness of feature,” began Rachel.

“Don’t push that theory, for your matron’s likeness was a very handsome Sepoy havildar whom we took at Lucknow, a capital soldier before the mutiny, and then an ineffable ruffian.”

“The mutiny was an infectious frenzy; so that you establish nothing against that cast of countenance.”

Never, indeed, was there more occasion for perseverance in Rachel’s championship. Hitherto Mrs. Kelland had been nailed to her pillow by the exigencies of Lady Keith’s outfit, and she and her minions had toiled unremittingly, without a thought beyond their bobbins, but as soon as the postponed orders were in train, and the cash for the wedding veil and flounces had been transmitted, the good woman treated herself and her daughters to a holiday at St. Norbert’s, without intimating her intention to her patronesses; and the consequence was a formal complaint of her ungrateful and violent language to Mrs. Rawlins on being refused admission to the asylum without authority from Mr. Mauleverer or Miss Curtis.

Rachel, much displeased, went down charged with reproof and representation, but failed to produce the desired effect upon the aunt.

“It was not right,” Mrs. Kelland reiterated, “that the poor lone orphan should not see her that was as good as a mother, when she had no one else to look to. They that kept her from her didn’t do it for no good end.”

“But, Mrs. Kelland, rules are rules.”

“Don’t tell me of no rules, Miss Rachel, as would cut a poor child off from her friends as her mother gave her to on her death-bed. ‘Sally,’ says she, ‘I know you will do a mother’s part by that poor little maid;’ and so I did till I was over persuaded to let her go to that there place.”

“Indeed you have nothing to regret there, Mrs. Kelland; you know, that with the kindest intentions, you could not make the child happy.”

“And why was that, ma’am, but because her mother was a poor creature from town, that had never broke her to her work. I never had the trouble with a girl of my own I had with her. ‘It’s all for your good, Lovedy,’ I says to her, and poor child, maybe she wishes herself back again.”

“I assure you, I always find the children well and happy, and it is very unfair on the matron to be angry with her for being bound by rules, to which she must submit, or she would transgress the regulations under which we have laid her! It is not her choice to exclude you, but her duty.”

“Please, ma’am, was it her duty to be coming out of the house in a ‘genta coloured silk dress, and a drab bonnet with a pink feather in it?” said Mrs. Kelland, with a certain, air of simplicity, that provoked Rachel to answer sharply—

“You don’t know what you are talking about, Mrs. Kelland.”

“Well, ma’am, it was a very decent woman as told me, an old lady of the name of Drinkwater, as keeps a baker’s shop on the other side of the way, and she never sees bread enough go in for a cat to make use of, let alone three poor hungry children. She says all is not right there, ma’am.”

“Oh, that must be mere gossip and spite at not having the custom. It quite accounts for what she may say, and indeed you brought it all on yourself by not having asked me for a note. You must restrain yourself. What you may say to me is of no importance, but you must not go and attack those who are doing the very best for your niece.”

Rachel made a dignified exit, but before she had gone many steps, she was assailed by tearful Mrs. Morris: “Oh, Miss Rachel, if it would not be displeasing to you, would you give me an order for my child to come home. Ours is a poor place, but I would rather make any shift for us to live than that she should be sent away to some place beyond sea.”

“Some place beyond sea!”

“Yes, ma’am. I beg your pardon, ma’am, but they do say that Mr. Maw-and-liver is a kidnapper, ma’am, and that he gets them poor children to send out to Botany Bay to be wives to the convicts as are transported, Miss Rachel, if you’ll excuse it. They say there’s a whole shipload of them at Plymouth, and I’d rather my poor Mary came to the Union at home than to the like of that, Miss Rachel.”

This alarm, being less reasonable, was even more difficult to talk down than Mrs. Kelland’s, and Rachel felt as if there wore a general conspiracy to drive her distracted, when on going home she found the drawing-room occupied by a pair of plump, paddy-looking old friends, who had evidently talked her mother into a state of nervous alarm. On her entrance, Mrs. Curtis begged the gentleman to tell dear Rachel what he had been saying, but this he contrived to avoid, and only on his departure was Rachel made aware that he and his wife had come, fraught with tidings that she was fostering a Jesuit in disguise, that Mrs. Rawlins was a lady abbess of a new order, Rachel herself in danger of being entrapped, and the whole family likely to be entangled in the mysterious meshes, which, as good Mrs. Curtis more than once repeated, would be “such a dreadful thing for poor Fanny and the boys.”

Her daughters, by soothing and argument, allayed the alarm, though the impression was not easily done away with, and they feared that it might yet cost her a night’s rest. These attacks—absurd as they were—induced Rachel to take measures for their confutation, by writing to Mr. Mauleverer, that she thought it would be well to allow the pupils to pay a short visit to their homes, so as to satisfy their friends.

She did not receive an immediate answer, and was beginning to feel vexed and anxious, though not doubtful, when Mr. Mauleverer arrived, bringing two beautiful little woodcuts, as illustrations for the “Journal of Female Industry.” They were entitled “The free maids that weave their thread with bones,” and one called “the Ideal,” represented a latticed cottage window, with roses, honeysuckles, cat, beehives, and all conventional rural delights, around a pretty maiden singing at her lace-pillow; while the other yclept the “Real,” showed a den of thin, wizened, half-starved girls, cramped over their cushions in a lace-school. The design was Mr. Mauleverer’s, the execution the children’s; and neatly mounted on cards, the performance did them great credit, and there was great justice in Mr. Manleverer’s view that while they were making such progress, it would be a great pity to interrupt the preparation of the first number by sending the children home even for a few hours. Rachel consented the more readily to the postponement of the holiday, as she had now something to show in evidence of the reality of their doings, and she laid hands upon the cuts, in spite of Mr. Mauleverer’s unwillingness that such mere essays should be displayed as specimens of the art of the F. U. E. E. When the twenty pounds which she advanced should have been laid out in blocks, ink, and paper, there was little doubt that the illustrations of the journal would be a triumphant instance of female energy well directed.

Meantime she repaired to Ermine Williams to persuade her to write an article upon the two pictures, a paper in the lively style in which Rachel herself could not excel, pointing out the selfishness of wilfully sentimental illusions. She found Ermine alone, but her usual fate pursued her in the shape of, first, Lady Temple, then both Colonel and Captain Keith, and little Rose, who all came in before she had had time to do more than explain her intentions. Rose had had another fright, and again the Colonel had been vainly trying to distinguish the bugbear of her fancy, and she was clinging all the more closely to him because he was the only person of her aquaintance who did not treat her alarms as absolutely imaginary.

Rachel held her ground, well pleased to have so many spectators of this triumphant specimen of the skill of her asylum, and Lady Temple gave much admiration, declaring that no one ought to wear lace again without being sure that no one was tortured in making it, and that when she ordered her new black lace shawl of Mrs. Kelland, it should be on condition that the poor girls were not kept so very hard at work.

“You will think me looking for another Sepoy likeness,” said the Colonel, “but I am sure I have met this young lady or her twin sister somewhere in my travels.”

“It is a satire on conventional pictures,” said Rachel.

“Now, I remember,” he continued. “It was when I was laid up with my wound at a Dutch boer’s till I could get to Cape Town. My sole reading was one number of the ‘Illustrated News,’ and I made too good acquaintance with that lady’s head, to forget her easily.”

“Of course,” said Rachel, “it is a reminiscence of the painting there represented.”

“What was the date?” asked Alick Keith.

The Colonel was able to give it with some precision.

“You are all against me,” said Rachel, “I see you are perfectly determined that there shall be something wrong about every performance of the F. U. E. E.”

“No, don’t say so,” began Fanny, with gentle argument, but Alick Keith put in with a smile, “It is a satisfaction to Miss Curtis.”

“Athanasius against the world,” she answered.

“Athanasius should take care that his own foot is firm, his position incontrovertible,” said Ermine.