was too much wrapped up in her own view to hear the trembling of
the voice, and answered, "Colonel Keith! why, the Major! You have not
been here so long without hearing of the Major?"

"Yes, but I did not know. Who is he?" And a more observant person would
have seen the governess's gasping effort to veil her eagerness under her
wonted self-control.

"Don't you know who the Major is?" shouted Leoline. "He is our military
secretary."

"That's the sum total of my knowledge," said Rachel, "I don't understand
his influence, nor know where he was picked up."

"Nor his regiment?"

"He is not a regimental officer; he is on our staff," said Leoline,
whose imagination could not attain to an earlier condition than "on our
staff."

"I shall go home, then," said Rachel, "and see if there is any
explanation there."

"I shall ask the Major not to let Aunt Rachel come here," observed
Hubert, as she departed; it was well it was not before.

"Leoline," anxiously asked Alison, "can you tell me the Major's name?"

"Colonel Keith--Lieutenant-Colonel Keith," was all the answer.

"I meant his Christian name, my dear."

"Only little boys have Christian names!" they returned, and Alison was
forced to do her best to tame herself and them to the duties of the long
day of anticipation so joyous on their part, so full of confusion and
bewildered anxiety on her own. She looked in vain, half stealthily, as
often before, for a recent Army List or Peerage. Long ago she had
lost the Honourable Colin A. Keith from among the officers of the --th
Highlanders, and though in the last Peerage she had laid hands on he was
still among the surviving sons of the late Lord Keith, of Gowanbrae, the
date had not gone back far enough to establish that he had not died in
the Indian war. It was fear that predominated with her, there were many
moments when she would have given worlds to be secure that the newcomer
was not the man she thought of, who, whether constant or inconstant,
could bring nothing but pain and disturbance to the calm tenour of her
sister's life. Everything was an oppression to her; the children, in
their wild, joyous spirits and gladsome inattention, tried her patience
almost beyond her powers; the charge of the younger ones in their
mother's absence was burthensome, and the delay in returning to her
sister became well-nigh intolerable, when she figured to herself Rachel
Curtis going down to Ermine with the tidings of Colonel Keith's ar