e and ridiculous; necessity
has reduced her to Jacqueline Pascal's system with her pensionnaires,
who were allowed to play one by one without any noise."

"But I don't play all alone," said Rose; "I play with you, Aunt Ermine,
and with Violetta."

And Violetta speedily had the honour of an introduction, very solemnly
gone through, in due form; Ermine, in the languid sportiveness of
enjoyment of his presence and his kindness to the child, inciting Rose
to present Miss Violetta Williams to Colonel Keith, an introduction that
he returned with a grand military salute, at the same time as he shook
the doll's inseparable fingers. "Well, Miss Violetta, and Miss Rose,
when you come to live with me, I shall hope for the pleasure of teaching
you to make a noise."

"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