Edward wrote shortly to his sister, as if almost annoyed at the shower of letters that had by every post begun to recall his attention from some new invention on the means of assaying metals:—­

“I am sorry you have stirred up Keith to the renewal of this painful subject.  You know I considered that page in my life as closed for ever, and I see nothing that would compensate for what it costs me even to think of it.  To redeem my name before the world would be of no avail to me now, for all my English habits are broken, and all that made life valuable to me is gone.  If Long and Beauchamp could reject my solemn affirmation three years ago, what would a retractation slowly wrung from them be worth to me now?  It might once have been, but that is all over now.  Even the desire to take care of you would no longer actuate me since you have Keith again; and in a few years I hope to make my child independent in money matters—­independent of your love and care you would not wish her to be.  Forget the troubles of your life, Ermine, and be happy with your faithful Keith, without further efforts on behalf of one whom they only harass and grieve.”

Ermine shed some bitter tears over this letter, the more sorrowful because the refusal was a shock to her own reliance on his honour, and she felt like a traitress to his cause.  And Colin would give him up after this ungrateful indifference, if nothing worse.  Surely it betrayed a consciousness that the whole of his conduct would not bear inquiry, and she thought of the representations that she had so indignantly rejected, that the accounts, even without the last fatal demand, were in a state that it required an excess of charity to ascribe to mere carelessness on the part of the principal.

She was glad that Alison was absent, and Rose in the garden.  She laid her head on her little table, and drew long sobs of keen suffering, the reaction from the enjoyment and hope of the last few months.  And so little knew she what she ought to ask, that she could only strive to say, “Thy will be done.”

“Ermine! my Ermine, this is not a thing to be so much taken to heart.  This foolish philosopher has not even read his letters.  I never saw any one more consistently like himself.”

Ermine looked up, and Colin was standing over her, muffled up to the eyes, and a letter of his own in his hand.  Her first impulse was to cry out against his imprudence, glad as she was to see him.  “My cough is nearly gone,” he said, unwinding his wrappings, “and I could not stay at home after this wonderful letter—­three pages about chemical analysis, which he does me the honour to think I can understand, two of commissions for villainous compounds, and one of protestations that ‘I will be drowned; nobody shall help me.’”

Ermine’s laugh had come, even amid her tears, his tone was so great a relief to her.  She did not know that he had spent some minutes in cooling down his vexation, lest he should speak ungently of her brother’s indifference.  “Poor Edward,” she said, “you don’t mean that this is all the reply you have?”