“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 you must have suffered!” he murmured.
“That is all over long ago; every year has left that further behind, and made me more content. Dear Colin, for me there is nothing to grieve.”
He could not control himself, rose up, made a long stride, and passed through the open window into the garden.
“Oh, if I could only follow him,” gasped Ermine, joining her hands and looking up.
“Is it because you can’t walk?” said Rose, somewhat frightened, and for the first time beginning to comprehend that her joyous-tempered aunt could be a subject for pity.
“Oh! this was what I feared!” sighed Ermine. “Oh, give us strength to go through with it.” Then becoming awake to the child’s presence—“A little water, if you please, my dear.” Then, more composedly, “Don’t be frightened, my Rose; you did not know it was such a shock to find me so laid by—”
“He is in the garden walking up and down,” said Rose. “May I go and tell him how much merrier you always are than Aunt Ailie?”
Poor Ermine felt anything but merry just then, but she had some experience of Rose’s powers of soothing, and signed assent. So in another second Colonel Keith was met in the hasty, agonized walk by which he was endeavouring to work off his agitation, and the slender child looked wistfully up at him from dark depths of half understanding eyes—“Please, please don’t be so very sorry,” she said. “Aunt Ermine does not like it. She never is sorry for herself—”