Ermine's beaming eyes as absolutely met the new comer as though she had
sprung forward. "I thought you would come," she said, in a voice serene
with exceeding bliss.

"I have found you at last," as their hands clasped; and they gazed into
each other's faces in the untroubled repose of the meeting, exclusive of
all else.

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 fath