ad a bonnier face to look into," added the Colonel.
"There, the game breaks up. We should collect our flock, and get them
them back to Les Invalides, as Alick calls it."

"Take care no one else does so," said Ermine, laughing. "It has been
a most happy day, and chief of all the pleasures has been the sight of
Rachel just what I hoped, a thorough wife and mother, all the more so
for her being awake to larger interests, and doing common things better
for being the Clever Woman of the family. Where is she? I don't see her
now."

Where is she? was asked by more than one of the party, but the next to
see her was Alick, who found her standing at the window of her own
room, with her long-robed, two-months' old baby in her arms. "Tired?" he
asked.

"No; I only sent down nurse to drink tea with the other grandees. What
a delightful day it has been! I never hoped that such good fruit would
rise out of my unhappy blunders."

"The blunders that brought so much good to me."

"Ah! the old places bring them back again. I have been recollecting how
it used to seem to me the depth of my fall that you were marrying me out
of pure pity, without my having the spirit to resent or prevent it, and
now I just like to think how kind and noble it was in you."

"I am glad to hear it! I thought I was so foolishly in love, that I was
very glad of any excuse for pressing it on."

"Are the people dispersing? Where is your uncle?"

"He went home with the Colonel and his wife; he has quite lost his heart
to Ermine."

"And Una--did you leave her with Grace?"

"No, she trotted down hand in hand with his little lordship: promising
to lead her uncle back."

"My dear Alick, you don't mean that you trust to that?"

"Why, hardly implicitly."

"Is that the way you say so? They may be both over the cliffs. If you
will just stay in the room with baby, I will go down and fetch them up."

Alick very obediently held out his arms for his son, but when Rachel
proceeded to take up her hat, he added, "You have run miles enough
to-day. I am going down as soon as my uncle has had time to pay his
visit in peace, without being hunted."

"Does he know that?"

"The Colonel does, which comes to the same thing. Is not this boy just
of the age that little Keith was when you gave him up?"

"Yes; and is it not delightful to see how much larger and heavier he
is!"

"Hardly, considering your objections to fine children."

"Oh, that was only to coarse, over-