“Mamma is gone to meet the Major!” cried three of the lesser boys, rushing upon them in full cry; then Leoline, facing round, “Not the major, he is lieutenant-colonel now—­Colonel Keith, hurrah!”

“What—­what do you mean?  Speak rationally, Leoline, if you can.”

“My lady sent a note to the Homestead this morning,” explained Coombe.  “She heard this morning that Colonel Keith intended to arrive to-day, and took the young gentlemen with her to meet him.”

Rachel could hardly refrain from manifesting her displeasure, and bluntly asked what time Lady Temple was likely to be at home.

“It depended,” Coombe said, “upon the train; it was not certain whether Colonel Keith would come by the twelve or the two o’clock train.”

And Rachel was going to turn sharply round, and dash home with the tidings, when Alison arrested her with the question—­

“And who is Colonel Keith?”

Rachel was too much wrapped up in her own view to hear the trembling of the voice, and answered, “Colonel Keith! why, the Major!  You have not been here so long without hearing of the Major?”

“Yes, but I did not know.  Who is he?” And a more observant person would have seen the governess’s gasping effort to veil her eagerness under her wonted self-control.

“Don’t you know who the Major is?” shouted Leoline.  “He is our military secretary.”

“That’s the sum total of my knowledge,” said Rachel, “I don’t understand his influence, nor know where he was picked up.”

“Nor his regiment?”

“He is not a regimental officer; he is on our staff,” said Leoline, whose imagination could not attain to an earlier condition than “on our staff.”

“I shall go home, then,” said Rachel, “and see if there is any explanation there.”

“I shall ask the Major not to let Aunt Rachel come here,” observed Hubert, as she departed; it was well it was not before.

“Leoline,” anxiously asked Alison, “can you tell me the Major’s name?”

“Colonel Keith—­Lieutenant-Colonel Keith,” was all the answer.

“I meant his Christian name, my dear.”

“Only little boys have Christian names!” they returned, and Alison was forced to do her best to tame herself and them to the duties of the long day of anticipation so joyous on their part, so full of confusion and bewildered anxiety on her own.  She looked in vain, half stealthily, as often before, for a recent Army List or Peerage.  Long ago she had lost the Honourable Colin A. Keith from among the officers of the —­th Highlanders, and though in the last Peerage she had laid hands on he was still among the surviving sons of the late Lord Keith, of Gowanbrae, the date had not gone back far enough to establish that he had not died in the Indian war.  It was fear that predominated with her, there were many moments when she would have given worlds to be secure that the newcomer was not the man she thought