“Yes, Ermine Williams, forgive all that is past, and feel for an old, it may be, a dying man, and for a motherless infant.  There is much to forget, but I trust to your overcoming any scruples, and giving me all the comfort in your power, in thinking of the poor child who has come into the world under such melancholy circumstances.

“Yours most truly,
“Keith of Gowanbrae”

“Poor Keith, he has given me his letter open, his real anxiety has been too much at last for his dignity; and now, my Ermine, what do you say to his entreaty?  The state of the case is this.  How soon this abscess may be ready for the operation is still uncertain, the surgeons think it will be in about three weeks, and in this interval he wishes to complete all his arrangements.  In plain English, his strongest desire is to secure the poor little boy from falling into Menteith’s hands.  Now, mine is a precarious life, and Alick and Rachel may of course be at the ends of the earth, so the point is that you shall be ‘one of the family,’ before the will is signed.  Alick’s leave has been extended to the 1st of October, no more is possible, and he undertakes to nurse poor Keith for a fortnight from to-morrow, if you will consent to fulfil this same request within that time.  After the 1st, I should have to leave you, but as soon as Keith is well enough to bear the journey, he wishes to return to Edinburgh, where he would be kindly attended to by Alick and Rachel all the winter.  There, Ermine, your victory is come, your consent has been entreated at last by my brother, not for my sake, but as a personal favour to himself, because there is no woman in the world of whom he thinks so highly.  For myself I say little.  I grieve that you should be thus hurried and fluttered, and if Ailie thinks it would harm you, she must telegraph back to me not to come down, and I will try to teach myself patience by preaching it to Keith, but otherwise you will see me by four o’clock to-morrow.  Every time I hear Rachel’s name, I think it ought to have been yours, and surely in this fourteenth year, lesser objections may give way.  But persuasions are out of the question, you must be entirely led by your own feeling.  If I could have seen you in July, this should not have come so suddenly at last.  “Yours, more than ever, decide as you may,

“Colin A Keith.

“P.  S.—­I am afraid Rose would hardly answer this purpose equally well.”

Colonel Keith followed his letter at four o’clock, and entering his own study, found it in a cloud of smoke, in the midst of which he dimly discerned a long beard and thin visage absorbed in calculation.

“Edward!  How is Ermine?”

“Oh?” (inquiringly) “Keith!” (as taken by surprise) “ah! you were to come home to-day.  How are you?”

“How is she?  Has she had my letter?”

“What letter?  You write every day, I thought.”

“The letter of yesterday.  Have you heard nothing of it?”