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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.
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 all the time Ermine's footstool was serving as a table for the various flowers that two children were constantly gathering in the grass and presenting to her, to Rachel, or to each other, with a constant stream of not very comprehensible prattle, full of pretty gesticulation that seemed to make up for the want of distinctness.
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?
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.
He was much struck by Rachel's distress, and the absence of all female spite and triumph, made him understand Ermine's defence of her as really large-minded and generous. "It is a very sad moment to be undeceived," he said; "one would rather have one's faults come to light in one's life than afterwards."
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.
The yearning of jealousy was sternly reproved and forced down, and told that Ermine had long been Colin Keith's, that the perpetrator of the evil had the least right of any one to murmur that her own monopoly of her sister was interfered with; that she was selfish, unkind, envious; that she had only to hate herself and pray for strength to bear the punishment, without alloying Ermine's happiness while it lasted.
Lady Temple was likewise asked to the Deanery, but Conrade was still too ill for her to think of leaving him for more than the few needful hours of the trial; nor had Alison been able to do more than pay an occasional visit at her sister's window to exchange reports, and so absorbed was she in her boys and their mother, that it was quite an effort of recollection to keep up to Ermine's accounts of Colonel Keith's doings.
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.
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