The Clever Woman of the Family [188]
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 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 evening that he had been there, but to his great regret he would not be able to come out the next day. Regimental duty would take him up nearly all the day, and then he was invited to a party at the