"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."
"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."