usion I ought to draw. I do not expect you to believe in this
person till he has cleared up the deceit. If it be only a joke in bad
taste, he deserves the distrust that is the penalty for it. If you have
been opening my eyes to a deception, perhaps I shall thank you for it
some day. I must think it over."

She rose, gathered her papers together, and took her leave gravely,
while Alick, much to Ermine's satisfaction, showed no elation in his
victory. All he said was, "There is a great deal of dignity in the
strict justice of a mind slow to condemn, or to withdraw the trust once
given."

"There is," said Ermine, much pleased with his whole part in the
affair; "there has been full and real candour, not flying into the other
extreme. I am afraid she has a great deal to suffer."

"It was very wrong to have stood so still when the rascal began his
machinations," repeated Alick, "Bessie absolutely helping it on! But for
her, the fellow would have had no chance even of acquaintance with her."

"Your sister hardly deserves blame for that."

"Not exactly blame; but the responsibility remains," he replied gravely,
and indeed he was altogether much graver than his wont, entirely free
from irony, and evidently too sorry for Rachel, and feeling himself,
through his sister, too guilty of her entanglement, to have any of that
amused satisfaction that even Colin evidently felt in her discomfiture.
In fact Ermine did not fully enter into Colin's present tactics; she saw
that he was more than usually excited and interested about the F. U.
E. E., but he had not explained his views to her, and she could only
attribute his desire, to defer the investigation, to a wish that Mr.
Mitchell should have time to return from London, whither he had gone
to conclude his arrangements with Mr. Touchett, leaving the duty in
commission between three delicate winter visitors.

Rachel walked home in a kind of dreamy bewilderment. The first stone in
her castle had been loosened, and her heart was beginning to fail
her, though the tenacity of her will produced a certain incapacity of
believing that she had been absolutely deceived. Her whole fabric was
so compact, and had been so much solidified by her own intensity of
purpose, that any hollowness of foundation was utterly beyond present
credence. She was ready to be affronted with Mauleverer for perilling
all for a bad joke, but wildly impossible as this explanation would have
seemed to others, she pre