“What, are you going to order me away?”

“I thought your brother wanted you at home.”

“It is all very well to talk of an ancestral home, but when it consists of a tall, slim house, with blank walls and pepper-box turrets, set down on a bleak hill side, and every one gone that made it once a happy place, it is not attractive.  Moreover, my only use there would be to be kept as a tame heir, the person whose interference would be most resented, and I don’t recognise that duty.”

“You are a gentleman at large, with no obvious duty,” said Ermine, meditatively.

“What, none?” bending his head, and looking earnestly at her.

“Oh, if you come here out of duty—­” she said archly, and with her merry laugh.  “There, is not that a nice occasion for picking a quarrel?  And seriously,” she continued, “perhaps it might be good for you if we did.  I am beginning to fear that I ought not to keep you lingering here without purpose or occupation.”

“Fulfil my purpose, and I will find occupation.”

“Don’t say that.”

“This once, Ermine.  For one year I shall wait in the hope of convincing you.  If you do not change, your mind in that time, I shall look for another staff appointment, to last till Rose is ready for me.”

The gravity of this conclusion made Ermine laugh.  “That’s what you learnt of your chief,” she said.

“There would be less difference in age,” he said.  “Though I own I should like my widow to be less helpless than poor little Lady Temple.  So,” he added, with the same face of ridiculous earnest, “if you continue to reject me yourself, you will at least rear her with an especial view to her efficiency in that capacity.”

And as Rose at that critical moment looked in at the window, eager to be encouraged to come and show Colinette’s successful toilette, he drew her to him with the smile that had won her whole heart, and listening to every little bit of honesty about “my work” and “Aunt Ermine’s work,” he told her that he knew she was a very managing domestic character, perfectly equal to the charge of both young ladies.

“Aunt Ermine says I must learn to manage, because some day I shall have to take care of papa.”

“Yes,” with his eyes on Ermine all the while, “learn to be a useful woman; who knows if we shan’t all depend on you by-and-by?”

“Oh do let me be useful to you,” cried Rose; “I could hem all your handkerchiefs, and make you a kettle-holder.”

Ermine had never esteemed him more highly than when he refrained from all but a droll look, and uttered not one word of the sportive courtship that is so peculiarly unwholesome and undesirable with children.  Perhaps she thought her colonel more a gentleman than she had done before, if that were possible; and she took an odd, quaint pleasure in the idea of this match, often when talking to Alison of her views of life and education, putting them in the form of what would become of Rose as Lady Keith; and Colin kept his promise of making no more references to the future.  On moving into his lodgings, the hour for his visits was changed, and unless he went out to dinner, he usually came in the evening, thus attracting less notice, and moreover rendering it less easy to lapse into the tender subject, as Alison was then at home, and the conversation was necessarily more general.