“No, we have not funds as yet. Mr. Mauleverer had them done at Bristol, where he has a large connection as a lecturer, and expects to get many subscribers. I brought these down as soon as he had left them with me, in hopes that you would kindly distribute them at the wedding. And I wished,” added she to Ermine, “to ask you to contribute to our first number.”
“Thank you,” and the doubtful tone induced Rachel to encourage her diffidence.
“I know you write a great deal, and I am sure you must produce something worthy to see the light. I have no scruple in making the request, as I know Colonel Keith agrees with me that womanhood need not be an extinguisher for talent.”
“I am not afraid of him,” Ermine managed to say without more smile than Rachel took for gratification.
“Then if you would only entrust me with some of your fugitive reflections, I have no doubt that something might be made of them. A practised hand,” she added with a certain editorial dignity, “can always polish away any little roughnesses from inexperience.”
Ermine was choking with laughter at the savage pulls that Colin was inflicting on his moustache, and feeling silence no longer honest, she answered in an odd under tone, “I can’t plead inexperience.”
“No!” cried Rachel. “You have written; you have not published!”
“I was forced to do whatever brought grist to the mill,” said Ermine. “Indeed,” she added, with a look as if to ask pardon; “our secrets have been hardly fair towards you, but we made it a rule not to spoil our breadwinner’s trade by confessing my enormities.”
“I assure you,” said the Colonel, touched by Rachel’s appalled look, “I don’t know how long this cautious person would have kept me in the dark if she had not betrayed herself in the paper we discussed the first day I met you.”
“The Traveller,” said Rachel, her eyes widening like those of a child. “She is the ‘Invalid’!”
“There, I am glad to have made a clean breast of it,” said Ermine.
“The ‘Invalid’!” repeated Rachel. “It is as bad as the Victoria Cross.”
“There is a compliment, Ermine, for which you should make your bow,” said Colin.
“Oh, I did not mean that,” said Rachel; “but that it was as great a mistake as I made about Captain Keith, when I told him his own story, and denied his being the hero, till I actually saw his cross,” and she spoke with a genuine simplicity that almost looked like humour, ending with, “I wonder why I am fated to make such mistakes!”
“Preconceived notions,” said Ermine, smiling; “your theory suffices you, and you don’t see small indications.”
“There may be something in that,” said Rachel, thoughtfully, “it accounts for Grace always seeing things faster than I did.”
“Did Mr. ⸻, your philanthropist, bring you this today?” said the Colonel, taking up the paper again, as if to point a practical moral to her confession of misjudgments.
“Mr. Mauleverer? Yes; I came down as soon as he had left me, only calling first upon Fanny. I am very anxious for contributions. If you would only give me a paper signed by the ‘Invalid,’ it would be a fortune to the institution.”
Ermine made a vague answer that she doubted whether the “Invalid” was separable from the Traveller, and Rachel presently departed with her prospectus, but without having elicited a promise.
“Intolerable!” exclaimed the Colonel. “She was improving under Bessie’s influence, but she has broken out worse than ever. Journal of Female Industry! Journal of a Knight of Industry, might be a better title. You will have nothing to do with it, Ermine?”
“Certainly not as the ‘Invalid,’ but I owe her something for having let her run into this scrape before you.”
“As if you could have hindered her! Come, don’t waste time and brains on a companion for ‘Curatocult.’ ”
“You make me so idle and frivolous that I shall be expelled from the Traveller, and obliged to take refuge in the Female Industry Journal. Shall you distribute the prospectuses?”
“I shall give one to Bessie! That is if I go at all.”
“No, no, there is no valid reason for staying away. Even if we were sure that Rose was right, nothing could well come of it, and your absence would be most invidious.”
“I believe I am wanted to keep Master Alick in order, but if you have the least feeling that you would be more at ease with me at home—”
“That is not a fair question,” said Ermine, smiling. “You know very well that you ought to go.”
“And I shall try to bring back Harry Beauchamp,” added the Colonel. “He would be able to identify the fellow.”
“I do not know what would be gained by that.”
“I should know whom to watch.”
Ermine had seen so much of Rose’s nervous timidity, and had known so many phantoms raised by it, that she attached little importance to the recognition, and when she went over the matter with her little niece, it was with far more thought of the effect of the terror, and of the long suppressed secret, upon the child’s moral and physical nature, than with any curiosity as to the subject of her last alarm. She was surprised to observe that Alison was evidently in a state of much more restlessness and suspense than she was conscious of in herself, during Colin’s absence, and attributed this to her sister’s fear of Maddox’s making some inroad upon her in her long solitary hours, in which case she tried to reassure her by promises to send at once for Mr. Mitchell or for Coombe.
Alison let these assurances be given to her, and felt hypocritical for receiving them in silence. Her grave set features had tutored themselves to conceal forever one page in the life that Ermine thought was entirely revealed to her. Never had Ermine known that brotherly companionship had once suddenly assumed the unwelcome aspect of an affection against which Alison’s heart had been steeled by devotion
