s niece
and Aunt Ermine's handmaid, sent her to consult with Tibbie on her new
apartment, and invited Augustus to the most eligible hole in the garden.
The grotto that Rose, Conrade, and Francis proceeded to erect with
pebbles and shells, was likely to prove as alarming to that respectable
reptile as a model cottage to an Irish peasant.

Ermine had dropped all scruples about Rose's intercourse with other
children, and the feeling that she might associate with them on equal
terms, perhaps, was the most complete assurance of Edward's restoration.
She was glad that companionship should render the little maiden more
active and childlike, for Edward's abstraction had made her believe that
there might be danger in indulging the dreaminess of the imaginative
child.

No one welcomed the removal of these restraints more warmly than Lady
Temple. She was perhaps the happiest of the happy, for with her there
was no drawback, no sorrow, no parting to fear. Her first impulse, when
Colonel Keith came to tell her his plans, was to seize on hat and shawl,
and rush down to Mackarel Lane to kiss Ermine with all her heart, and
tell her that "it was the most delightful thing of her to have consented
at last, for nobody deserved so well to be happy as that dear Colonel;"
and then she clung to Alison, declaring that now she should have her all
to herself, and if she would only come to Myrtlewood, she would do her
very best to make her comfortable there, and it should be her home--her
home always.

"In fact," said Ermine, afterwards to the Colonel, "when you go to
Avoncester, I think you may as well get a licence for the wedding of
Alison Williams and Fanny Temple at the same time. There has been quite
a courtship on the lady's part."

The courtship had been the more ardent from Fanny's alarm lest the
brother should deprive her of Alison; and when she found her fears
groundless, she thanked him with such fervour, and talked so eagerly of
his sister's excellences that she roused him into a lucid interval, in
which he told Colonel Keith that Lady Temple might give him an idea of
the style of woman that Lucy had been. Indeed, Colin began to think that
it was as well that he was so well wrapped up in smoke and chemistry,
otherwise another might have been added to the list of Lady Temple's
hopeless adorers. The person least satisfied was Tibbie, who could not
get over the speediness of the marriage, nor forgive the injury to Miss
Williams, "of