"What does he mean?" said Rose, turning round amazed upon her aunt.
"I am afraid he does not quite know," said Ermine, sadly.
"Nay, Ermine," said he, turning from the child, and bending over her,
"you are the last who should say that. Have I not told you that there is
nothing now in our way--no one with a right to object, and means enough
for all we should wish, including her--? What is the matter?" he added,
startled by her look.
"Ah, Colin! I thought you knew--"
"Knew what, Ermine?" with his brows drawn together.
"Knew--what I am," she said; "knew the impossibility. What, they have
not told you? I thought I was the invalid, the cripple, with every one."
"I knew you had suffered cruelly; I knew you were lame," he said,
breathlessly; "but--what--"
"It is more than lame," she said. "I should be better off if the fiction
of the Queens of Spain were truth with me. I could not move from this
chair without help. Oh, Colin! poor Colin! it was very cruel not to
have prepared you for this!" she added, as he gazed at her in grief and
dismay, and made a vain attempt to find the voice that would not come.
"Yes, indeed it is so," she said; "the explosion, rather than the fire,
did mischief below the knee that poor nature could not repair, and I can
but just stand, and cannot walk at all."
"Has anything been done--advice?" he murmured.
"Advice upon advice, so that I felt at the last almost a compensation to
be out of the way of the doctors. No, nothing more can be done; and now
that one is used to it, the snail is very comfortable in its shell. But
I wish you could have known it sooner!" she added, seeing him shade his
brow with his hand, overwhelmed.
"What you must have suffered!" he murmured.
"That is all over long ago; every year has left that further behind, and
made me more content. Dear Colin, for me there is nothing to grieve."
He could not control himself, rose up, made a long stride, and passed
through the open window into the garden.
"Oh, if I could only follow him," gasped Ermine, joining her hands and
looking up.
"Is it because you can't walk?" said Rose, somewhat frightened, and for
the first time beginning to comprehend that her joyous-tempered aunt
could be a subject for pity.
"Oh! this was what I feared!" sighed Ermine. "Oh, give us strength to go
through with it." Then becoming awake to the child's presence--"A
little water, if you please, my dear." Then, more composedly, "Don't be
frightened, my Rose; you did not know it was such a shock to find me so
laid by--"