“If you will come up to Myrtlewood, you don’t know what you may do.”

“No, you are to set no more people upon me, though Lady Temple’s eyes are very wistful.”

“I did not think you would have held out against her.”

“Not when I had against you?  No, indeed, though I never did see anybody more winning than she is in that meek, submissive gentleness!  Alison says she has cheered up and grown like another creature since your arrival.”

“And Alexander Keith’s.  Yes, poor thing, we have brought something of her own old world, where she was a sort of little queen in her way.  It is too much to ask me to have patience with these relations, Ermine.  If you could see the change from the petted creature she was with her mother and husband, almost always the first lady in the place, and latterly with a colonial court of her own, and now, ordered about, advised, domineered over, made nobody of, and taking it as meekly and sweetly as if she were grateful for it!  I verily believe she is!  But she certainly ought to come away.”

“I am not so sure of that.  It seems to me rather a dangerous responsibility to take her away from her own relations, unless there were any with equal claims.”

“They are her only relations, and her husband had none.  Still to be under the constant yoke of an overpowering woman with unfixed opinions seems to be an unmitigated evil for her and her boys; and no one’s feelings need be hurt by her fixing herself near some public school for her sons’ education.  However, she is settled for this year, and at the end we may decide.”

With which words he again applied himself to Ermine’s correspondence, and presently completed the letter, offering to direct the envelope, which she refused, as having one already directed by the author.  He rather mischievously begged to see it that he might judge of the character of the writing, but this she resisted.

However, in four days’ time there was a very comical twinkle in his eye, as he informed her that the new number of the “Traveller” was in no favour at the Homestead, “there was such a want of original thought in it.”  Ermine felt her imprudence in having risked the betrayal, but all she did was to look at him with her full, steady eyes, and a little twist in each corner of her mouth, as she said, “Indeed!  Then we had better enliven it with the recollections of a military secretary,” and he was both convinced of what he guessed, and also that she did not think it right to tell him; “But,” he said, “there is something in that girl, I perceive, Ermine; she does think for herself, and if she were not so dreadfully earnest that she can’t smile, she would be the best company of any of the party.”

“I am so glad you think so!  I shall be delighted if you will really talk to her, and help her to argue out some of her crudities.  Indeed she is worth it.  But I suppose you will hardly stay here long enough to do her any good.”