Ermine was the first to break silence.  “Oh, Colin, you look worn and altered.”

“You don’t; you have kept your sunbeam face for me with the dear brown glow I never thought to have seen again.  Why did they tell me you were an invalid, Ermine?”

“Have you not seen Alison?” she asked, supposing he would have known all.

“I saw her, but did not hear her name, till just now at luncheon, when our looks met, and I saw it was not another disappointment.”

“And she knows you are come to me?”

“It was not in me to speak to her till I had recovered you!  One can forgive, but not forget.”

“You will do more when you know her, and how she has only lived and worked for me, dear Ailie, and suffered far more than I—­”

“While I was suffering from being unable to do anything but live for you,” he repeated, taking up her words; “but that is ended now—­” and as she made a negative motion of her head, “have you not trusted to me?”

“I have thought you not living,” she said; “the last I know was your letter to dear Lady Alison, written from the hospital at Cape Town, after your wound.  She was ill even when it came, and she could only give it to Ailie for me.”

“Dear good aunt, she got into trouble with all the family for our sake; and when she was gone no one would give me any tidings of you.”

“It was her last disappointment that you were not sent home on sick leave.  Did you get well too fast?”

“Not exactly; but my father, or rather, I believe, my brother, intimated that I should be welcome only if I had laid aside a certain foolish fancy, and as lying on my back had not conduced to that end, I could only say I would stay where I was.”

“And was it worse for you?  I am sure, in spite of all that tanned skin, that your health has suffered.  Ought you to have come home?”

“No, I do not know that London surgeons could have got at the ball,” he said, putting his hand on his chest, “and it gives me no trouble in general.  I was such a spectacle when I returned to duty, that good old Sir Stephen Temple, always a proverb for making his staff a refuge for the infirm, made me his aide-de-camp, and was like a father to me.”

“Now I see why I never could find your name in any list of the officers in the moves of the regiment!  I gave you quite up when I saw no Keith among those that came home from India.  I did believe then that you were the Colonel Alexander Keith whose death I had seen mentioned, though I had long trusted to his not being honourable, nor having your first name.”

“Ah! he succeeded to the command after Lady Temple’s father.  A kind friend to me he was, and he left me in charge of his son and daughter.  A very good and gallant fellow is that young Alick.  I must bring him to see you some day—­”

“Oh!  I saw his name; I remember!  I gloried in the doings of a Keith; but I was afraid he had died, as there was no such name with the regiment when it came home.”