If it was not Rachel, it was the next thing to her, namely, Alick Keith.  This was the last day of those that he had spent at the Homestead, and he was leaving Rachel certainly better.  She had not fallen back on any evening that he had been there, but to his great regret he would not be able to come out the next day.  Regimental duty would take him up nearly all the day, and then he was invited to a party at the Deanery, “which the mother would never have forgiven me for refusing,” he said; just as if the mother’s desires had the very same power over him as over her daughters.  “I came to make a desperate request, Miss Williams,” he said.  “Would it be any way possible for you to be so kind as to go up and see Rachel?  She comes downstairs now, and there are no steps if you go in by the glass doors.  Do you think you could manage it?”

“She wishes it!” said Ermine.

“Very much.  There are thorns in her mind that no one knows how to deal with so well as you do, and she told me yesterday how she longed to get to you.”

“It is very good in her.  I have sometimes feared she might think we had dealt unfairly by her if she did not know how very late in the business we suspected that our impostors were the same,” said Ermine.

“It is not her way to blame any one but herself,” said Alick, “and, in fact, our showing her the woodcut deception was a preparation for the rest of it.  But I have said very little to her about all that matter.  She required to be led away rather than back to it.  Brooding over it is fatal work, and yet her spirits are too much weakened and shattered to bear over-amusement.  That is the reason that I thought you would be so very welcome to-morrow.  She has seen no one yet but Lady Temple, and shrinks from the very idea.”

“I do not see why I should not manage it very well,” said Ermine, cheerfully, “if Miss Curtis will let me know in time whether she is equal to seeing me.  You know I can walk into the house now.”

Alick thanked her earnestly.  His listless manner was greatly enlivened by his anxiety, and Colonel Keith was obliged to own that marriage would be a good thing for him; but such a marriage!  If from sheer indolence he should leave the government to his wife, then—­ Colin could only shrug his shoulders in dismay.

Nevertheless, when Ermine’s wheeled chair came to the door the next afternoon, he came with it, and walked by her side up the hill, talking of what had been absolutely the last call she had made—­a visit when they had both been riding with the young Beauchamps.

“Suppose any one had told me then I should make my next visit with you to take care of me, how pleased I should have been,” said Ermine, laughing, and taking as usual an invalid’s pleasure in all the little novelties only remarked after long seclusion.  That steep, winding, pebbly road, with the ferns and creeping plants on its rocky sides, was a wonderful panorama to her, and she entreated