she looked up at him, and felt that he was as much her own as ever.
"And you have brought your brother," she said; "you have been too
useful to him to be spared. Is he come to look after you or to be
looked after!"

"A little of both I fancy," said the Colonel, "but I suspect he is
giving me up as a bad job. Ermine, there are ominous revivifications
going on at home, and he has got himself rigged out in London, and
had his hair cut, so that he looks ten years younger."

"Do you think he has any special views!"

"He took such pains to show me the charms of the Benorchie property
that I should have thought it would have been Jessie Douglas, the
heiress thereof, only coming here does not seem the way to set about
it, unless be regards this place as a bath of youth and fashion.
I fancy he has learnt enough about my health to make him think me a
precarious kind of heir, and that his views are general. I hope he
may not be made a fool of, otherwise it is the best thing that could
happen to us."

"It has been a dreary uncomfortable visit, I much fear," said Ermine.

"Less so than you think. I am glad to have been able to be of use to
him, and to have lived on something like brotherly terms. We know
and like each other much better than we had a chance of doing before,
and we made some pleasant visits together, but at home there are many
things on which we can never be of one mind, and I never was well
enough at Gowanbrae to think of living there permanently."