always obeyed her sister; and Lord Keith, taking
his constitutional turn before breakfast on the esplanade, was met by
what he so little expected to encounter that he had not time to get out
of the way--a Bath chair with Alison walking on one side, his brother
on the other. He bowed coldly, but Ermine held out her hand, and he was
obliged to come near.

"I am glad to have met you," she said.

"I am glad to see you out so early," he answered, confused.

"This is an exception," she said, smiling and really looking beautiful.
"Good-bye, I have thought over what passed yesterday, and I believe we
are more agreed than perhaps I gave you reason to think."

There was a queenly air of dignified exchange of pardon in her manner of
giving her hand and bending her head as she again said "Good-bye," and
signed to her driver to move on.

Lord Keith could only say "Good-bye;" then, looking after her, muttered,
"After all, that is a remarkable woman."

CHAPTER VIII. WOMAN'S MISSION DISCOVERED.

"But O unseen for three long years,
Dear was the garb of mountaineers
To the fair maid of Lorn."--LORD OF THE ISLES.

"Only nerves," said Alison Williams, whenever she was pushed hard as to
why her sister continued unwell, and her own looks betrayed an anxiety
that her words would not confess. Rachel, after a visit on the first
day, was of the same opinion, and prescribed globules and enlivenment;
but after a personal administration of the latter in the shape of
a discussion of Lord Keith, she never called in the morning without
hearing that Miss Williams was not up, nor in the afternoon without
Alison's meeting her, and being very sorry, but really she thought it
better for her sister to be quite quiet.

In fact, Alison was not seriously uneasy about Ermine's health, for
these nervous attacks were not without precedent, as the revenge for all
excitement of the sensitive mind upon the much-tried constitution. The
reaction must pass off in time, and calm and patience would assist in
restoring her; but the interview with Lord Keith had been a revelation
to her that her affection was not the calm, chastened, mortified, almost
dead thing of the past that she had tried to believe it; but a
young, living, active feeling, as vivid, and as little able to brook
interference as when the first harsh letter from Gowanbrae had fallen
like a thunderbolt on the bright hopes of youth. She looked back at some
verses that she had wri