"Both much better, Francis nearly well."
"You have had a terrible time! And their mother?"
"Dearer and sweeter than ever," said Alison, with her voice trembling;
"no one who has not seen her now can guess half what she is!"
"I hope she has not missed me. If this matter had not been so pressing,
I could not have stayed away."
"The one message she always gave me was, that you were not to think of
coming home; and, indeed, those dear boys were so good, that we managed
very well without you."
"Yes, I had faith in your discipline, and I think that matters are in
train against Edward comes. Of course there is no letter, or you would
have told me."
"He will be coming himself," said Ermine, resolved against again
expressing a doubt; while Alison added that he hated letter-writing.
"Nothing could be more satisfactory than Beauchamp's letter," added
Colin. "He was so thoroughly convinced, that he immediately began
to believe that he had trusted Edward all along, and had only been
overruled."
"I dare say," said Ermine, laughing; "I can quite fancy honest Harry
completely persuaded that he was Edward's champion, while Maddox was
turning him round his finger."
"And such is his good faith, that I hope he will make Edward believe the
same! I told you of his sending his love to you, and of his hopes that
you would some day come and see the old place. He made his wife quite
cordial."
Alison did not feel herself obliged to accept the message, and Ermine
could freely say, "Poor Harry! I should like to see him again! He would
be exactly the same, I dare say. And how does the old place look?"
"Just what I do not want you to see. They have found out that the
Rectory is unhealthy, and stuck up a new bald house on the top of the
hill; and the Hall is new furnished in colours that set one's teeth on
edge. Nothing is like itself but Harry, and he only when you get him off
duty--without his wife! I was glad to get away to Belfast."
"And there, judging from Julia's letter, they must have nearly devoured
you."
"They were very hospitable. Your sister is not so very unlike you,
Ermine?"
"Oh, Colin!" exclaimed Alison, with an indignation of which she became
ashamed, and added, by way of making it better, "Perhaps not so very."
"She was very gracious to me," said Colin, smiling, "and we had much
pleasant talk of you."
"Yes," said Ermine, "it will be a great pleasure to poor Julia to be
allowed to take us up again, and you thought the doctor sufficiently
convinced."
"More satisfactorily so than Harry, for he reasoned out the matter, and
seems to me to have gone more by his impression that a man could not be
so imprudent as Edward in good faith than by Maddox's representation."