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.”