"I was sure you had been very unwell! You are better though?"

"Well, since I came into Avonmouth air," said he, "I fear nothing but
cold. I am glad to have brought him with me, since he could not stay
there, for it is very lonely for him."

"Yet you said his daughter was settled close by."

"Yes; but that makes it the worse. In fact, Ermine, I did not know
before what a wretched affair he had made of his daughters'
marriages. Isabel he married when she was almost a child to this
Comyn Menteith, very young too at the time, and who has turned out a
good-natured, reckless, dissipated fellow, who is making away with
his property as fast as he can, and to whom Keith's advice is like
water on a duck's back. It is all rack and ruin and extravagance, a
set of ill-regulated children, and Isabel smiling and looking pretty
in the midst of them, and perfectly impervious to remonstrance. He
is better out of sight of them, for it is only pain and vexation, an
example of the sort of match he likes to make. Mary, the other
daughter, was the favourite, and used to her own way, and she took
it. Keith was obliged to consent so as to prevent an absolute
runaway wedding, but he has by no means forgiven her husband, and
they are living on very small means on a Government appointment in
Trinidad. I believe it would be the bitterest pill to him that
either son-in-law should come in for any part of the estate."

"I thought it was entailed."

"Gowanbrae is, but as things stand at present that ends with me, and
the other estates are at his disposal."