The Clever Woman of the Family

CHAPTER XXIII. DEAR ALEXANDER.

"I pray thee now tell me, for which of my bad parts didst thou first fall in love with me?"--Much Ado about Nothing.

"Alick, is this all chivalry?" inquired Colonel Keith, sitting by his fire, suffering considerably from his late drive, and hearing reports that troubled him.

"Very chivalrous, indeed! when there's an old county property to the fore."

"For that matter, you have all been canny enough to have means enough to balance all that barren moorland. You are a richer man than I shall ever be."

"Without heiress-hunting?" said Alick, as though weighing his words.

"Come, Alick, you need not put on a mask that does not fit you! If it is not too late, take the risk into consideration, for I own I think the price of your championship somewhat severe."

"Ask Miss Williams."

"Ermine is grateful for much kindness, and is--yes--really fond of her."

"Then, Colonel, you ought to know that a sensible woman's favourable estimate of one of her own sex outweighs the opinion men can form of her."

"I grant that there are fine qualities; but, Alick, regarding you, as I must necessarily do, from our former relations, you must let me speak if there is still time to warn you, lest your pity and sense of injustice should be entangling you in a connexion that would hardly conduce to make you happy or popular."

"Popularity is not my line," said Alick, looking composedly into the fire.

"Tell me first," said the puzzled Colonel, "are you committed?"

"No one can be more so."

"Engaged!!!"

"I thought you would have known it from themselves; but I find she has forbidden her mother to mention it till she has seen me again. And they talk of quiet, and shut me out!" gloomily added Alick.

The Colonel conceived a hope that the lady would abjure matrimony, and release this devoted knight, but in a few moments Alick burst out--

"Absurd! She cannot mend with anything on her mind! If I could have seen Mrs. Curtis or Grace alone, they might have heard reason, but that old woman of a doctor was prosing about quiet and strain on the nerves. I know that sort of quiet, the best receipt for distraction!"

"Well, Alick," said his friend, smiling, "you have at least convinced me that your heart is in the matter."

"How should it not be " returned Alick.

"I was afraid it was only with the object of unjust vituperation."

"No such thing. Let me tell you, Colonel, my heart has been in it ever since I felt the relief of meeting real truth and unselfishness! I liked her that first evening, when she was manfully chasing us off for frivolous danglers round her cousin! I liked her for having no conventionalities, fast or slow, and especially for hating heroes! And when my sister had helped to let her get into this intolerable web, how could I look on without feeling the nobleness that has never shifted blame from herself, but bowed, owned all, suffered--suffered- -oh, how grievously!"

The Colonel was moved. "With such genuine affection you should surely lead her and work upon her! I trust you will be able."

"It is less that," said Alick, rather resentfully, "than sympathy that she wants. Nobody ever gave her that except your Ermine! By-the-bye, is there any news of the brother?"

Colonel Keith shook his head. "I believe I shall have to go to Russia," he said with some dejection.

"After that, reproach one with chivalry," said Alick, lightly. "Nay, I beg your pardon. Shall I take any message down to Mackarel Lane?"

"Are you going?"

"Well, yes, though I hardly ought to venture there till this embargo is taken off; for she is the one person there will be some pleasure in talking to. Perhaps I may reckon you as the same in effect."

The Colonel responded with a less cheerful look than usual, adding, "I don't know whether to congratulate you, Alick, on having to ask no one's consent but your own at your age."

"Especially not my guardian's!" said Alick, with the desired effect of making him laugh.

"No, if you were my son, I would not interfere," he added gravely. "I only feared your not knowing what you were about. I see you do know it, and it merely becomes a question of every man to his taste-- except for one point, Alick. I am afraid there may have been much disturbance of her opinions."

"Surface work," said Alick, "some of the effects of the literature that paints contradiction as truth. It is only skin deep, and makes me wish all the more to have her with my uncle for a time. I wonder whether Grace would let me in if I went back again!"

No, Grace was obdurate. Mr. Frampton had spoken of a nervous fever, and commanded perfect quiescence; and Grace was the less tempted to transgress the order, because she really thought her mother was more in love with "dear Alexander" than Rachel was. Rachel was exceedingly depressed, restless, and feverish, and shrank from her mother's rejoicing, declaring that she was mistaken, and that nothing more must be said. She had never consented, and he must not make such a sacrifice; he would not when he knew better. Nay, in some moods, Rachel seemed to think even the undefined result of the interview an additional humiliation, and to feel herself falling, if not fallen, from her supreme contempt of love and marriage. The hurry, and the consent taken for granted, had certainly been no small elements in her present disturbed and overwhelmed state; and Grace, though understanding the motive, was disposed to resent the over- haste. Calm and time to think were promised to Rachel, but the more she had of both the more they hurt her. She tossed restlessly all night, and was depressed to the lowest ebb by day; but on the second day, ill as she evidently was, she insisted on seeing Captain Keith, declaring that she should never be better till she had made him understand her. Her nurses saw that she was right; and, besides, Mrs. Curtis's pity was greatly touched by dear Alexander's entreaties. So, as a desperate experiment, he was at last allowed to go into the dressing-room, where she was lying on the sofa. He begged to enter alone, only announced by a soft knock, to which she replied with a listless "Come in," and did not look up till she suddenly became conscious of a footfall firmer though softer than those she was used to. She turned, and saw who it was who stood at a window opposite to her feet, drawing up the Venetian blind, from whose teasing divisions of glare and shade she had been hiding her eyes from the time she had come in, fretted by the low continuous tap of its laths upon the shutters. Her first involuntary exclamation was a sigh of relief.

"Oh, thank you. I did not know what it was that was such a nuisance."

"This is too much glare. Let me turn your sofa a little way round from it."

And as he did so, and she raised herself, he shook out her cushions, and substituted a cool chintz covered one for the hot crimson damask on which her head had been resting. "Thank you! How do you know so well?" she said with a long breath of satisfaction.

"By long trial," he said, very quietly seating himself beside her couch, with a stillness of manner that strangely hushed all her throbbings; and the very pleasure of lying really still was such that she did not at once break it. The lull of these few moments was inexpressibly sweet, but the pang that had crossed her so many times in the last two days and nights could not but return. She moved restlessly, and he leant towards her with a soft-toned inquiry what it was she wanted.

"Don't," she said, raising herself. "No, don't! I have thought more over what you said," she continued, as if repeating the sentence she had conned over to herself. "You have been most generous, most noble; but--but," with an effort of memory, "it would be wrong in me to accept such--oh! such a sacrifice; and when I tell you all, you will think it a duty to turn from me," she added, pressing her hands to her temples. "And mind, you are not committed--you are free."

"Tell me," he said, bending towards her.

"I know you cannot overlook it! My faith--it is all confusion," she said in a low awe-struck voice. "I do believe--I do wish to believe; but my grasp seems gone. I cannot rest or trust for thinking of the questions that have been raised! There," she added in a strange interrogative tone.

"It is a cruel thing to represent doubt as the sign of intellect," Alick said sadly; "but you will shake off the tormentors when the power of thinking and reasoning is come back."

"Oh, if I could think so! The misery of darkness here--there-- everywhere--the old implicit reliance gone, and all observance seeming like hypocrisy and unreality. There is no thinking, no enduring the intolerable maze."

"Do not try to think now. You cannot bear it. We will try to face what difficulties remain when you are stronger."

She turned her eyes full on him. "You do not turn away! You know you are free."

"Turn from the sincerity that I prize?"

"You don't? I thought your views were exactly what would make you hate and loathe such bewilderment, and call it wilful;" there was something piteous in the way her eye sought his face.

"It was not wilful," he said; "it came of honest truth-seeking. And, Rachel, I think the one thing is now gone that kept that honesty from finding its way."

"Self-sufficiency!" she said with a groan; but with a sudden turn she exclaimed, "You don't trust to my surrendering my judgment. I don't think I am that kind of woman."

"Nor I that kind of man," he answered in his natural tone; then affectionately, "No, indeed I want you to aid mine."

She lay back, wearied with the effort, and disinclined to break the stillness. There was a move at the door; Mrs. Curtis, in an agony of restless anxiety, could not help coming to see that the interview was doing no harm.

"Don't go!" exclaimed Rachel, holding out her hand as he turned at the opening of the door. "Oh, mother!" and there was an evident sound of disappointment.

Mrs. Curtis was infinitely rejoiced to find her entrance thus inopportune. "I only wished just to be sure it was not too much," she said.

"Oh, mother, it is the first peace I have known for weeks! Can't you stay?" looking up to him, as her mother retreated to tell Grace that it was indeed all right.

This brought him to a footstool close beside her. "Thank you," he murmured. "I was wondering just then if it would hurt you or agitate you to give me some little satisfaction in going on with this. I know you are too true not to have told me at once if your objections were more personal than those you have made; but, Rachel, it is true, as you say, that you have never consented!"

The tone of these words made Rachel raise herself, turn towards him, and hold out both her hands. "Oh," she said, as he took them into his own, "it was--it could be only that I cannot bear so much more than I deserve."

"What! such an infliction?" in his own dry way.

"Such rest, such kindness, such generosity!"

"No, Rachel, there is something that makes it neither kindness nor generosity. You know what I mean."

"And that is what overpowers me more than all," she sighed, in the full surrender of herself. "I ought not to be so very happy."

"That is all I want to hear," he said, as he replaced her on her cushions, and sat by her, holding her hand, but not speaking till the next interruption, by one of the numerous convalescent meals, brought in by Grace, who looked doubtful whether she would be allowed to come in, and then was edified by the little arrangements he made, quietly taking all into his own hands, and wonderfully lessening a sort of fidget that Mrs. Curtis's anxiety had attached to all that was done for Rachel. It was not for nothing that he had spent a year upon the sofa in the irritably sensitive state of nerves that Bessie had described; and when he could speak to Grace alone, he gave her a lecture on those little refinements of unobtrusive care, that more demonstrative ailments had not availed to inculcate, and which Mrs. Curtis's present restless anxiety rendered almost impossible. To hinder her from constantly aggravating the fever on the nerves by her fidgeting solicitude was beyond all power save his own, and that when he was actually in the house.

Morning after morning he rode to the Homestead to hear that Rachel had had a very bad night, and was very low, then was admitted to find Mrs. Curtis's fluttering, flurried attentions exasperating every wearied fibre with the very effort to force down fretfulness and impatience, till, when she was left to him, a long space of the lull impressed on her by his presence was needful before he could attempt any of the quiet talk, or brief readings of poetry, by which he tried further to soothe and rest her spirits. He would leave her so calm and full of repose as to make him augur well for the next day; but the moment his back was turned, something would always happen that set all the pulses in agitation again, and consigned her to a fresh night of feverish phantoms of the past. He even grew distracted enough to scold Grace fraternally as the only person he could scold.

"You seem to nurse her on the principle of old Morris, the biggest officer among us, who kindly insisted on sitting up with me, and began by taking his seat upon my hand as it was lying spread out upon a pillow."

"Indeed, Alick," said Grace, with tears in her eyes, "I hardly know what to do. When you are not in the house the mother is almost as much in a nervous fever as Rachel, and it is hardly in her power to keep from fretting her. It is all well when you are here."

"Then, Grace, there is only one thing to be done. The sooner I take Rachel away the better for both her and the mother."

"Oh, Alick, you will drive them both wild if you hurry it on."

"Look here. I believe I can get leave from Saturday till Tuesday. If I can get a hearing in those two days, I shall try; and depend upon it, Grace, this place is the worst that Rachel can be in."

"Can you come out here for three whole days? Oh, what a comfort!"

And 'what a comfort' was re-echoed by Mrs. Curtis, who had erected dear Alexander to a pedestal of infallibility, and was always treated by him with a considerate kindness that made her pity Fanny for the number of years that must pass before Stephana could give her the supreme blessing of a son-in-law. Fanny, on her side, had sufficient present blessing in collecting her brood around her, after the long famine she had suffered, and regretted only that this month had rendered Stephana's babyhood more perceptibly a matter of the past; and that, in the distance, school days were advancing towards Conrade, though it was at least a comfort that his diphtheria had secured him at home for another half year, and the Colonel had so much to think about that he had not begun his promised researches into schools.

The long-looked-for letters came after a weary interval of expectation, the more trying to Ermine because the weather had been so bitter that Colin could not shake off his cold, nor venture beyond his own fireside, where Rose daily visited him, and brought home accounts that did not cheer her aunt.

Edward wrote shortly to his sister, as if almost annoyed at the shower of letters that had by every post begun to recall his attention from some new invention on the means of assaying metals:--

"I am sorry you have stirred up Keith to the renewal of this painful subject. You know I considered that page in my life as closed for ever, and I see nothing that would compensate for what it costs me even to think of it. To redeem my name before the world would be of no avail to me now, for all my English habits are broken, and all that made life valuable to me is gone. If Long and Beauchamp could reject my solemn affirmation three years ago, what would a retractation slowly wrung from them be worth to me now? It might once have been, but that is all over now. Even the desire to take care of you would no longer actuate me since you have Keith again; and in a few years I hope to make my child independent in money matters--independent of your love and care you would not wish her to be. Forget the troubles of your life, Ermine, and be happy with your faithful Keith, without further efforts on behalf of one whom they only harass and grieve."

Ermine shed some bitter tears over this letter, the more sorrowful because the refusal was a shock to her own reliance on his honour, and she felt like a traitress to his cause. And Colin would give him up after this ungrateful indifference, if nothing worse. Surely it betrayed a consciousness that the whole of his conduct would not bear inquiry, and she thought of the representations that she had so indignantly rejected, that the accounts, even without the last fatal demand, were in a state that it required an excess of charity to ascribe to mere carelessness on the part of the principal.

She was glad that Alison was absent, and Rose in the garden. She laid her head on her little table, and drew long sobs of keen suffering, the reaction from the enjoyment and hope of the last few months. And so little knew she what she ought to ask, that she could only strive to say, "Thy will be done."

"Ermine! my Ermine, this is not a thing to be so much taken to heart. This foolish philosopher has not even read his letters. I never saw any one more consistently like himself."

Ermine looked up, and Colin was standing over her, muffled up to the eyes, and a letter of his own in his hand. Her first impulse was to cry out against his imprudence, glad as she was to see him. "My cough is nearly gone," he said, unwinding his wrappings, "and I could not stay at home after this wonderful letter--three pages about chemical analysis, which he does me the honour to think I can understand, two of commissions for villainous compounds, and one of protestations that 'I will be drowned; nobody shall help me.'"

Ermine's laugh had come, even amid her tears, his tone was so great a relief to her. She did not know that he had spent some minutes in cooling down his vexation, lest he should speak ungently of her brother's indifference. "Poor Edward," she said, "you don't mean that this is all the reply you have?"

"See for yourself," and he pointed to the divisions of the letter he had described. "There is all he vouchsafes to his own proper affairs. You see he misapprehends the whole; indeed, I don't believe he has even read our letters."

"We often thought he did not attend to all we wrote," said Ermine. "It is very disheartening!"

"Nay, Ermine, you disheartened with the end in view!"

"There are certainly the letters about Maddox's committal still to reach him, but who knows if they will have more effect! Oh, Colin, this was such a hope that--perhaps I have dwelt too much upon it!"

"It is such a hope," he repeated. "There is no reason for laying it aside, because Edward is his old self."

"Colin! you still think so?"

"I think so more than ever. If he will not read reason, he must hear it, and if he takes no notice of the letters we sent after the sessions, I shall go and bring him back in time for the assizes."

"Oh, Colin! it cannot be. Think of the risk! You who are still looking so thin and ill. I cannot let you."

"It will be warm enough by the time I get there."

"The distance! You are doing too much for us."

"No, Ermine," with a smile, "that I will never do."

She tried to answer his smile, but leant back and shed tears, not like the first, full of pain, but of affectionate gratitude, and yet of reluctance at his going. She had ever been the strength and stay of the family, but there seemed to be a source of weakness in his nearness, and this period of his indisposition and of suspense had been a strain on her spirits that told in this gentle weeping. "This is a poor welcome after you have been laid up so long," she said when she could speak again. "If I behave so ill, you will only want to run from the sight of me."

"It will be July when I come back."

"I do not think you ought to go."

"Nor I, if Edward deigns to read the account of Rose's examination."

In that calm smiling resolution Ermine read the needlessness of present argument, and spoke again of his health and his solitary hours.

"Mitchel has been very kind in coming to sit with me, and we have indulged in two or three castles in the air--hospitals in the air, perhaps, I should say. I told him he might bring me down another guest instead of the tailor, and he has brought a poor young pupil teacher, whom Tibbie calls a winsome gallant, but I am afraid she won't save him. Did you ever read the 'Lady of La Garaye'?"

"Not the poem, but I know her story."

"As soon as that parcel comes in, which Villars is always expecting, I propose to myself to read that poem with you. "What's that? It can't be Rachel as usual."

If it was not Rachel, it was the next thing to her, namely, Alick Keith. This was the last day of those that he had spent at the Homestead, and he was leaving Rachel certainly better. She had not fallen back on any evening that he had been there, but to his great regret he would not be able to come out the next day. Regimental duty would take him up nearly all the day, and then he was invited to a party at the Deanery, "which the mother would never have forgiven me for refusing," he said; just as if the mother's desires had the very same power over him as over her daughters. "I came to make a desperate request, Miss Williams," he said. "Would it be any way possible for you to be so kind as to go up and see Rachel? She comes downstairs now, and there are no steps if you go in by the glass doors. Do you think you could manage it?"

"She wishes it!" said Ermine.

"Very much. There are thorns in her mind that no one knows how to deal with so well as you do, and she told me yesterday how she longed to get to you."

"It is very good in her. I have sometimes feared she might think we had dealt unfairly by her if she did not know how very late in the business we suspected that our impostors were the same," said Ermine.

"It is not her way to blame any one but herself," said Alick, "and, in fact, our showing her the woodcut deception was a preparation for the rest of it. But I have said very little to her about all that matter. She required to be led away rather than back to it. Brooding over it is fatal work, and yet her spirits are too much weakened and shattered to bear over-amusement. That is the reason that I thought you would be so very welcome to-morrow. She has seen no one yet but Lady Temple, and shrinks from the very idea."

"I do not see why I should not manage it very well," said Ermine, cheerfully, "if Miss Curtis will let me know in time whether she is equal to seeing me. You know I can walk into the house now."

Alick thanked her earnestly. His listless manner was greatly enlivened by his anxiety, and Colonel Keith was obliged to own that marriage would be a good thing for him; but such a marriage! If from sheer indolence he should leave the government to his wife, then-- Colin could only shrug his shoulders in dismay.

Nevertheless, when Ermine's wheeled chair came to the door the next afternoon, he came with it, and walked by her side up the hill, talking of what had been absolutely the last call she had made--a visit when they had both been riding with the young Beauchamps.

"Suppose any one had told me then I should make my next visit with you to take care of me, how pleased I should have been," said Ermine, laughing, and taking as usual an invalid's pleasure in all the little novelties only remarked after long seclusion. That steep, winding, pebbly road, with the ferns and creeping plants on its rocky sides, was a wonderful panorama to her, and she entreated for a stop at the summit to look down on the sea and the town; but here Grace came out to them full of thanks and hopes, little knowing that to them the event was a very great one. When at the glass doors of the garden entrance, Ermine trusted herself to the Colonel's arm, and between him and her crutch crossed the short space to the morning room, where Rachel rose from her sofa, but wisely did not come forward till her guest was safely placed in a large easy chair.

Rachel then held out her hand to the Colonel, and quietly said, "Thank you," in a subdued manner that really touched him, as he retreated quickly and left them together. Then Rachel sat down on a footstool close to Ermine, and looked up to her. "Oh, it is so good of you to come to me! I would not have dared to think of it, but I just said I wished to get out for nothing but to go to you; and then he--Captain Keith-would go and fetch you."

"As the nearest approach to fetching the moon, I suppose," said Ermine, brightly. "It was very kind to me, for I was longing to see you, and I am glad to find you looking better than I expected."

For in truth Rachel's complexion had been little altered by her illness; and the subdued dejected expression was the chief change visible, except in the feebleness and tremulousness of all her movements. "Yes, I am better," she said. "I ought to be, for he is so good to me."

"Dear Rachel, I was so very glad to hear of this," said Ermine, bending down to kiss her.

"Were you? I thought no one could be that cared for him," said Rachel.

"I cared more for him the week that you were ill than ever I had done before."

"Grace tells me of that," said Rachel, "and when he is here I believe it. But, Miss Williams, please look full at me, and tell me whether everybody would not think--I don't say that I could do it--but if every one would not think it a great escape for him if I gave him up."

"No one that could really judge."

"Because, listen," said Rachel, quickly, "the regiment is going to Scotland, and he and the mother have taken it into their heads that I shall get well faster somewhere away from home. And--and they want to have the wedding as soon as I am better; and they are going to write about settlements and all that. I have never said I would, and I don't feel as if--as if I ought to let him do it; and if ever the thing is to be stopped at all, this is the only time."

"But why? You do not wish--"

"Don't talk of what I wish," said Rachel. "Talk of what is good for him."

Ermine was struck with the still resolute determination of judging for herself--the self-sufficiency, almost redeemed by the unselfishness, and the face was most piteously in earnest.

"My dear, surely he can be trusted to judge. He is no boy, in spite of his looks. The Colonel always says that he is as much older than his age in character as he is younger in appearance."

"I know that," said Rachel, "but I don't think he ought to be trusted here; for you see," and she looked down, "all the blindness of--of his affection is enhanced by his nobleness and generosity, and he has nobody to check or stop him; and it does seem to me a shame for us all to catch at such compassion, and encumber him with me, just because I am marked for scorn and dislike. I can't get any one to help me look at it so. My own people would fancy it was only that I did not care for him; and he--I can't even think about it when he is here, but I get quite distracted with doubts if it can be right whenever he goes away. And you are the only person who can help me! Bessie wrote very kindly to me, and I asked to see what she said to him. I thought I might guess her feeling from it. And he said he knew I should fancy it worse than it was if he did not let me see. It was droll, and just like her--not unkind, but I could see it is the property that makes her like it. And his uncle is blind, you know, and could only send a blessing, and kind hopes, and all that. Oh, if I could guess whether that uncle thinks he ought! What does Colonel Keith think? I know you will tell me truly."

"He thinks," said Ermine, with a shaken voice, "that real trustworthy affection outweighs all the world could say."

"But he thinks it is a strange, misplaced liking, exaggerated by pity for one sunk so low?" said Rachel, in an excited manner.

"Rachel," said Ermine, "you must take my beginning as a pledge of my speaking the whole truth. Colonel Keith is certainly not fond of you personally, and rather wonders at Alick, but he has never doubted that this is the genuine feeling that is for life, and that it is capable of making you both better and happier. Indeed, Rachel, we do both feel that you suit Alick much more than many people who have been far better liked."

Rachel looked cheered. "Yet you," she faltered, "you have been an instance of resolute withstanding."

"I don't think I shall be long," murmured Ermine, a vivid colour flashing forth upon her cheek, and leading the question from herself. "Just suppose you did carry out this fierce act of self-abnegation, what do you think could come next?"

"I don't know! I would not break down or die if I could help it," added Rachel, faintly after her brave beginning.

"And for him? Do you think being cast off would be so very pleasant to him?"

Rachel hung her head, and her lips made a half murmur of, "Would not it be good for him?"

"No, Rachel, it is the very sorest trial there can be when, even in the course of providence, kind intentions are coldly requited; and it would be incalculably harder when therewith there would be rejection of love."

"Ah! I never said I could do it. I could not tell him I did not care for him, and short of that nothing would stop it," sobbed Rachel, "only I wished to feel it was not very mean--very wrong." She laid her weary head on Ermine's lap, and Ermine bent down and kissed her.

"So happy, so bright and free, and capable, his life seems now," proceeded Rachel. "I can't understand his joining it to mine; and if people shunned and disliked him for my sake!"

"Surely that will depend on yourself. I have never seen you in society, but if you have the fear of making him unpopular or remarkable before your eyes, you will avoid it."

"Oh, yes, I know," said Rachel, impatiently. "I did think I should not have been a commonplace woman," and she shed a few tears.

Ermine was provoked with her, and began to think that she had been arguing on a wrong tack, and that it would be better after all for Alick to be free. Rachel looked up presently. "It must be very odd to you to hear me say so, but I can't help feeling the difference. I used to think it so poor and weak to be in love, or to want any one to take care of one. I thought marriage such ordinary drudgery, and ordinary opinions so contemptible, and had such schemes for myself. And this--and this is such a break down, my blunders and their consequences have been so unspeakably dreadful, and now instead of suffering, dying--as I felt I ought--it has only made me just like other women, for I know I could not live without him, and then all the rest of it must come for his sake."

"And will make you much more really useful and effective than ever you could have been alone," said Ermine.

"He does talk of doing things together, but, oh! I feel as if I could never dare put out my hand again!"

"Not alone perhaps."

"I like to hear him tell me about the soldiers' children, and what he wants to have done for them."

"You and I little thought what Lady Temple was to bring us," said Ermine, cheerfully, "but you see we are not the strongest creatures in the world, so we must resign ourselves to our fate, and make the best of it. They must judge how many imperfections they choose to endure, and we can only make the said drawbacks as little troublesome as may be. Now, I think I see Miss Curtis watching in fear that I am over-talking you."

"Oh, must you go? You have really comforted me! I wanted an external opinion very much, and I do trust yours! Only tell me," she added, holding Ermine's hand, "is this indeed so with you?"

"Not yet," said Ermine, softly, "do not speak about it, but I think you will be comforted to hear that this matter of yours, by leading to the matron's confession, may have removed an obstacle that was far more serious in my eyes than even my own helplessness, willing as Colin was to cast both aside. Oh, Rachel, there is a great deal to be thankful for."

Rachel lay down on her sofa, and fell asleep, nor did Alick find any occasion for blaming Grace when he returned the next day. The effect of the conversation had been to bring Rachel to a meek submission, very touching in its passiveness and weary peacefulness. She was growing stronger, walked out leaning on Alick's arm, and was even taken out by him in a boat, a wonderful innovation, for a dangerous accident to Mr. Curtis had given the mother such a horror of the sea that no boating excursions had ever taken place during her solitary reign, and the present were only achieved by a wonderful stretch of dear Alexander's influence. Perhaps she trusted him the more, because his maimed hand prevented him from being himself an oarsman, though he had once been devoted to rowing. At any rate, with an old fisherman at the oar, many hours were spent upon the waters of the bay, in a tranquillity that was balm to the harassed spirit, with very little talking, now and then some reading aloud, but often nothing but a dreamy repose. The novelty and absence of old association was one secret of the benefit that Rachel thus derived. Any bustle or resumption of former habits was a trial to her shattered nerves, and brought back the dreadful haunted nights. The first sight of Conrade, still looking thin and delicate, quite overset her; a drive on the Avoncester road renewed all she had felt on the way thither; three or four morning visitors coming in on her unexpectedly, made the whole morbid sense of eyes staring at her recur all night, and when the London solicitor came down about the settlements, she shrank in such a painful though still submissive way, from the sight of a stranger, far more from the semblance of a dinner party, that the mother yielded, and let her remain in her sitting-room.

"May I come in?" said Alick, knocking at the door. I have something to tell you."

"What, Alick! Not Mr. Williams come?"

"Nothing so good. In fact I doubt if you will think it good at all. I have been consulting this same solicitor about the title-deeds; that cheese you let fall, you know," he added, stroking her hand, and speaking so gently that the very irony was rather pleasant.

"Oh, it is very bad."

"Now wouldn't you like to hear it was so bad that I should have to sell out, and go to the diggings to make it up?"

"Now, Alick, if it were not for your sake, you know I should like--"

"I know you would; but you see, unfortunately, it was not a cheese at all, only a wooden block that the fox ran away with. Lawyers don't put people's title-deeds into such dangerous keeping, the true cheese is safe locked up in a tin-box in Mr. Martin's chambers in London."

"Then what did I give Mauleverer?"

"A copy kept for reference down here." Rachel hid her face.

"There, I knew you would think it no good news, and it is just a thunder-clap to me. All you wanted me for was to defend the mother and make up to the charity, and now there's no use in me," he said in a disconsolate tone.

"Oh, Alick, Alick, why am I so foolish?"

"Never mind; I took care Martin should not know it. Nobody is aware of the little affair but our two selves; and I will take care the fox learns the worth of his prize. Only now, Rachel, answer me, is there any use left for me still?"

"You should not ask me such things, Alick, you know it all too well."

"Not so well that I don't want to hear it. But I had more to say. This Martin is a man of very different calibre from old Cox, with a head and heart in London charities and churches, and it had struck him as it did you, that the Homestead had an easier bargain of it than that good namesake of yours had ever contemplated. If it paid treble or quadruple rent, the dear mother would never find it out, nor grow a geranium the less."

"No, she would not! But after all, the lace apprenticeships are poor work."

"So they are, but Martin says there would be very little difficulty in getting a private bill to enable the trustees to apply the sum otherwise for the benefit of the Avonmouth girls."

"Then if I had written to him, it would have been all right! Oh, my perverseness!"

"And, Rachel, now that money has been once so intended; suppose it kept its destination. About £500 would put up a tidy little industrial school, and you might not object to have a scholarship or two for some of our little -th Highlander lassies whose fathers won't make orphans of them for the regular military charities. What, crying, Rachel! Don't you like it?"

"It is my dream. The very thing I wished and managed so vilely. If Lovedy were alive! Though perhaps that is not the thing to wish. But I can't bear taking your--"

"Hush! You can't do worse than separate your own from mine. This is no part of the means I laid before Mr. Martin by way of proving myself a responsible individual. I took care of that. Part of this is prize-money, and the rest was a legacy that a rich old merchant put me down for in a transport of gratitude because his son was one of the sick in the bungalow where the shell came. I have had it these three or four months, and wondered what to do with it."

"This will be very beautiful, very excellent. And we can give the ground."

"I have thought of another thing. I never heard of an industrial school where the great want was not food for industry. Now I know the Colonel and Mr. Mitchell have some notion floating in their minds about getting a house for convalescents down here, and it strikes me that this might supply the work in cooking, washing, and so on. I think I might try what they thought of it."

Rachel could only weep out her shame and thankfulness, and when Alick reverently added that it was a scheme that would require much thought and much prayer, the pang struck her to the heart--how little she had prayed over the F. U. E. E. The prayer of her life had been for action and usefulness, but when she had seen the shadow in the stream, her hot and eager haste, her unconscious detachment from all that was not visible and material had made her adhere too literally to that misinterpreted motto, laborare est orare. How should then her eyes be clear to discern between substance and shadow?