“And when I am there I shall have to visit every one in the family;” and he looked into her eyes to see if she would let them show concern, but she kept up their brave sparkle as she still said, “You know you ought.”

“Then you deliver me up to Keith’s tender mercies till—­”

“Till you have done your duty—­and forgiven him.”

“Remember, Ermine, I can’t spend a winter in Scotland.  A cold always makes the ball remind me of its presence in my chest, and I was told that if I spent a winter at home, it must be on the Devonshire coast.”

“That ball is sufficient justification for ourselves, I allow,” she said, that one little word our making up for all that had gone before.

“And meantime you will write to me—­about Rose’s education.”

“To be sure, or what would be the use of growing old?”

Alison felt savage all through this interview.  That perfect understanding and the playful fiction about waiting for Rose left him a great deal too free.  Ermine might almost be supposed to want to get rid of him, and even when he took leave she only remained for a few minutes leaning her cheek on her hand, and scarcely indulged in a sigh before asking to be wheeled into the house again, nor would she make any remark, save “It has been too bright a summer to last for ever.  It would be very wrong to wish him to stay dangling here.  Let what will happen, he is himself.”

It sounded far too like a deliberate resignation of him, and persuasion that if he went he would not return to be all he had been.  However, the departure was not immediate, Lord Keith had taken a fancy to the place and scenery, and wished to see all the lions of the neighbourhood, so that there were various expeditions in the carriages or on horseback, in which he displayed his grand courtesy to Lady Temple, and Rachel enjoyed the colonel’s conversation, and would have enjoyed it still more if she had not been tracing a meaning in every attention that he paid her, and considering whether she was committing herself by receiving it.  She was glad he was going away that she might have time to face the subject, and make up her mind, for she was convinced that the object of his journey was to make himself certain of his prospects.  When he said that he should return for the winter, and that he had too much to leave at Avonmouth to stay long away from it, there must be a meaning in his words.

Ermine had one more visit from Lord Keith, and this time he came alone.  He was in his most gracious and courteous mood, and sat talking of indifferent things for some time, of his aunt Lady Alison, and of Beauchamp in the old time, so that Ermine enjoyed the renewal of old associations and names belonging to a world unlike her present one.  Then he came to Colin, his looks and his health, and his own desire to see him quit the army.

Ermine assented to his health being hardly fit for the army, and restrained the rising indignation as she recollected what a difference the best surgical advice might have made ten years ago.