appear like mere malevolence.'
'Never mind what it would appear,' said Alick, who was evidently in such a ferment as his usually passive demeanour would have seemed incapable of.
'If the appearance would entirely baffle the purpose, it must be considered,' said the Colonel; 'and in this case it could only lead to estrangement, which would be a lasting evil. I conclude that you have remonstrated with your sister.'
'As much as she gave me time for; but of course that is breath spent in vain.'
'Your uncle had the same means of judging as yourself.'
'No, Colonel, he could do nothing! In the first place, there can be no correspondence with him; and next, he is so devotedly fond of Bessie, that he would no more believe anything against her than Lady Temple would. I have tried that more than once.'
'Then, Alick, there is nothing for it but to let it take its course; and even upon your own view, your sister will be much safer married than single.'
'I had very little expectation of your saying anything else, but in common honesty I felt bound to let you know.'
'And now the best thing to be done is to forget all you have said.'
'Which you will do the more easily as you think it an amiable delusion of mine. Well, so much the better. I dare say you will never think otherwise, and I would willingly believe that my senses went after my fingers' ends.'
The Colonel almost believed so himself. He was aware of the miserably sensitive condition of shattered nerve in which Alick had been sent home, and of the depression of spirits that had ensued on the news of his father's death; and he thought it extremely probable that his weary hours and solicitude for his gay young sister might have made molehills into mountains, and that these now weighed on his memory and conscience. At least, this seemed the only way of accounting for an impression so contrary to that which Bessie Keith made on every one else, and, by his own avowal, on the uncle whom he so much revered. Every other voice proclaimed her winning, amiable, obliging, considerate, and devoted to the service of her friends, with much drollery and shrewdness of perception, tempered by kindness of heart and unwillingness to give pain; and on that sore point of residence with the blind uncle, it was quite possibly a bit of Alick's exaggerated feeling to imagine the arrangement so desirable-- the young lady might be the better judge.
On the whole, the expostulation left Colonel Keith more uncomfortable on Alick's account than on that of his brother.
CHAPTER XVI. AN APPARITION.
'And there will be auld Geordie Tanner, Who coft a young wife wi' his gowd.' JOANNA BAILLIE.
'Mamma,' quoth Leoline, 'I thought a woman must not marry her grandfather. And she called him the patriarch of her clan.'
'He is a cross old man,' added Hubert. 'He said children ought not to be allowed on the esplanade, because he got into the way as I was pushing the perambulator.'
'This was the reason,' said Francis, gravely, 'that she stopped me from braying at him. I shall know what people are at, when they talk of disrespect another time.'
'Don't talk of her,' cried Conrade, flinging himself round; 'women have no truth in them.'
'Except the dear, darling, delightful mammy!' And the larger proportion of boys precipitated themselves headlong upon her, so that any one but a mother would have been buffeted out of breath in their struggles for embracing ground; and even Lady Temple found it a relief when Hubert, having been squeezed out, bethought himself of extending the honourable exception to Miss Williams, and thus effected a diversion. What would have been the young gentlemen's reception of his lordship's previous proposal!
Yet in the fulness of her gladness the inconsistent widow, who had thought Lord Keith so much too old for herself, gave her younger friend heartfelt congratulations upon the blessing of being under fatherly direction and guidance. She was entrusted with the announcement to Rachel, who received it with a simple 'Indeed!' and left her cousin unmolested in her satisfaction, having long relegated Fanny to the class of women who think having a friend about to be married the next best thing to being married themselves, no matter to whom.
'Aspirations in women are mere delusions,' was her compensating sigh to Grace. 'There is no truer saying, than that a woman will receive every man.'
'I have always been glad that is aprocryphal,' said Grace, 'and Eastern women have no choice.'
'Nor are Western women better than Eastern,' said Rachel. 'It is all circumstances. No mental power or acuteness has in any instance that I have yet seen, been able to balance the propensity to bondage. The utmost flight is, that the attachment should not be unworthy.'
'I own that I am very much surprised,' said Grace.
'I am not at all,' said Rachel. 'I have given up hoping better things. I was beginning to have a high opinion of Bessie Keith's capabilities, but womanhood was at the root all the time; and, as her brother says, she has had great disadvantages, and I can make excuses for her. She had not her heart filled with one definite scheme of work and usefulness, such as deters the trifling and designing.'
'Like the F. U. E. E.?'
'Yes, the more I see of the fate of other women, the more thankful I am that my vocation has taken a formed and developed shape.'
And thus Rachel could afford to speak without severity of the match, though she abstained from congratulation. She did not see Captain Keith for the next few days, but at last the two sisters met him at the Cathedral door as they were getting into the carriage after a day's shopping at Avoncester; and Grace offered her congratulations, in accordance with her mother's old fashioned code.
'Thank you,' he said; then turning to Rachel, 'Did she write to you?'
'No.'
'I thought not.'
There was something marked in his tone, but his sister's silence was not of long duration, for a letter arrived containing orders for lace, entreating that a high pressure might be put on Mrs. Kelland, and containing beauteous devices for the veil, which was to be completed in a fearfully short time, since the wedding was to be immediate, in order that Lord Keith might spend Christmas and the ensuing cold months abroad. It was to take place at Bath, and was to be as quiet as possible; 'or else,' wrote Miss Keith, 'I should have been enchanted to have overcome your reluctance to witness the base surrender of female rights. I am afraid you are only too glad to be let off, only don't thank me, but circumstances.'
Rachel's principles revolted at the quantity of work demanded of the victims to lace, and Grace could hardly obtain leave to consult Mrs. Kelland. But she snapped at the order, for the honour and glory of the thing, and undertook through the ramifications of her connexion to obtain the whole bridal array complete. 'For such a pleasant- spoken lady as Miss Keith, she would sit up all night rather than disappoint her.'
The most implacable person of all was the old housekeeper, Tibbie. She had been warmly attached to Lady Keith, and resented her having a successor, and one younger than her daughters; and above all, ever since the son and heir had died, she had reckoned on her own Master Colin coming to the honours of the family, and regarded this new marriage as a crossing of Providence. She vainly endeavoured to stir up Master Colin to remonstrate on his brother's 'makin' siccan a fule's bargain wi' yon glaikit lass. My certie, but he'll hae the warst o't, honest man; rinnin' after her, wi' a' her whigmaleries an' cantrips. He'll rue the day that e'er he bowed his noble head to the likes o' her, I'm jalousin.'
It was to no purpose to remind her that the bride was a Keith in blood; her great grandfather a son of the house of Gowanbrae; all the subsequent descendants brave soldiers.
'A Keith ca' ye her! It's a queer kin' o' Keiths she's comed o', nae better nor Englishers that haena sae muckle's set fit in our bonny Scotland; an' sic scriechin', skirlin' tongues as they hae, a body wad need to be gleg i' the uptak to understan' a word they say. Tak' my word for't, Maister Colin, it's no a'thegither luve for his lordship's grey hairs that gars yon gilpy lassock seek to become my Leddy Keith.'
