les of your life, Ermine, and
be happy with your faithful Keith, without further efforts on behalf of
one whom they only harass and grieve."

Ermine shed some bitter tears over this letter, the more sorrowful
because the refusal was a shock to her own reliance on his honour, and
she felt like a traitress to his cause. And Colin would give him up
after this ungrateful indifference, if nothing worse. Surely it betrayed
a consciousness that the whole of his conduct would not bear inquiry,
and she thought of the representations that she had so indignantly
rejected, that the accounts, even without the last fatal demand, were
in a state that it required an excess of charity to ascribe to mere
carelessness on the part of the principal.

She was glad that Alison was absent, and Rose in the garden. She laid
her head on her little table, and drew long sobs of keen suffering,
the reaction from the enjoyment and hope of the last few months. And
so little knew she what she ought to ask, that she could only strive to
say, "Thy will be done."

"Ermine! my Ermine, this is not a thing to be so much taken to heart.
This foolish philosopher has not even read his letters. I never saw any
one more consistently like himself."

Ermine looked up, and Colin was standing over her, muffled up to the
eyes, and a letter of his own in his hand. Her first impulse was to cry
out against his imprudence, glad as she was to see him. "My cough is
nearly gone," he said, unwinding his wrappings, "and I could not stay at
home after this wonderful letter--three pages about chemical analysis,
which he does me the honour to think I can understand, two of
commissions for villainous compounds, and one of protestations that 'I
will be drowned; nobody shall help me.'"

Ermine's laugh had come, even amid her tears, his tone was so great
a relief to her. She did not know that he had spent some minutes
in cooling down his vexation, lest he should speak ungently of her
brother's indifference. "Poor Edward," she said, "you don't mean that
this is all the reply you have?"

"See for yourself," and he pointed to the divisions of the letter he had
described. "There is all he vouchsafes to his own proper affairs. You
see he misapprehends the whole; indeed, I don't believe he has even read
our letters."

"We often thought he did not attend to all we wrote," said Ermine. "It
is very disheartening!"

"Nay, Ermine, you disheartened with the end in view!"

"There are