"Best for me to have eight Temples thrown on my hands, all in despair!

To have you at Myrtlewood is an infinite relief to me, both on their

account and Ermine's. You should not suspect a penniless Scotsman of

such airs, Ailie."

"Not you, Colin, but your family."

"Isabel Menteith thinks a glass-blower was your father, and Mauleverer

your brother, so yours is by far the most respectable profession. No,

indeed, my family might be thankful to have any one in it who could do

as you have done."

Alison's scruples were thus disposed of, and when Edward's brain cleared

itself from platinum, he showed himself satisfied with the decision,

though he insisted on henceforth sending home a sum sufficient for his

daughter's expenses, and once said something that could be construed

into a hope of spending a quiet old age with her and his sister; but at

present he was manifestly out of his element, and was bent on returning

to Ekaterinburg immediately after the marriage.

His presence was but a qualified pleasure. Naturally shy and absent,

his broken spirits and removal from domestic life, and from society,

had exaggerated his peculiarities; and under the pressure of misfortune,

caused in a great measure by his own negligence, he had completely given

way, without a particle of his sister's patience or buoyancy, and had

merely striven to drown his troubles in engrossing problems of his

favourite pursuit, till the habit of abstraction had become too

confirmed to be shaken off. When the blot on his name was removed, he

was indeed sensible that he was no longer an exile, but he could

not resume his old standing, friendships rudely severed could not be

re-united; his absorption had grown by indulgence; old interests had

passed away; needful conformity to social habits was irksome, and even

his foreign manner and appearance testified to his entire unfitness for

English life.

Tibbie was in constant dread of his burning the house down, so

incalculable and preposterous were his hours, and the Colonel, longing

to render the house a perfect shrine for his bride, found it hard to

tolerate the fumes with which her brother saturated it. If he had been

sure that opium formed no portion of Edward's solace, his counsel to

Alison would have been less decisive. To poor little Rose, her father

was an abiding perplexity and distress; she wanted to love him, and

felt it absolute naughtiness to be constantly disappointed by his

insensibility to her approaches, or else repelled and disgusted by that

vice of the Russian sheep. And a vague hint of being transported to

the Ural mountains, away from Aunt Ermine, had haunted her of late more

dreadfully than even the lions of old; so that the relief was ineffable

when her dear Colonel confided to her that she was to be his niece

and Aunt Ermine's handmaid, sent her to consult with Tibbie on her new

apartment, and invited Augustus to the most eligible hole in the garden.

The grotto that Rose, Conrade, and Francis proceeded to erect with

pebbles and shells, was likely to prove as alarming to that respectable

reptile as a model cottage to an Irish peasant.




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