“Masons?” asked Ermine.

“On, aye? didna ye ken it’s for the new room, that is to be built out frae the further parlour, and what they ca’ the bay to the drawin’- room, just to mak’ the house more conformable like wi’ his name and forbears.  I never thocht but that ye’d surely seen the plans and a’, Miss Ermine, an’ if so be it was Maister Colin’s pleasure the thing suld be private, I’m real vext to hae said a word; but ye’ll may be no let on to him, ma’am, that ye ken onything about it.”

“Those down-stairs rooms so silently begun,” thought Ermine.  “How fixed his intention must be?  Oh, how will it end?  What would be best for him?  And how can I think of myseif, while all, even my Ailie, are in distress and danger?”

Ermine had, however, a good deal to think of, for not only had she Colin’s daily letter to answer, but she had Conrade, Leoline, and Hubert with her for several hours every day, and could not help being amused by Rose’s ways with them, little grown-up lady as she was compared to them.  Luckily girls were such uncommon beings with them as to be rather courted than despised, and Rose, having nothing of the tom-boy, did not forfeit the privileges of her sex.  She did not think they compensated for her Colonel’s absence, and never durst introduce Violetta to them; but she enjoyed and profited by the contact with childhood, and was a very nice little comforter to Conrade when he was taken with a fit of anxiety for the brother whom he missed every moment.

Quarantine weighed, however, most heavily upon poor Grace Curtis.  Rachel had from the first insisted that she should be kept out of her room; and the mother’s piteous entreaty always implied that saddest argument, “Why should I be deprived of you both in one day?” So Grace found herself condemned to uselessness almost as complete as Ermine’s.  She could only answer notes, respond to inquiries, without even venturing far enough from the house to see Ermine, or take out the Temple children for a walk.  For indeed, Rachel’s state was extremely critical.

The feverish misery that succeeded Lovedy’s death had been utterly crushing, the one load of self-accusation had prostrated her, but with a restlessness of agony, that kept her writhing as it were in her wretchedness; and then came the gradual increase of physical suffering, bearing in upon her that she had caught the fatal disorder.  To her sense of justice, and her desire to wreak vengeance on herself, the notion might be grateful; but the instinct of self-preservation was far stronger.  She could not die.  The world here, the world to come, were all too dark, too confused, to enable her to bear such a doom.  She saw her peril in her mother’s face; in the reiterated visits of the medical man, whom she no longer spurned; in the calling in of the Avoncester physician; in the introduction of a professional nurse, and the strong and agonizing measures to which she had to submit, every time with the sensation that the suffering could not possibly be greater without exceeding the powers of endurance.