The Clever Woman of the Family

The two elder boys were with her; and while Francis, slowly apprehending her meaning in part, began to bristle up with the assurance that “Colonel Keith never brayed in his life,” Conrade caught the point with dangerous relish, and dwelt with colonial disrespect, that alarmed his mother, on the opinion expressed by some unguarded person in his hearing, that Lord Keith was little better than an old donkey. “He is worse than Aunt Rachel,” said Conrade, meditatively, “now she has saved Don, and keeps away from the croquet.”

Meantime Rachel studied her own feelings. A few weeks ago her heart would have leapt at the announcement; but now her mission had found her out, and she did not want to be drawn aside from it. Colonel Keith might have many perfections, but alike as Scotsman, soldier, and High-Churchman, he was likely to be critical of the head of the F. U. E. E., and matters had gone too far now for her to afford to doubt, or to receive a doubting master. Moreover, it would be despicable to be diverted from a great purpose by a courtship like any ordinary woman; nor must marriage settlements come to interfere with her building and endowment of the asylum, and ultimate devotion of her property thereunto. No, she would school herself into a system of quiet discouragement, and reserve herself and her means as the nucleus of the great future establishment for maintaining female rights of labour.

CHAPTER XI. LADY TEMPLE’S TROUBLES.

Early in the afternoon of a warm October day, the brothers arrived at Avomnouth, and ten minutes after both were upon the lawn at Myrtlewood, where croquet was still in progress. Shouts of delight greeted the Colonel, and very gracefully did Bessie Keith come to meet him, with the frank confiding sweetness befitting his recent ward, the daughter of his friend. A reassuring smile and monosyllable had scarcely time to pass between him and the governess before a flood of tidings was poured on him by the four elder boys, while their mother was obliged to be mannerly, and to pace leisurely along with the elder guest, and poor Mr. Touchett waited a little aloof, hammering his own boot with his mallet, as if he found the enchanted ground failing him. But the boys had no notion of losing their game, and vociferated an inquiry whether the Colonel knew croquet. Yes, he had several times played with his cousins in Scotland. “Then,” insisted Conrade, “he must take mamma’s place, whilst she was being devoured, and how surprised she would be at being so helped on!”

“Not now, not to-day,” he answered. “I may go to your sister, Ailie? Yes, boys, you must close up your ranks without me.”

“Then please,” entreated Hubert, “take him away,” pointing to the engrosser of their mother.

“Do you find elder brothers so easily disposed of, Hubert?” said the Colonel. “Do you take Conrade away when you please?”

“I should punch him,” returned Francis.

“He knows better,” quoth Conrade in the same breath, both with infinite contempt for Hubert.

“And I know better,” returned Colonel Keith; “never mind, boys, I’ll come back in—in reasonable time to carry him off,” and he waved a gay farewell.

“Surely you wish to go too,” said Bessie to Alison, “if only to relieve them of the little girl! I’ll take care of the boys. Pray go.”

“Thank you,” said Alison, surprised at her knowledge of the state of things, “but they are quite hardened to Rose’s presence, and I think would rather miss her.”

And in fact Alison did not feel at all sure that, when stimulated by Bessie’s appreciation of their mischief, her flock might not in her absence do something that might put their mother in despair, and make their character for naughtiness irretrievable; so Leoline and Hubert were summoned, the one from speculations whether Lord Keith would have punched his brother, the other from amaze that there was anything our military secretary could not do, and Conrade and Francis were arrested in the midst of a significant contraction of the nostrils and opening of the mouth, which would have exploded in an “eehaw” but for Bessie’s valiant undertaking to be herself and Lady Temple both at once.

Soon Colonel Keith was knocking at Ermine’s door, and Rose was clinging to him, glowing and sparkling with shy ecstasy; while, without sitting down again after her greeting, Rachel resolutely took leave, and walked away with firm steps, ruminating on her determination not to encourage meetings in Mackarel Lane.

“Better than I expected!” exclaimed Colonel Keith, after having ushered her to the door in the fulness of his gratitude. “I knew it was inevitable that she should be here, but that she should depart so fast was beyond hope!”

“Yes,” said Ermine, laughing, “I woke with such a certainty that she would be here and spend the first half hour in the F. U. E, E. that I wasted a great deal of resignation. But how are you, Colin? You are much thinner! I am sure by Mrs. Tibbie’s account you were much more ill than you told me.”

“Only ill enough to convince me that the need of avoiding a northern winter was not a fallacy, and likewise to make Tibbie insist on coming here for fear Maister Colin should not be looked after. It is rather a responsibility to have let her come, for she has never been farther south than Edinburgh, but she would not be denied. So she has been to see you! I told her you would help her to find her underlings. I thought it might be an opening for that nice little girl who was so oppressed with lace-making.”

“Ah! she has gone to learn wood-cutting at the F. U. E. E.; but I hope we have comfortably provided Tibbie with a damsel. She made us a long visit, and told us all about Master Colin’s nursery days. Only I am afraid we did not understand half.”

“Good old body,” said the Colonel, in tones almost as national as Tibbie’s own. “She was nursery girl when I was the spoilt child of the house, and hers was the most homelike face that met me. I wish she may be happy here. And you are well, Ermine?”

“Very well, those drives are so pleasant, and Lady Temple so kind! It is wonderful to think how many unlooked-for delights have come to us; how good every one is;” and her eyes shone with happy tears as she looked up at him, and felt that he was as much her own as ever. “And you have brought your brother,” she said; “you have been too useful to him to be spared. Is he come to look after you or to be looked after!”

“A little of both I fancy,” said the Colonel, “but I suspect he is giving me up as a bad job. Ermine, there are ominous revivifications going on at home, and he has got himself rigged out in London, and had his hair cut, so that he looks ten years younger.”

“Do you think he has any special views!”

“He took such pains to show me the charms of the Benorchie property that I should have thought it would have been Jessie Douglas, the heiress thereof, only coming here does not seem the way to set about it, unless be regards this place as a bath of youth and fashion. I fancy he has learnt enough about my health to make him think me a precarious kind of heir, and that his views are general. I hope he may not be made a fool of, otherwise it is the best thing that could happen to us.”

“It has been a dreary uncomfortable visit, I much fear,” said Ermine.

“Less so than you think. I am glad to have been able to be of use to him, and to have lived on something like brotherly terms. We know and like each other much better than we had a chance of doing before, and we made some pleasant visits together, but at home there are many things on which we can never be of one mind, and I never was well enough at Gowanbrae to think of living there permanently.”

“I was sure you had been very unwell! You are better though?”

“Well, since I came into Avonmouth air,” said he, “I fear nothing but cold. I am glad to have brought him with me, since he could not stay there, for it is very lonely for him.”

“Yet you said his daughter was settled close by.”

“Yes; but that makes it the worse. In fact, Ermine, I did not know before what a wretched affair he had made of his daughters’ marriages. Isabel he married when she was almost a child to this Comyn Menteith, very young too at the time, and who has turned out a good-natured, reckless, dissipated fellow, who is making away with his property as fast as he can, and to whom Keith’s advice is like water on a duck’s back. It is all rack and ruin and extravagance, a set of ill-regulated children, and Isabel smiling and looking pretty in the midst of them, and perfectly impervious to remonstrance. He is better out of sight of them, for it is only pain and vexation, an example of the sort of match he likes to make. Mary, the other daughter, was the favourite, and used to her own way, and she took it. Keith was obliged to consent so as to prevent an absolute runaway wedding, but he has by no means forgiven her husband, and they are living on very small means on a Government appointment in Trinidad. I believe it would be the bitterest pill to him that either son-in-law should come in for any part of the estate.”

“I thought it was entailed.”

“Gowanbrae is, but as things stand at present that ends with me, and the other estates are at his disposal.”

“Then it would be very hard on the daughters not to have them.”

“So hard that the death of young Alexander may have been one of the greatest disasters of my life, as well as of poor Keith’s. However, this is riding out to meet perplexities. He is most likely to outlive me; and, moreover, may marry and put an end to the difficulty. Meantime, till my charge is relieved, I must go and see after him, and try if I can fulfil Hubert’s polite request that I would take him away. Rosie, my woman, I have hardly spoken to you. I have some hyacinth roots to bring you to-morrow.”

In spite of these suspicions, Colonel Keith was not prepared for what met him on his return to Myrtlewood. On opening the drawing-room door, he found Lady Temple in a low arm-chair in an agony of crying, so that she did not hear his approach till he stood before her in consternation. Often had he comforted her before, and now, convinced that something dreadful must have befallen one of the children, he hastily, though tenderly, entreated her to tell him which, and what he could do.

“Oh, no, no!” she exclaimed, starting up, and removing her handkerchief, so that he saw her usually pale cheeks were crimson—“Oh, no,” she cried, with panting breath and heaving chest. “It is all well with them as yet. But—but—it’s your brother.”

He was at no loss now as to what his brother could have done, but he stood confounded, with a sense of personal share in the offence, and his first words were—“I am very sorry. I never thought of this.”

“No, indeed,” she exclaimed, “who could? It was too preposterous to be dreamt of by any one. At his age, too, one would have thought he might have known better.”

A secret sense of amusement crossed the Colonel, as he recollected that the disparity between Fanny Curtis and Sir Stephen Temple had been far greater than that between Lady Temple and Lord Keith, but the little gentle lady was just at present more like a fury than he had thought possible, evidently regarding what had just passed as an insult to her husband and an attack on the freedom of all her sons. In answer to a few sympathising words on the haste of his brother’s proceeding, she burst out again with indignation almost amusing in one so soft—“Haste! Yes! I did think that people would have had some respect for dear, dear Sir Stephen,” and her gush of tears came with more of grief and less of violence, as if she for the first time felt herself unprotected by her husband’s name.

“I am very much concerned,” he repeated, feeling sympathy safer than reasoning. “If I could have guessed his intentions, I would have tried to spare you this; at least the suddenness of it. I could not have guessed at such presumptuous expectations on so short an acquaintance.”

“He did not expect me to answer at once,” said Fanny. “He said he only meant to let me know his hopes in coming here. And, oh, that’s the worst of it! He won’t believe me, though I said more to him than I thought I could have said to anybody! I told him,” said Fanny, with her hands clasped over her knee to still her trembling, “that I cared for my dear, dear husband, and always shall—always—and then he talked about waiting, just as if anybody could leave off loving one’s husband! And then when he wanted me to consider about my children, why then I told him”—and her voice grew passionate again—“the more I considered, the worse it would be for him, as if I would have my boys know me without their father’s name; and, besides, he had not been so kind to you that I should wish to let him have anything to do with them! I am afraid I ought not to have said that,” she added, returning to something of her meek softness; “but indeed I was so angry, I did not know what I was about. I hope it will not make him angry with you.”

“Never mind me,” said Colonel Keith, kindly. “Indeed, Lady Temple, it is a wonderful compliment to you that he should have been ready to undertake such a family.”

“I don’t want such compliments! And, oh!” and here her eyes widened with fright, “what shall I do? He only said my feelings did me honour, and he would be patient and convince me. Oh, Colonel Keith, what shall I do?” and she looked almost afraid that fate and perseverance would master her after all, and that she should be married against her will.

“You need do nothing but go on your own way, and persist in your refusal,” he said in the calm voice that always reassured her.

“Oh, but pray, pray never let him speak to me about it again!”

“Not if I can help it, and I will do my best. You are quite right, Lady Temple. I do not think it would be at all advisable for yourself or the children, and hardly for himself,” he added, smiling. “I think the mischief must all have been done by that game at whist.”

“Then I’ll never play again in my life! I only thought he was an old man that wanted amusing—.” Then as one of the children peeped in at the window, and was called back—“O dear! how shall I ever look at Conrade again, now any one has thought I could forget his father?”

“If Conrade knew it, which I trust he never will, he ought to esteem it a testimony to his mother.”

“Oh, no, for it must have been my fault! I always was so childish, and when I’ve got my boys with me, I can’t help being happy,” and the tears swelled again in her eyes. “I know I have not been as sad and serious as my aunt thought I ought to be, and now this comes of it.”

“You have been true, have acted nothing,” said Colonel Keith, “and that is best of all. No one who really knew you could mistake your feelings. No doubt that your conduct agrees better with what would please our dear Sir Stephen than if you drooped and depressed the children.”

“Oh, I am glad you say that,” she said, looking up, flushed with pleasure now, and her sweet eyes brimming over. “I have tried to think what he would like in all I have done, and you know I can’t help being proud and glad of belonging to him still; and he always told me not to be shy and creeping into the nursery out of every one’s way.”

The tears were so happy now that he felt that the wound was healed, and that he might venture to leave her, only asking first, “And now what would you like me to do? Shall I try to persuade my brother to come away from this place?”

“Oh, but then every one would find out why, and that would be dreadful! Besides, you are only just come. And Miss Williams—”

“Do not let that stand in your way.”

“No, no. You will be here to take care of me. And his going now would make people guess; and that would be worse than anything.”

“It would. The less disturbance the better; and if you upset his plans now, he might plead a sort of right to renew the attempt later. Quiet indifference will be more dignified and discouraging. Indeed, I little thought to what I was exposing you. Now I hope you are going to rest, I am sure your head is aching terribly.”

She faintly smiled, and let him give her his arm to the foot of the stairs.

At first he was too indignant for any relief save walking up and down the esplanade, endeavouring to digest the unfairness towards himself of his brother’s silence upon views that would have put their joint residence at Avonmouth on so different a footing; above all, when the Temple family were his own peculiar charge, and when he remembered how unsuspiciously he had answered all questions on the money matters, and told how all was left in the widow’s own power. It was the more irritating, as he knew that his displeasure would be ascribed to interested motives, and regarded somewhat as he had seen Hubert’s resentment treated when Francis teased his favourite rabbit. Yet not only on principle, but to avoid a quarrel, and to reserve to himself such influence as might best shield Lady Temple from further annoyance, he must school himself to meet his brother with coolness and patience. It was not, however, without strong effort that he was able to perceive that, from the outer point of view, one who, when a mere child, had become the wife of an aged general, might, in her early widowhood, be supposed open to the addresses of a man of higher rank and fewer years, and the more as it was not in her nature to look crushed and pathetic. He, who had known her intimately throughout her married life and in her sorrow, was aware of the quiet force of the love that had grown up with her, so entirely a thread in her being as to crave little expression, and too reverent to be violent even in her grief. The nature, always gentle, had recovered its balance, and the difference in years had no doubt told in the readiness with which her spirits had recovered their cheerfulness, though her heart remained unchanged. Still, retired as her habits were, and becoming as was her whole conduct, Colin began to see that there had been enough of liveliness about her to lead to Lord Keith’s mistake, though not to justify his want of delicacy in the precipitation of his suit.

These reflections enabled him at length to encounter his brother with temper, and to find that, after all, it had been more like the declaration of an intended siege than an actual summons to surrender. Lord Keith was a less foolish and more courteous man than might have been gathered from poor Fanny’s terrified account; and all he had done was to intimate his intention of recommending himself to her, and the view with which he had placed himself at Avonmouth; nor was he in the slightest degree disconcerted by her vehemence, but rather entertained by it, accepting her faithfulness to her first husband’s memory as the best augury of her affection for a second. He did not even own that he had been precipitate.

“Let her get accustomed to the idea,” he said with a shrewd smile. “The very outcry she makes against it will be all in my favour when the turn comes.”

“I doubt whether you will find it so.”

“All the world does not live on romance like you, man. Look on, and you will see that a pretty young widow like her cannot fail to get into scrapes; have offers made to her, or at least the credit of them. I’d lay you ten pounds that you are said to be engaged to her yourself by this time, and it is no one’s fault but your own that you are not. It is in the very nature of things that she will be driven to shelter herself from the persecution, with whoever has bided his time.”

“Oh, if you prefer being accepted on such terms—”

He smiled, as if the romance of the exclamation were beneath contempt, and proceeded—“A pretty, gracious, ladylike woman, who has seen enough of the world to know how to take her place, and yet will be content with a quiet home. It is an introduction I thank you for, Colin.”

“And pray,” said Colin, the more inwardly nettled because he knew that his elder brother enjoyed his annoyance, “what do you think of those seven slight encumbrances?”

“Oh, they are your charge,” returned Lord Keith, with a twinkle in his eye. “Besides, most of them are lads, and what with school, sea, and India, they will be easily disposed of.”

“Certainly it has been so in our family,” said Colin, rather hoarsely, as he thought of the four goodly brothers who had once risen in steps between him and the Master.

“And,” added Lord Keith, still without direct answer, “she is so handsomely provided for, that you see, Colin, I could afford to give you up the Auchinvar property, that should have been poor Archie’s, and what with the farms and the moor, it would bring you in towards three hundred a year for your housekeeping.”

Colin restrained himself with difficulty, but made quiet answer. “I had rather see it settled as a provision on Mary and her children.”

Lord Keith growled something about minding his own concerns.

“That is all I desire,” responded the Colonel, and therewith the conference ended. Nor was the subject recurred to. It was observable, however, that Lord Keith was polite and even attentive to Ermine. He called on her, sent her grouse, and though saying nothing, seemed to wish to make it evident that his opposition was withdrawn, perhaps as no longer considering his brother’s affairs as his own, or else wishing to conciliate him. Lady Temple was not molested by any alarming attentions from him. But for the proclamation, the state of siege might have been unsuspected. He settled himself at the southern Gowanbrae as if he had no conquest to achieve but that of the rheumatism, and fell rapidly into sea-side habits—his morning stroll to see the fishing-boats come in, his afternoon ride, and evening’s dinner party, or whist-club, which latter institution disposed of him, greatly to Colin’s relief. The brothers lived together very amicably, and the younger often made himself helpful and useful to the elder, but evidently did not feel bound to be exclusively devoted to his service and companionship. All the winter residents and most of the neighbouring gentry quickly called at Gowanbrae, and Lord Keith, in the leisure of his present life, liked society where he was the man of most consequence, and readily accepted and gave invitations. Colin, whose chest would not permit him to venture out after sunset, was a most courteous assistant host, but necessarily made fewer acquaintances, and often went his own way, sometimes riding with his brother, but more frequently scarcely seeing him between breakfast and twilight, and then often spending a solitary evening, which he much preferred either to ecarte or to making talk.

The summer life had been very different from the winter one. There was much less intercourse with the Homestead, partly from Rachel being much engrossed with the F. U. E. E., driving over whenever the coachman would let her, to inspect progress, and spending much of her time in sending out circulars, answering letters, and writing a tale on the distresses of Woman, and how to help them, entitled “Am I not a Sister?” Tales were not much in Bachel’s line; she despised reading them, and did not love writing them, but she knew that she must sugar the cup for the world, and so she diligently applied herself to the piece de resistance for the destined magazine, heavily weighting her slender thread of story with disquisitions on economy and charity, and meaning to land her heroines upon various industrial asylums where their lot should be far more beatific than marriage, which was reserved for the naughty one to live unhappy in ever after. 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.

The croquet practice still survived. In truth, Fanny was afraid to ride lest Lord Keith should join her, and was glad to surround herself with companions. She could not see the enemy without a nervous trepidation, and was eager to engross herself with anybody or thing that came to hand so as to avoid the necessity of attending to him. More than once did she linger among her boys “to speak to Mr. Touchett,” that she might avoid a ten minutes’ walk with his lordship; and for nothing was she more grateful than for the quiet and ever ready tact with which Bessie Keith threw herself into the breach. That bright damsel was claimed by Lord Keith as a kinswoman, and, accepting the relationship, treated him with the pretty playfulness and coquetry that elderly men enjoy from lively young girls, and thus often effected a diversion in her friend’s favour, to the admiration both of the Colonel and of Lady Temple herself; all, however, by intuition, for not a word had been hinted to her of what had passed during that game at croquet. She certainly was a most winning creature; the Colonel was charmed with her conversation in its shades between archness and good sense, and there was no one who did not look forward with dread to the end of her visit, when after a short stay with one of her married cousins, she must begin her residence with the blind uncle to whose establishment she, in her humility, declared she should be such a nuisance. It was the stranger that she should think so, as she had evidently served her apprenticeship to parish work at Bishopsworthy; she knew exactly how to talk to poor people, and was not only at home in clerical details herself, but infused them into Lady Temple; so that, to the extreme satisfaction of Mr. Touchett, the latter organized a treat for the school-children, offered prizes for needlework, and once or twice even came to listen to the singing practice when anything memorable was going forward. She was much pleased at being helped to do what she felt to be right and kind, though hitherto she had hardly known how to set about it, and had been puzzled and perplexed by Rachel’s disapproval, and semi-contempt of “scratching the surface” by the commonplace Sunday-school system.

CHAPTER XII. A CHANGE AT THE PARSONAGE.

“What could presumptuous hope inspire.”—Rokeby.

There had been the usual foretaste of winter, rather sharp for Avonmouth, and though a trifle to what it was in less sheltered places, quite enough to make the heliotropes sorrowful, strip the fig-trees, and shut Colonel Keith up in the library. Then came the rain, and the result was that the lawn of Myrtlewood became too sloppy for the most ardent devotees of croquet; indeed, as Bessie said, the great charm of the sport was that one could not play it above eight months in the year.

The sun came back again, and re-asserted the claim of Avonmouth to be a sort of English Mentone; but drying the lawn was past its power, and Conrade and Francis were obliged to console themselves by the glory of taking Bessie Keith for a long ride. They could not persuade their mother to go with them, perhaps because she had from her nursery-window sympathized with Cyril’s admiration of the great white horse that was being led round to the door of Gowanbrae.

She said she must stay at home, and make the morning calls that the charms of croquet had led her to neglect, and in about half an hour from that time she was announced in Miss Williams’ little parlour, and entered with a hurried, panting, almost pursued look, a frightened glance in her eyes, and a flush on her cheek, such as to startle both Ermine and the Colonel.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, as if still too much perturbed to know quite what she was saying, “I—I did not mean to interrupt you.”

“I’m only helping Rose to change the water of her hyacinths,” said Colonel Keith, withdrawing his eyes and attention to the accommodation of the forest of white roots within the purple glass.

“I did not know you were out to-day,” said Lady Temple, recovering herself a little.

“Yes, I came to claim my walking companion. Where’s your hat, Rosie?”

And as the child, who was already equipped all but the little brown hat, stood by her aunt for the few last touches to the throat of her jacket, he leant down and murmured, “I thought he was safe out riding.”

“Oh no, no, it is not that,” hastily answered Lady Temple, a fresh suffusion of crimson colour rustling over her face, and inspiring an amount of curiosity that rendered a considerable effort of attention necessary to be as supremely charming a companion as Rose generally found him in the walks that he made it his business to take with her.

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? Colin, have you so low an opinion of the dignity of your charge as to expect her to pour out her secrets to the first ear in her way?”

“Oh, if she has told you in confidence.”

“No, she has not told me in confidence; she knew better.”

“She has told you nothing?”

“Nothing!” and Ermine indulged in a fit of laughter at his discomfiture, so comical that he could not but laugh himself, as he said, “Ah! the pleasure of disappointing me quite consoles you.”

“No; the proof of the discretion of womanhood does that! You thought, because she tells all her troubles to you, that she must needs do so to the rest of the world.”

“There is little difference between telling you and me.”

“That’s the fault of your discretion, not of hers.”

“I should like to know who has been annoying her. I suspect—”

“So do I. And when you get the confidence at first hand, you will receive it with a better grace than if you had had a contraband foretaste.”

He smiled. “I thought yours a more confidence-winning face, Ermine.”

“That depends on my respect for the individual. Now I thought Lady Temple would much prefer my looking another way, and talking about Conrade’s Latin grammar, to my holding out my arms and inviting her to pour into my tender breast what another time she had rather not know that I knew.”

“That is being an honourable woman,” he said, and Rose’s return ended the exchange of speculations; but it must be confessed that at their next meeting Ermine’s look of suppressed inquiry quite compensated for her previous banter, more especially as neither had he any confidence to reveal or conceal, only the tidings that the riders, whose coalition had justified Lady Temple’s prudence, had met Mr. Touchett wandering in the lanes in the twilight, apparently without a clear idea of what he was doing there. And on the next evening there was quite an excitement, the curate looked so ill, and had broken quite down when he was practising with the choir boys before church; he had, indeed, gone safely through the services, but at school he had been entirely at a loss as to what Sunday it was, and had still more unfortunately forgotten that to be extra civil to Miss Villars was the only hope of retaining her services, for he had walked by her with less attention than if she had been the meanest scholar. Nay, when his most faithful curatolatress had offered to submit to him a design for an illumination for Christmas, he had escaped from her with a desperate and mysterious answer that he had nothing to do with illumination, he hoped it would be as sombre as possible.

No wonder Avonmouth was astonished, and that guesses were not confined to Mackarel Lane.

“Well, Colin,” said Ermine, on the Tuesday, “I have had a first-hand confidence, though from a different quarter. Poor Mr. Touchett came to announce his going away.”

“Going!”

“Yes. In the very nick of time, it seems, Alick Keith has had a letter from his uncle’s curate, asking him to see if he could meet with a southern clergyman to exchange duties for the winter with a London incumbent who has a delicate wife, and of course. Mr. Touchett jumped at it.”

“A very good thing—a great relief.”

“Yes. He said he was very anxious for work, but he had lost ground in this place within the last few months, and he thought that he should do better in a fresh place, and that a fresh person would answer better here, at least for a time. I am very sorry for him, I have a great regard for him.”

“Yes; but he is quite right to make a fresh beginning. Poor man! he has been quite lifted off his feet, and entranced all this time, and his recovery will be much easier elsewhere. It was all that unlucky croquet.”

“I believe it was. I think there was at first a reverential sort of distant admiration, too hopeless to do any one any harm, and that really might have refined him, and given him a little of the gentleman-like tone he has always wanted. But then came the croquet, and when it grew to be a passion it was an excuse for intimacy that it would have taken a stronger head than his to resist.”

“Under the infection of croquet fever.”

“It is what my father used to say of amusements—the instant they become passions they grow unclerical and do mischief. Now he used, though not getting on with the Curtises, to be most successful with the second-rate people; but he has managed to offend half of them during this unhappy mania, which, of course, they all resent as mercenary, and how he is ever to win them back I don’t know. After all, curatocult is a shallow motive—Rachel Curtis might triumph!”

“The higher style of clergyman does not govern by curatocult. I hope this one may be of that description, as he comes through Mr. Clare. I wonder if this poor man will return?”

“Perhaps,” said Ermine, with a shade of mimicry in her voice, “when Lady Temple is married to the Colonel. There now, I have gone and told you! I did try to resolve I would not.”

“And what did you say?”

“I thought it due to Lady Temple to tell him exactly how she regarded you.”

“Yes, Ermine, and it is due to tell others also. I cannot go on on these terms, either here or at Myrtlewood, unless the true state of the case is known. If you will not let me be a married man, I must be an engaged one, either to you or to the little Banksia.”

This periphrasis was needful, because Rose was curled up in a corner with a book, and her accessibility to outward impressions was dubious. It might be partly for that reason, partly from the tone of fixed resolve in his voice, that Ermine made answer, “As you please.”

It was calmly said, with the sweet, grave, confiding smile that told how she trusted to his judgment, and accepted his will. The look and tone brought his hand at once to press hers in eager gratitude, but still she would not pursue this branch of the subject; she looked up to him and said gently, but firmly, “Yes, it may be better that the true state of the case should be known,” and he felt that she thus conveyed that he must not press her further, so he let her continue, “At first I thought it would do him good, he began pitying us so vehemently; but when he found I did not pity myself, he was as ready to forget our troubles as—you are to forget his,” she added, catching Colin’s fixed eye, more intent on herself than on her narrative.

“I beg his pardon, but there are things that come more home.”

“So thought he,” said Ermine.

“Did you find out,” said Colin, now quite recalled, “what made him take courage?”

“When he had once come to the subject, it seemed to be a relief to tell it all out, but he was so faltering and agitated that I did not always follow what he said. I gather, though, that Lady Temple has used him a little as a defence from other perils.”

“Yes, I have seen that.”

“And Miss Keith’s fun has been more encouragement than she knew; constantly summoning him to the croquet-ground, and giving him to understand that Lady Temple liked to have him there. Then came that unlucky day, it seems, when he found Bessie mounting her horse at the door, and she called out that it was too wet for croquet, but Lady Temple was in the garden, and would be glad to see him. She was going to make visits, and he walked down with her, and somehow, in regretting the end of the croquet season, he was surprised into saying how much it had been to him. He says she was exceedingly kind, and regretted extremely that anything should have inspired the hope, said she should never marry again, and entreated him to forget it, then I imagine she fled in here to put an end to it.”

“She must have been much more gentle this time than she was with Keith. I had never conceived her capable of being so furious as she was then. I am very sorry, I wish we could spare her these things.”

“I am afraid that can only be done in one way, which you are not likely at present to take,” said Ermine with a serious mouth, but with light dancing in her eyes.

“I know no one less likely to marry again,” he continued, “yet no one of whom the world is so unlikely to believe it. Her very gentle simplicity and tenderness tell against her! Well, the only hope now is that the poor man has not made his disappointment conspicuous enough for her to know that it is attributed to her. It is the beginning of the fulfilment of Keith’s prediction that offers and reports will harass her into the deed!”

“There is nothing so fallacious as prophecies against second marriages, but I don’t believe they will. She is too quietly dignified for the full brunt of reports to reach her, and too much concentrated on her children to care about them.”

“Well, I have to see her to-morrow to make her sign some papers about her pension, so I shall perhaps find out how she takes it.”

He found Fanny quite her gentle composed self, as usual uncomprehending and helpless about her business affairs, and throwing the whole burthen on him of deciding on her investments; but in such a gracious, dependent, grateful way that he could not but take pleasure in the office, and had no heart for the lesson he had been meditating on the need of learning to act for herself, if she wished to do without a protector. It was not till she had obediently written her “Frances Grace Temple” wherever her prime minister directed, that she said with a crimson blush, “Is it true that poor Mr. Touchett is going away for the winter?”

“I believe he is even going before Sunday.”

“I am very glad—I mean I am very sorry. Do you think any one knows why it is?”

“Very few are intimate enough to guess, and those who are, know you too well to think it was otherwise than very foolish on his part.”

“I don’t know,” said Fanny, “I think I must have been foolish too, or he never could have thought of it. And I was so sorry for him, he seemed so much distressed.”

“I do not wonder at that, when he had once allowed himself to admit the thought.”

“Yes, that is the thing. I am afraid I can’t be what I ought to be, or people would never think of such nonsense,” said Fanny, with large tears welling into her eyes. “I can’t be guarding that dear memory as I ought, to have two such things happening so soon.”

“Perhaps they have made you cherish it all the more.”

“As if I wanted that! Please will you tell me how I could have been more guarded. I don’t mind your knowing about this; indeed you ought, for Sir Stephen trusted me to you, but I can’t ask my aunt or any one else. I can’t talk about it, and I would not have them know that Sir Stephen’s wife can’t get his memory more respected.”

She did not speak with anger as the first time, but with most touching sadness.

“I don’t think any one could answer,” he said.

“I did take my aunt’s advice about the officers being here. I have not had them nearly as much as Bessie would have liked, not even Alick. I have been sorry it was so dull for her, but I thought it could not be wrong to be intimate with one’s clergyman, and Rachel was always so hard upon him.”

“You did nothing but what was kind and right. The only possible thing that could have been wished otherwise was the making a regular habit of his playing croquet here.”

“Ah! but the boys and Bessie liked it so much. However, I dare say it was wrong. Alick never did like it.”

“Not wrong, only a little overdone. You ladies want sometimes to be put in mind that, because a clergyman has to manage his own time, he is not a whit more really at liberty than a soldier or a lawyer, whose hours are fixed for him. You do not do him or his parish any kindness by engrossing him constantly in pastimes that are all very well once in a way, but which he cannot make habitual without detriment to his higher duties.”

“But I thought he would have known when he had time.”

“I am afraid curates are but bits of human nature after all.”

“And what ought I to have done?”

“If you had been an exceedingly prudent woman who knew the world, you would have done just as you did about the officers, been friendly, and fairly intimate, but instead of ratifying the daily appointments for croquet, have given a special invitation now and then, and so shown that you did not expect him without one.”

“I see. Oh, if I had only thought in time, I need not have driven him away from his parish! I hope he won’t go on being unhappy long! Oh, I wish there may be some very nice young lady where he is going. If he only would come back married!”

“We would give him a vote of thanks.”

“What a wedding present I would make her,” proceeded Fanny, brightening perceptibly; “I would give her my best Indian table, only I always meant that for Ermine. I think she must have the emu’s egg set in Australian gold.”

“If she were to be induced by the bribe,” said Colonel Keith, laughing, “I think Ermine would be sufficiently provided for by the emu’s egg. Do you know,” he added, after a pause, “I think I have made a great step in that direction.”

She clasped her hands with delighted sympathy. “She has given me leave to mention the matter,” he continued, “and I take that as a sign that her resistance will give way.”

“Oh, I am very glad,” said Fanny, “I have so wished them to know at the Homestead,” and her deepened colour revealed, against her will, that she had not been insensible to the awkwardness of the secrecy.

“I should rather like to tell your cousin Rachel myself,” said the Colonel; “she has always been very kind to Ermine, and appreciated her more than I should have expected. But she is not easily to be seen now.”

“Her whole heart is in her orphan asylum,” said Fanny. “I hope you will soon go with us and see it; the little girls look so nice.”

The brightening of his prospects seemed to have quite consoled her for her own perplexities.

That Avonmouth should have no suspicion of the cause of the sudden change of pastor could hardly be hoped; but at least Lady Temple did not know how much talk was expended upon her, how quietly Lord Keith hugged himself, how many comical stories Bessie detailed in her letters to her Clare cousins, nor how Mrs. Curtis resented the presumption; and while she shrank from a lecture, more especially as she did not see how dear Fanny was to blame, flattered herself and Grace that, for the future, Colonel Keith and Rachel would take better care of her.

Rachel did not dwell much on the subject, it was only the climax of conceit, croquet, and mere womanhood; and she was chiefly anxious to know whether Mr. Mitchell, the temporary clergyman, would support the F. U. E. E., and be liberal enough to tolerate Mr. Mauleverer. She had great hopes from a London incumbent, and, besides, Bessie Keith knew him, and spoke of him as a very sensible, agreeable, earnest man.

“Earnest enough for you, Rachel,” she said, laughing.

“Is he a party man?”

“Oh, parties are getting obsolete! He works too hard for fighting battles outside.”

The Sunday showed a spare, vigorous face, and a voice and pronunciation far more refined than poor Mr. Touchett’s; also the sermons were far more interesting, and even Rachel granted that there were ideas in it. The change was effected with unusual celerity, for it was as needful to Mrs. Mitchell to be speedily established in a warm climate, as it was desirable to Mr. Touchett to throw himself into other scenes; and the little parsonage soon had the unusual ornaments of tiny children with small spades and wheelbarrows.

The father and mother were evidently very shy people, with a great deal beneath their timidity, and were much delighted to have an old acquaintance like Miss Keith to help them through their introductions, an office which she managed with all her usual bright tact. The discovery that Stephana Temple and Lucy Mitchell had been born within two days of one another, was the first link of a warm friendship between the two mammas; and Mr. 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. Touchett, she had not dared to propose, lest there should be some great inconvenience in the way.

Colonel Keith was the person, however, with whom the new comers chiefly fraternized, and he was amused with their sense of the space for breathing compared with the lanes and alleys of their own district. The schools and cottages seemed to them so wonderfully large, the children so clean, even their fishiness a form of poetical purity, the people ridiculously well off, and even Mrs. Kelland’s lace-school a palace of the free maids that weave their thread with bones. Mr. Mitchell seemed almost to grudge the elbow room, as he talked of the number of cubic feet that held a dozen of his own parishioners; and needful as the change had been for the health of both husband and wife, they almost reproached themselves for having fled and left so many pining for want of pure air, dwelling upon impossible castles for the importation of favourite patients to enjoy the balmy breezes of Avonmouth.

Rachel talked to them about the F. U. E. E., and was delighted by the flush of eager interest on Mrs. Mitchell’s thin face. “Objects” swarmed in their parish, but where were the seven shillings per week to come from? At any rate Mr. Mitchell would, the first leisure day, come over to St. Herbert’s with her, and inspect. He did not fly off at the first hint of Mr. Mauleverer’s “opinions,” but said he would talk to him, and thereby rose steps untold in Rachel’s estimation. The fact of change is dangerously pleasant to the human mind; Mr. Mitchell walked at once into popularity, and Lady Temple had almost conferred a public benefit by what she so little liked to remember. At any rate she had secured an unexceptionable companion, and many a time resorted to his wing, leaving Bessie to amuse Lord Keith, who seemed to be reduced to carry on his courtship to the widow by attentions to her guest.