“My name is Rose, not Ailie,” replied the little girl.

“Oh, aye!  Well, it ought to have been, what d’ye call her—­that was a Daniel come to judgment?”

“Portia,” returned Rose; “but I don’t think that is pretty at all.”

“And where is Lady Temple?” anxiously asked Alison.  “She must be grieved to be detained so long.”

“Oh!  Lady Temple is well provided for,” said the Colonel, “all the magistrates and half the bar are at her feet.  They say the grace and simplicity of her manner of giving her evidence were the greatest contrast to poor Rachel’s.”

“But where is she?” still persisted Alison.

“At the hotel; Maria’s was the last case of the day, and she went away directly after it, with such a choice of escorts that I only just spoke to her.”

And at the hotel they found the waggonette at the gateway, and Lady Temple in the parlour with Sir Edward Morden, who, late as it was, would not leave her till he had seen her with the rest of the party.  She sprang up to meet them, and was much relieved to hear that Mauleverer was again secured.  “Otherwise,” she said, “it would have been all my fault for having acted without asking advice.  I hope I shall never do so again.”

She insisted that all should go home together in the waggonette, and Rose found herself upon Mr. Beauchamp’s knee, serving as usual as a safety valve for the feelings of her aunt’s admirers.  There was no inconstancy on her part, she would much have preferred falling to the lot of her own Colonel, but the open carriage drive was rather a risk for him in the night air, and though he had undertaken it in the excitement, he soon found it requisite to muffle himself up, and speak as little as possible.  Harry Beauchamp talked enough for both.  He was in high spirits, partly, as Colin suspected, with the escape from a dull formal home, and partly with the undoing of a wrong that had rankled in his conscience more than he had allowed to himself.  Lady Temple, her heart light at the convalescence of her sons, was pleased with everything, liked him extremely, and answered gaily; and Alison enjoyed the resumption of pleasant habits of days gone by.  Yet, delightful as it all was, there was a sense of disenchantment:  she was marvelling all the time how she could have suffered so much on Harry Beauchamp’s account.  The rejection of him had weighed like a stone upon her heart, but now it seemed like freedom to have escaped his companionship for a lifetime.

Presently a horse’s feet were heard on the road before them; there was a meeting and a halt, and Alick Keith’s voice called out—­“How has it gone?”

“Why, were you not in court?”

“What!  I go to hear my friends baited!”

“Where were you then?”

“At Avonmouth.”

“Oh, then you have seen the boys,” cried Lady Temple.  “How is Conrade?”

“Quite himself.  Up to a prodigious amount of indoor croquet.  But how has it gone?”