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."