"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.