"Yes, Fordham goes on coughing, and Sydney has a bad cold, caught at the wedding. Did you see her?"
"Oh yes, I saw her," he mechanically answered, while his mother continued-
"Mrs. Evelyn has been pressing me most kindly to let Armine go with them; but as Dr. Leslie assures me it is not essential, and he seems so much averse to it himself-"
"You know, mother, how I wish to hold my poor neglected Woodside to the last," cried Armine. "Why is my health always to be made the excuse for deserting it?"
"You are not the only reason," said his mother. "It is hard to keep Esther in banishment all this time, and I am in constant fear of a row about the shooting with that Gilbert Gould."
"Has he been at it again!" exclaimed Jock, fiercely.
"You are as bad as Rob," she said. "I fully expect a disturbance between them, and I had rather be no party to it. Oh, I shall be very thankful to get away, I feel like a prisoner on parole."
"And I feel," said Armine, "as if all we could do here was too little to expiate past carelessness."
"Mind, you are talking of mother!" said Jock, firing up.
"I thought she felt with me," said Armine, meekly.
"So I do, my dear; I ought to have done much better for the place, but our staying on now does no good, and only leads to perplexity and distress."
"And when can you come, mother?" said Jock. "The house is at your service instanter."
"I should like to go to-night, without telling any one or wishing any one good-bye. No, you need not be afraid, Armie. The time must depend on your brother's plans. St. Cradocke's is too far off for much running backwards and forwards. Have you any notion when you may have to leave us, Jock? You don't go with Sir Philip?"
"No, certainly not," said Jock. Then, with a little hesitation, "In fact, that's all up."
"He has not thrown you over?" said his mother; "or is there any difficulty about your exchange?"
Here Babie broke in, "Oh, that's it! That's what Sydney meant! Oh, Jock! you don't mean that you let it prey upon you-the nonsense I talked? Oh, I will never, never say anything again!"
"What did she say?" demanded Jock.
"Sydney? Oh, that it would break her heart and Cecil's if you persisted, and that she could not prevent you, and it was my duty. Mother, that was the letter I didn't show you. I could not understand it, and I thought you had enough to worry you."
"But what does it all mean?" asked their mother. "What have you been doing to the Evelyns?"
"Mother, I have gone back to our old programme," said Jock. "I have sent in my papers; I said nothing to you, for I thought you would only vex yourself."
"Oh, Jock!" she said, overpowered; "I should never have let you!"
"No, mother, dear, I knew that, so I didn't ask you."
"You undutiful person!" but she held out her arm, and as he came to her, she leant her head against him, sobbing a little sob of infinite relief, as though fortitude found it much pleasanter to have a living column.
"You've done it?" said Armine.
"You will see it gazetted in a day or two."
"Then it is all over," cried Babie, again in tears; "all our dreams of honour, and knighthood, and wounds, and glorious things!"
"You can always have the satisfaction of believing I should have got them," said Jock, but there was a quiver in his voice, and a thrill through his whole frame that showed his mother that it was very sore with him, and she hastened to let him subside into a chair while she asked if it was far to the end of the canto, and as Babie was past reading, she took the book and finished it herself. Nobody had much notion of the sense, but the cadence was soothing, and all were composed by the time the prayer-bell rang.
"Come to my dressing-room presently," she said to Lucas, as he lighted her candle for her.
Just as she had gone up stairs, the front door opened to admit Bobus.
"Oh, you are here!" was his salutation. "So you have done for yourself?"
"How do you know?"
"Your colonel wrote to my uncle. He was at the dinner, and made me come back with him to ask if I knew about it."
"How does he take it?"
"He will probably fall on you, as he did on me to-night, calling it all my fault."
"As how?"
"For looking out for myself. For my part, I had thought it praiseworthy, but he says none of the rest of us care a rush for my mother, and so the only one of us good for anything has to be the victim. But don't plume yourself. You'll be the scum of the earth when he has you before him. Poor old boy, it is a sore business to him, and it doesn't improve his temper. I believe this place is a greater loss to him than to my mother. What are your plans?"
"Rotifer, as before."
"Chacun a son gout," said Bobus, shrugging his shoulders.
"I should have thought you would respect curing more than killing."
"If there were not a whole bag of stones about your neck."
"Magnets," said Jock.
"That's just it. All the heavier."
The brothers went upstairs together, and Jock was kept waiting a little while in the dressing-room, till his mother came out, shutting the door on Barbara.
"The poor Infanta!" she said. "She is breaking her foolish little heart over something she said to you. 'As bad as the woman in the "Black Brunswicker,"' she says, only she didn't mean it. Was it so, Jock?"
"I had pretty well made up my mind before. Mother, are you vexed that I did not tell you?"
"You spared me much. Your uncle would never have consented. But oh, Jock! I'm not a Spartan mother. My heart _will_ bound."
"My colonel said it was right," said Jock; "so did Cameron, and even Sir James, though he did not like it."
"With such an array of old soldiers on our side we may let the young ladies rage," said his mother, but she checked her mirth on seeing how far from a joke their indignation was to her son.
He turned and looked into the fire as he said-
"When did Sydney write that letter, mother?"
"Before meeting you at the wedding. She has not written since."
"I thought not," muttered Jock, his brow against the mantel-piece.
"No, but Mrs. Evelyn has written such a nice letter, just like herself, though I did not understand it then. I think she was doubtful how much I knew, for she only said how thankworthy it must be to have such a self-sacrificing spirit among my sons, moral courage, in fact, of the highest kind, and how those who were lavish of strong words in their first disappointment would be wiser by-and- by. I was puzzled then. But oh, my dear, this must have been very grievous to you!"
"I couldn't go back, but I did not know how it would be," said Jock, in a choked voice, collapsing at last, and hiding his face on his mother's lap.
"My Jock, I am so sorry! I wish it were not too late. I could not have let you give up so much," and she fondled his head. "I did not think I had been so weak as to let you see."
"No, mother. It was not that you were so weak, but that you were so brave. Besides, I ought to take the brunt of it. I ruined you all by being the prime mover with that assification, and I was the cause of Armie's illness too. I ought to take my share. If ever I can be any good to any one again," he added, in a dejected tone.
"Good!-unspeakably good! This is my first bright spot of light through the wood. If it were but bright to you! I am afraid they have been very unkind."
"Not unkind. _She_ couldn't be that, but I've shocked and disappointed her," and his head dropped again.
"What, in not being a hero? My dear, you are a true hero in the eyes of us old mothers; but I am afraid that is poor comfort. My Jock, does it go so deep as that? Giving up _all_ that for me! O my boy!"
"It is nonsense to talk of giving up," said Jock, rousing himself to a common-sense view. "What chance had I of her if I had gone to India ten times over?" but the wave of grief broke over him again. "She would have believed in me, and, may be, have waited."
"She will believe in you again."
"No, I'm below her."