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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?"
Alison was utterly silent about him. Ermine seemed to have a tender pleasure in bringing in a reference to his ways as if all were well, and it were a matter of course to speak of "Edward;" but it was plain that Ermine's was an outspoken nature.
Rachel had from the first insisted that she should be kept out of her room; and the mother's piteous entreaty always implied that saddest argument, "Why should I be deprived of you both in one day?" So Grace found herself condemned to uselessness almost as complete as Ermine's.
With which words he again applied himself to Ermine's correspondence, and presently completed the letter, offering to direct the envelope, which she refused, as having one already directed by the author. He rather mischievously begged to see it that he might judge of the character of the writing, but this she resisted.
"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.
Ermine's hint, that with Rachel it rested to prevent her unpopularity from injuring her husband, had not been thrown away, and she never manifested any shrinking from the party, and even took some interest in arraying herself for it. "That is what I call well turned out," exclaimed Alick, when she came down. "Describe her dress, if you please," said Mr. Clare, "I like to hear how my nieces look."
And as Rose at that critical moment looked in at the window, eager to be encouraged to come and show Colinette's successful toilette, he drew her to him with the smile that had won her whole heart, and listening to every little bit of honesty about "my work" and "Aunt Ermine's work," he told her that he knew she was a very managing domestic character, perfectly equal to the charge of both young ladies.
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.
The lashes of the eyelids are short, but thick and black as the tip of an ermine's tail; the eyelids are brown and strewn with red fibrils, which give them grace and strength, two qualities which are seldom united in a woman. The circle round the eyes shows not the slightest blemish nor the smallest wrinkle. There, again, we find the granite of an Egyptian statue softened by the ages.
My own earliest ermine was humbler still, being constructed of the very democratic white canton flannel turned wrong side out, while the ermine's characteristic little black tails were formed by short bits of round shoe-lacing. The only advantage I can honestly claim for this domestic ermine is its freedom from the moths, who dearly love imported garments of soft fine cloth and rare lining.
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