“What does it mean?” was her first exclamation; then suddenly turning on Ermine, “Well, do you triumph?”

“I am very, very sorry,” said Ermine.

“I do not know that it is come to that yet,” said Rachel, trying to collect herself.  “I may have been pressing too hard for results.”  Then looking at the mangled picture again as they wisely left her to herself, “But it is a deception!  A deception!  Oh! he need not have done it!  Or,” with a lightened look and tone of relief, “suppose he did it to see whether I should find it out?”

“He is hardly on terms with you for that,” said Ermine; while Alick could not refrain from saying, “Then he would be a more insolent scoundrel than he has shown himself yet.”

“I know he is not quite a gentleman,” said Rachel, “and nothing else gives the instinct of the becoming.  You have conquered, Captain Keith, if it be any pleasure to you to have given my trust and hope a cruel shock.”

“With little satisfaction to myself,” he began to say; but she continued, “A shock, a shock I say, no more; I do not know what conclusion I ought to draw.  I do not expect you to believe in this person till he has cleared up the deceit.  If it be only a joke in bad taste, he deserves the distrust that is the penalty for it.  If you have been opening my eyes to a deception, perhaps I shall thank you for it some day.  I must think it over.”

She rose, gathered her papers together, and took her leave gravely, while Alick, much to Ermine’s satisfaction, showed no elation in his victory.  All he said was, “There is a great deal of dignity in the strict justice of a mind slow to condemn, or to withdraw the trust once given.”

“There is,” said Ermine, much pleased with his whole part in the affair; “there has been full and real candour, not flying into the other extreme.  I am afraid she has a great deal to suffer.”

“It was very wrong to have stood so still when the rascal began his machinations,” repeated Alick, “Bessie absolutely helping it on!  But for her, the fellow would have had no chance even of acquaintance with her.”

“Your sister hardly deserves blame for that.”

“Not exactly blame; but the responsibility remains,” he replied gravely, and indeed he was altogether much graver than his wont, entirely free from irony, and evidently too sorry for Rachel, and feeling himself, through his sister, too guilty of her entanglement, to have any of that amused satisfaction that even Colin evidently felt in her discomfiture.  In fact Ermine did not fully enter into Colin’s present tactics; she saw that he was more than usually excited and interested about the F. U. E. E., but he had not explained his views to her, and she could only attribute his desire, to defer the investigation, to a wish that Mr. Mitchell should have time to return from London, whither he had gone to conclude his arrangements with Mr. Touchett, leaving the duty in commission between three delicate winter visitors.