After this interview it was strange to meet again the little committee upstairs, and resume the consideration of ways and means, which Sir Thomas would have settled so summarily. Colin could not help thinking of the difference with a little amusement. He was young enough to be able to dismiss entirely the grave thoughts of the previous night, feeling in his elastic, youthful mind, something of the fresh influence of the morning, or at least—for Colin had found out that the wind was easterly, a thing totally indifferent to him in old times—of the sentiment of the morning, which, so long as heart and courage are unbroken, renews the thoughts and hopes. Money was a necessary evil, to Colin’s thinking. So long as there happened to be enough of it for necessary purposes, he was capable of laughing at the contrast between his own utter impecuniosity and the wealth which was only important for sake of the things that could be done with it. Though he was Scotch, and of a careful, money-making race, this was as yet the aspect which money bore to the young man. He laughed as he leaned back in his easy chair.

“What Lauderdale makes up by working for years, and what we can’t make up by any amount of working, Sir Thomas does with a scrape of his pen,” said Colin. “Downstairs they need to take little thought about these matters, and up here a great deal of thought serves very little purpose. On the whole, it seems to me that it would be very good for our tempers and for our minds in general if we all had plenty of money,” said the young philosopher, still laughing. He was tolerably indifferent on the subject, and able to take it easily. While he spoke, his eye lighted on his mother’s face, who was not regarding the matter by any means so lightly. Mrs. Campbell on the contrary was suffering under one of the greatest minor trials of a woman. She thought her son’s life depended on this going to Italy, and to procure the means for it there was nothing on earth his mother would not have done. She would have undertaken joyfully the rudest and hardest labour that ever was undertaken by man. She would have put her hands, which indeed were not unaccustomed to work, to any kind of toil; but with this eager, longing in her heart she knew at the same time that it was quite impossible for her to do anything by which she could earn those sacred and precious coins on which her boy’s life depended. While Colin spoke, his mother was making painful calculations what she could save and spare, at least, if she could not earn. Colin stopped short when he looked at her; he could not laugh any longer. What was to him a matter of amusing speculation was to her life or death.

“There canna but be inequalities in this world,” said the Mistress, her tender brows still puckered with their baffling calculations. “I’m no envious of ony grandeur, nor of taking my ease, nor of the pleasures of this life. We’re awfu’ happy at hame in our sma’ way when a’s weel with the bairns; but it’s for their sakes, to get them a’ that’s good for them! Money’s precious when it means health and life,” said Mrs. Campbell, with a sigh; “and it’s awfu’ hard upon a woman when she can do nothing for her ain, and them in need.”

“I’ve known it hard upon mony a man,” said Lauderdale; “there’s little difference when it comes to that. But a hundred pounds,” he continued, with a delightful consciousness of power and magnificence, “is not a bad sum to begin upon; before that’s done, there will be time to think of more. It’s none of your business, callant, that I can see. If you’ll no come with me, you must even stay behind. I’ve set my heart on a holiday. A man has little good of his existence when he does nothing but work and eat, and eat and work again, as I’ve been doing. I would like to take the play a while, and feel that I’m alive.”

When the Mistress saw how Lauderdale stretched his long limbs on his chair, and how Colin’s face brightened with the look, half sympathetic, half provocative, which usually marked the beginning of a long discussion, she went to the other end of the room for her work. It was Colin’s linen which his mother was putting in order, and she was rather glad to withdraw to a distance, and retire within that refuge of needlework, which is a kind of sanctuary for a woman, and in which she could pursue undisturbed her own thoughts. After a while, though these discussions were much in Mrs. Campbell’s way, and she was not disinclined in general to take part in them, she lost the thread of the conversation. The voices came to her in a kind of murmur, now and then chiming in with a chance word or two in the current of her own reflections. The atmosphere which surrounded the convalescent had never felt so hopeful as to-day, and the heart of the mother swelled with a sense of restoration, a trust in God’s mercy which recently had been dull and faint within her. Restoration, recovery, deliverance—Nature grows humble, tender, and sweet under these influences of heaven. The Mistress’s heart melted within her, repenting of all the hard thoughts she had been thinking, of all the complaints she had uttered. “It is good for me that I was afflicted,” said the Psalmist; but it was not until his affliction was past that he could say so. Anguish and loss make no such confession. The heart, when it is breaking, has enough ado to refrain from accusing God of its misery, and it is only the inhumanity of human advisers that adjure it to make spiritual merchandize out of the hopelessness of its pain.

Matters were going on thus in Colin’s chamber, where he and his friend sat talking; and the mother at the other end of the room carefully sewing on Colin’s buttons, began to descend out of her heaven of thankfulness, and to be troubled with a pang of apprehension lest her husband should not see things in the same light as she did, but might, perhaps, demur to Colin’s journey as an unwarrantable expense. People at Ramore did not seek such desperate remedies for failing health. Whenever a cherished one was ill, they were content to get “the best doctors,” and do everything for him that household care and pains could do; but, failing that, the invalid succumbed into the easy chair, and, when domestic cherishing would serve the purpose no longer, into a submissive grave, without dreaming of those resources of the rich which might still have prolonged the fading life. Colin of Ramore was a kind father, but he was only a man, as the Mistress recollected, and apt to come to different conclusions from an anxious and trembling mother. Possibly he might think this great expense unnecessary, not to be thought of, an injustice to his other children; and the thought disturbed her reflections terribly, as she sat behind backs examining Colin’s wardrobe. At all events, present duty prompted her to make everything sound and comfortable, that he might be ready to encounter the journey without any difficulty on that score; and, absorbed in these mingled cares and labours, she was folding up carefully the garments she had done with, and laying them before her in a snowy heap upon the table, when the curate knocked softly at the door. It was rather an odd scene for the young clergyman, who grew more and more puzzled by his Scotch acquaintances the more he saw of them, not knowing how to account for their quaint mixture of homeliness and intelligence, nor whether to address them politely as equals, or familiarly as inferiors. Mrs. Campbell came forward, when he opened the door, with her cordial smile and looks as gracious as if she had been a duchess. “Come away, sir,” said the farmer’s wife; “we are aye real glad to see you,” and then the Mistress stopped short, for Henry Frankland was behind the curate, and somehow the heir of Wodensbourne was not a favourite with Colin’s mother. But her discontent lasted only a moment. “I canna bid ye welcome, Mr. Frankland, to your own house,” said the diplomatical woman; “but if it was mine I would say I was glad to see you.” This was how she got over the difficulty. But she followed the two young men towards the fire, where Colin had risen from his easy chair. She could but judge according to her knowledge, like other people; and she was a little afraid that the man who had taken his love from him, who had hazarded his health and, probably, his life, would find little favour in Colin’s eyes; and to be anything but courteous to a man who came to pay her a visit, even had he been her greatest enemy, was repugnant to her barbaric-princely Scotch ideas. She followed accordingly, to be at hand and put things straight, if they went wrong.

“Frankland was too late to see you to-day when you were downstairs; so he thought he would come up with me,” said the curate, giving this graceful version of the fact that, dragged by himself and pursued by Lady Frankland, Harry had most reluctantly ascended the stair. “I am very glad indeed to hear that you were down to-day. You are looking—ah—better already,” said the kind young man. As for Harry Frankland, he came forward and offered his hand, putting down at the same time on the table a pile of books with which he was loaded.

“My cousin told me you wanted to learn Italian,” said Harry; “so I brought you the books. It’s a very easy language; though people talk great nonsense about its being musical. It is not a bit sweeter than English. If you only go to Nice, French will answer quite well.” He sat down suddenly and uncomfortably as he delivered himself of this utterance; and Colin, for his part, took up the grammar, and looked at it as if he had no other interest under the sun.

“I don’t agree with Frankland there,” said the curate; “everything is harmonious in Italy except the churches. I know you are a keen observer, and I am sure you will be struck with the fine spirit of devotion in the people; but the churches are the most impious edifices in existence,” said the Anglican, with warmth—which was said, not because the curate was thinking of ecclesiastical art at the moment, but by way of making conversation, and conducting the interview between the saved man and his deliverer comfortably to an end.

“I think you said you had never been in Scotland?” said Lauderdale. “For my part I’m no heeding much about the churches; but I’m curious to see the workings of an irrational system where it has no limit. It’s an awfu’ interesting subject of inquiry; and there is little doubt in my mind that a real popular system must aye be more or less irrational——”

“I beg your pardon,” said the curate. “Of course there are many errors in the Church of Rome; but I don’t see that such a word as irrational——”

“It’s a very good word,” said Lauderdale. “I’m no using it in a contemptuous sense. Man’s an irrational being, take him at his best. I’m not saying if it’s above reason or below reason, but out of reason; which makes it none the worse to me. All religion’s out of reason for that matter—which is a thing we never can be got to allow in Scotland. You understand it better here,” said the philosopher; but the curate’s attention was too much distracted to leave him any time for self-defence.

During this pause, however, Colin and Harry were eyeing each other over the Italian books. “You won’t find it at all difficult,” said young Frankland; “if you had been staying longer we might have helped you. I say—look here; I am much obliged to you,” Harry added suddenly: “a fellow does not know what to say in such circumstances. I am horribly vexed to think of your being ill. I’d be very glad to do as much for you as you have done for me.”

“Which is simply nothing at all,” said Colin, hastily; and then he became conscious of the effort the other had made. “Thank you for saying so much. I wish you could, and then nobody would think any more about it,” he said, laughing; and they regarded each other for another half minute across the table while Lauderdale and the curate kept on talking heresy. Then Colin suddenly held out his hand.

“It seems my fate to go away without a grudge against anybody,” said the young man; “which is hard enough when one has a certain right to a grievance. Good-bye. I daresay after this your path and mine will scarcely cross again.”

“Good-bye,” said Harry Frankland, rising up—and he made a step or two to the door, but came back again, swallowing a lump in his throat. “Good-bye,” he repeated, holding out his hand another time. “I hope you’ll soon get well! God bless you, old fellow! I never knew you till now;” and so disappeared very suddenly, closing the door after him with a little unconscious violence. Colin lay back in his chair with a smile on his face. The two who were talking beside him had their ears intently open to this bye-play, but they went on with their talk, and left the principal actors in the little drama alone.

“I wonder if I am going to die?” said Colin, softly, to himself; and then he caught the glance of terror, almost of anger, with which his mother stopped short and looked at him, with her lips apart, as if her breathing had stopped for the moment. “Mother, dear, I have no such intention,” said the young man; “only that I am leaving Wodensbourne with feelings so amicable and amiable to everybody, that it looks alarming. Even Harry Frankland, you see—and this morning his cousin——”

“What about his cousin, Colin?” said the Mistress, with bated breath.

Upon which Colin laughed—not harshly or in mockery—softly, with a sound of tenderness, as if somewhere not far off there lay a certain fountain of tears.

“She is very pretty, mother,” he said, “very sweet, and kind, and charming. I daresay she will be a leader of fashion a few years hence, when she is married; and I shall have great pleasure in paying my respects to her when I go up from the Assembly in black silk stockings, with a deputation, to present an address to the Queen.”

Mrs. Campbell never heard any more of what had been or had not been between her son and the little siren whom she herself, in the bitterness of her heart, had taken upon herself to reprove; and this was how Colin, without, as he said, a grudge against anybody, concluded the episode of Wodensbourne.

Some time, however, elapsed before it was possible for Colin and his companion to leave England. Colin of Ramore was, as his wife had imagined, slow to perceive the necessity for so expensive a proceeding. The father’s alarm by this time had come to a conclusion. The favourable bulletins which the Mistress had sent from time to time by way of calming the anxiety of the family, had appeared to the farmer the natural indications of a complete recovery; and so thought Archie, who was his father’s chief adviser in the absence of the mistress of the house.

“The wife’s gone crazy,” said big Colin. “She thinks this laddie of hers should be humoured and made of as if he was Sir Thomas Frankland’s son.” And the farmer treated with a little carelessness his wife’s assurances that a warmer climate was necessary for Colin.

“Naebody would ever have thought of such a thing had he been at hame when the accident happened,” said Archie; which was, indeed, very true: and the father and son, who were the money-makers of the family, thought the idea altogether fantastical. The matter came to be mentioned to the minister, who was, like everybody else on the Holy Loch, interested about Colin, and, as it happened, finally reached the ears of the same Professor who had urged him to compete for the Baliol scholarship. Now, it would be hard in this age of competitive examinations to say anything in praise of a university prize awarded by favour—not to say that the prizes in Scotch universities are so few as to make such patronage specially invidious. Matters are differently managed now-a-days, and it is to be hoped that pure merit always wins the tiny rewards which Scotch learning has at its disposal; but in Colin’s day the interest of a popular professor was worth something. The little conclave was again gathered round the fire in Colin’s room at Wodensbourne, reading, with mingled feelings, a letter from Ramore, when another communication from Glasgow was put into Colin’s hand. The farmer’s letter had been a little impatient, and showed a household disarranged and out of temper. One of the cows was ill, and the maid-servant of the period had not proved herself equal to the emergency. “I don’t want to hurry you, or to make Colin move before he is able,” wrote the head of the house; “but it appears to me that he would be far more likely to recover his health and strength at home.” The Mistress had turned aside, apparently to look out at the window, from which was visible a white blast of rain sweeping over the dreary plain which surrounded Wodensbourne, though in reality it was to hide the gush of tears that had come to her eyes. Big Colin and his wife were what people call “a very united couple,” and had kept the love of their youth wonderfully fresh in their hearts; but still there were times when the man was impatient and dull of understanding, and could not comprehend the woman, just as, perhaps, though Mrs. Campbell was not so clearly aware of that side of the question, there might be times when, on her side, the woman was equally a hindrance to the man. She looked out upon the sweeping rain, and thought of the “soft weather” on the Holy Loch, which had so depressing an effect upon herself, notwithstanding her sound health and many duties, and of the winds of March which were approaching, and of Colin’s life,—the most precious thing on earth, because the most in peril. What was she to do, a poor woman who had nothing, who could earn nothing, who had only useless yearnings and cares of love to give her son?

While Mrs. Campbell was thus contemplating her impotence, and wringing her hands in secret over the adverse decision from home, Lauderdale was walking about the room in a state of high good-humour and content, radiant with the consciousness of that hundred pounds, “or maybe mair,” with which it was to be his unshared, exclusive privilege to succour Colin. “I see no reason why we should wait longer. The Mistress is wanted at home, and the east winds are coming on; and, when our siller is spent we’ll make more,” said the exultant philosopher. And it was at this moment of all others that the professor’s letter was put into the invalid’s hands. He read it in silence, while the Mistress remained at the window, concocting in her mind another appeal to her husband, and wondering in her tender heart how it was that men were so dull of comprehension and so hard to manage. “If Colin should turn ill again”—for she dared not even think the word she meant—“his father would never forgive himsel’,” said the Mistress to herself; and, as for Lauderdale, he had returned to the contemplation of a Continental Bradshaw, which was all the literature of which at this crisis Colin’s friend was capable. They were both surprised when Colin rose up, flushed and excited, with this letter which nobody had attached any importance to in his hands. “They have given me one of the new scholarships,” said Colin without any preface, “to travel and complete my studies. It is a hundred pounds a year; and I think, as Lauderdale says, we can start to-morrow,” said the young man, who in his weakness and excitement was moved almost to tears.

“Eh, Colin, the Lord bless them!” said the Mistress, sitting down suddenly in the nearest chair. She did not know who it was upon whom she was bestowing that benediction, which came from the depths of her heart; but she had to sit still after she had uttered it, blinded by two great tears that made even her son’s face invisible, and with a trembling in her frame, which rendered her incapable of any movement. She was inconsistent, like other human creatures. When she had attained to this sudden deliverance, and had thanked God for it, it instantly darted through her mind that her boy was going to leave her on a solemn and doubtful journey, now to be delayed no longer; and it was some time before she was able to get up and arrange for the last time the carefully-mended linen, which was all ready for him now. She packed it, shedding a few tears over it, and saying prayers in her tender heart for her firstborn; and God only knows the difficulty with which she preserved her smile and cheerful looks, and the sinking of her heart when all her arrangements were completed. Would he ever come back again to make her glad? “You’ll take awfu’ care of my laddie?” she said to Lauderdale, who, for his part, was not delighted with the scholarship; and that misanthrope answered, “Ay, I’ll take care of him.” This was all that passed between the two guardians, who knew, in their inmost hearts, that the object of their care might never come back again. All the household of Wodensbourne turned out to wish Colin a good journey next morning when he went away; and the Mistress put down her old-fashioned veil when the express was gone which carried him to London, and went home again humbly by the night-train. Fortunately there was in the same carriage with her a harassed young mother with little children, whose necessities speedily demanded the lifting up of Mrs. Campbell’s veil. And the day was clear on the Holy Loch, and all her native hills held out their arms to her, when the good woman reached her home. She was able to see the sick cows that afternoon, and her experience suggested a means of relieving the speechless creatures which filled the house with admiration. “She may be a foolish woman about her bairns,” said big Colin, who was half pleased and half angry to hear her story; “but it’s a different-looking house when the wife comes hame.” And thus the natural sunshine came back again to the Mistress’s eyes.