“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.