certainly the letters about Maddox's committal still to reach
him, but who knows if they will have more effect! Oh, Colin, this was
such a hope that--perhaps I have dwelt too much upon it!"

"It is such a hope," he repeated. "There is no reason for laying it
aside, because Edward is his old self."

"Colin! you still think so?"

"I think so more than ever. If he will not read reason, he must hear it,
and if he takes no notice of the letters we sent after the sessions, I
shall go and bring him back in time for the assizes."

"Oh, Colin! it cannot be. Think of the risk! You who are still looking
so thin and ill. I cannot let you."

"It will be warm enough by the time I get there."

"The distance! You are doing too much for us."

"No, Ermine," with a smile, "that I will never do."

She tried to answer his smile, but leant back and shed tears, not like
the first, full of pain, but of affectionate gratitude, and yet of
reluctance at his going. She had ever been the strength and stay of the
family, but there seemed to be a source of weakness in his nearness, and
this period of his indisposition and of suspense had been a strain on
her spirits that told in this gentle weeping. "This is a poor welcome
after you have been laid up so long," she said when she could speak
again. "If I behave so ill, you will only want to run from the sight of
me."

"It will be July when I come back."

"I do not think you ought to go."

"Nor I, if Edward deigns to read the account of Rose's examination."

In that calm smiling resolution Ermine read the needlessness of present
argument, and spoke again of his health and his solitary hours.

"Mitchel has been very kind in coming to sit with me, and we have
indulged in two or three castles in the air--hospitals in the air,
perhaps, I should say. I told him he might bring me down another guest
instead of the tailor, and he has brought a poor young pupil teacher,
whom Tibbie calls a winsome gallant, but I am afraid she won't save him.
Did you ever read the 'Lady of La Garaye'?"

"Not the poem, but I know her story."

"As soon as that parcel comes in, which Villars is always expecting, I
propose to myself to read that poem with you. What's that? It can't be
Rachel as usual."

If it was not Rachel, it was the next thing to her, namely, Alick Keith.
This was the last day of those that he had spent at the Homestead, and
he was leaving Rachel certainly better. She had not fallen back on any