“Just what I do not want you to see.  They have found out that the Rectory is unhealthy, and stuck up a new bald house on the top of the hill; and the Hall is new furnished in colours that set one’s teeth on edge.  Nothing is like itself but Harry, and he only when you get him off duty—­without his wife!  I was glad to get away to Belfast.”

“And there, judging from Julia’s letter, they must have nearly devoured you.”

“They were very hospitable.  Your sister is not so very unlike you, Ermine?”

“Oh, Colin!” exclaimed Alison, with an indignation of which she became ashamed, and added, by way of making it better, “Perhaps not so very.”

“She was very gracious to me,” said Colin, smiling, “and we had much pleasant talk of you.”

“Yes,” said Ermine, “it will be a great pleasure to poor Julia to be allowed to take us up again, and you thought the doctor sufficiently convinced.”

“More satisfactorily so than Harry, for he reasoned out the matter, and seems to me to have gone more by his impression that a man could not be so imprudent as Edward in good faith than by Maddox’s representation.”

“That is true,” said Alison, “he held out till Edward refused to come home, and then nothing would make him listen to a word on his behalf.”

“And it will be so again,” thought Ermine, with a throb at her heart.  Then she asked, “Did you see whether there was a letter for you at home?”

“Yes, I looked in, and found only this, which I have only glanced at, from Bessie.”

“From Paris?”

“Yes, they come home immediately after Easter.  ’Your brother is resolved I should be presented, and submit to the whole season in style; after which he says I may judge for myself.’  What people will do for pretty young wives!  Poor Mary’s most brilliant season was a winter at Edinburgh; and it must be his doing more than hers, for she goes on:  ’Is it not very hard to be precluded all this time from playing the chieftainess in the halls of my forefathers?  I shall have to run down to your Gowanbrae to refresh myself, and see what you are all about, for I cannot get the fragment of a letter from Alick; and I met an Avoncestrian the other day, who told me that the whole county was in a state of excitement about the F. U. etc.; that every one believed that the fascinating landscape-painter was on the high road to winning one of the joint-heiresses; but that Lady Temple—­the most incredible part of the story—­had blown up the whole affair, made her way into the penetralia of the asylum, and rescued two female ’prentices, so nearly whipped to death that it took an infinitesimal quantity of Rachel’s homoeopathy to demolish one entirely, and that the virtuous public was highly indignant that there was no inquest nor trial for manslaughter; but that it was certain that Rachel had been extremely ill ever since.  Poor Rachel, there must be some grain of truth in all this, but one would like to be able to contradict it.  I wrote to ask Alick the rights of the story, but he has not vouchsafed me a line of reply; and I should take it as very kind in you to let me know whether he is in the land of the living or gone to Edinburgh—­as I hear is to be the lot of the Highlanders—­or pining for the uncroquetable lawn, to which I always told him he had an eye.’”