nd of the long
suppressed secret, upon the child's moral and physical nature, than with
any curiosity as to the subject of her last alarm. She was surprised to
observe that Alison was evidently in a state of much more restlessness
and suspense than she was conscious of in herself, during Colin's
absence, and attributed this to her sister's fear of Maddox's making
some inroad upon her in her long solitary hours, in which case she tried
to reassure her by promises to send at once for Mr. Mitchell or for
Coombe.

Alison let these assurances be given to her, and felt hypocritical for
receiving them in silence. Her grave set features had tutored themselves
to conceal for ever one page in the life that Ermine thought was
entirely revealed to her. Never had Ermine known that brotherly
companionship had once suddenly assumed the unwelcome aspect of an
affection against which Alison's heart had been steeled by devotion
to the sister whose life she had blighted. Her resolution had been
unswerving, but its full cost had been unknown to her, till her
adherence to it had slackened the old tie of hereditary friendship
towards others of her family; and even when marriage should have
obliterated the past, she still traced resentment in the hard judgment
of her brother's conduct, and even in the one act of consideration that
it galled her to accept.

There had been no meeting since the one decisive interview just before
she had left her original home, and there were many more bitter feelings
than could be easily assuaged in looking forward to a renewal of
intercourse, when all too late, she knew that she should soon be no
longer needed by her sister. She tried to feel it all just retribution,
she tried to rejoice in Ermine's coming happiness; she tried to believe
that the sight of Harry Beauchamp, as a married man, would be the best
cure for her; she blamed and struggled with herself: and after all, her
distress was wasted, Harry Beauchamp had not chosen to come home with
his cousin, who took his unwillingness to miss a hunting-day rather
angrily and scornfully. Alison put her private interpretation on the
refusal, and held aloof, while Colin owned to Ermine his vexation and
surprise at the displeasure that Harry Beauchamp maintained against his
old schoolfellow, and his absolute refusal to listen to any arguments as
to his innocence.

This seemed to have been Colin's prominent interest in his expedition
to Bath; the particulars of