would
be exactly the same, I dare say. And how does the old place look?"

"Just what I do not want you to see. They have found out that the
Rectory is unhealthy, and stuck up a new bald house on the top of the
hill; and the Hall is new furnished in colours that set one's teeth on
edge. Nothing is like itself but Harry, and he only when you get him off
duty--without his wife! I was glad to get away to Belfast."

"And there, judging from Julia's letter, they must have nearly devoured
you."

"They were very hospitable. Your sister is not so very unlike you,
Ermine?"

"Oh, Colin!" exclaimed Alison, with an indignation of which she became
ashamed, and added, by way of making it better, "Perhaps not so very."

"She was very gracious to me," said Colin, smiling, "and we had much
pleasant talk of you."

"Yes," said Ermine, "it will be a great pleasure to poor Julia to be
allowed to take us up again, and you thought the doctor sufficiently
convinced."

"More satisfactorily so than Harry, for he reasoned out the matter, and
seems to me to have gone more by his impression that a man could not be
so imprudent as Edward in good faith than by Maddox's representation."

"That is true," said Alison, "he held out till Edward refused to come
home, and then nothing would make him listen to a word on his behalf."

"And it will be so again," thought Ermine, with a throb at her heart.
Then she asked, "Did you see whether there was a letter for you at
home?"

"Yes, I looked in, and found only this, which I have only glanced at,
from Bessie."

"From Paris?"

"Yes, they come home immediately after Easter. 'Your brother is resolved
I should be presented, and submit to the whole season in style; after
which he says I may judge for myself.' What people will do for
pretty young wives! Poor Mary's most brilliant season was a winter at
Edinburgh; and it must be his doing more than hers, for she goes on:
'Is it not very hard to be precluded all this time from playing the
chieftainess in the halls of my forefathers? I shall have to run down to
your Gowanbrae to refresh myself, and see what you are all about, for
I cannot get the fragment of a letter from Alick; and I met an
Avoncestrian the other day, who told me that the whole county was in a
state of excitement about the F. U. etc.; that every one believed that
the fascinating landscape-painter was on the high road to winning one of
the joint-heiresses; but that Lady Temple--the most