Though Mr. Moubray said this, it is not to be supposed that he liked his brother-in-law’s second marriage. It was not in flesh and blood to do that.

Gilston House must always be the most important house in that parish to the minister; for it is at once nearest to the manse, and the house in which he is most likely to find people who have at least the outside gloss of education. And he had been used to go there familiarly for nearly twenty years. He had been a favourite with the old people, Mr. Ogilvie’s father and mother, and when their son succeeded them he was already engaged to the minister’s young sister. There was therefore a daily habit of meeting for nearly a lifetime. The two men had not always agreed. Indeed it was not in human nature that they should not have sometimes disagreed strenuously, one being the chief heritor, restraining every expenditure, and the other the minister, who was always, by right of his position, wanting to have something done.

But after all their quarrels they “just ’greed again,” which is the best and indeed the only policy in such circumstances. And though the laird would thunder against that “pig-headed fellow, your brother John,” Mrs. Ogilvie had always been able to smile, knowing that on the other hand she would hear nothing worse from the minister than a recommendation to “remind Robert that schoolhouse roofs and manse windows are not eternal.”

And then the children had woven another link between the two houses. Eric had been Uncle John’s pupil since the boy had been old enough to trot unattended through the little wood and across the two fields which separated the manse from the House; and Effie had trotted by his side when the days were fine, and when she pleased—a still more important stipulation. They had been the children of the manse almost as much as of the House.

The death of the mother had for a time drawn the tie still closer, Ogilvie in his first desolation throwing himself entirely upon the succour and help of his brother-in-law; and the young ones clinging with redoubled tenderness to the kind Uncle John, whom for the first time they found out to be “so like mamma!” There never was a day in which he did not appear on his way to his visiting, or to a session meeting, or some catechising or christening among the hills. They were dependent upon him, and he upon them. But now this constant association had come to an end. No, not to an end—that it could never do; but, in all likelihood, it must now change its conditions.

John Moubray was an old bachelor without chick or child: so most people thought. In reality, he was not a bachelor at all; but his married life had lasted only a year, and that was nearly thirty years ago! The little world about might be excused for forgetting—or himself even—for what is one year out of fifty-four? Perhaps that one year had given him more insight into the life of men; perhaps it had made him softer, tenderer to the weak. That mild celibacy, which the Church of Rome has found so powerful an instrument, was touched perhaps to a more benignant outcome still in this Scotch minister, by the fact that he had loved like his fellows, and been as other men in his time, a triumphant bridegroom, a woman’s husband. But the experience itself was long past, and had left no trace behind; it was to him as a dream. Often he felt uncertain whether there had been any reality in it at all—whether it was not a golden vision such as is permitted to youth.

In these circumstances, it may be supposed that the closing upon him in any degree of the house which had been his sister’s, which belonged to the most intimate friend of everyday life, and which was the home of children who were almost his own children, was very serious to Uncle John.

Mrs. Ogilvie, to do her justice, was anxious to obviate any feeling of this kind. The very first time he dined there after her marriage, she took him aside into a corner of the drawing-room, and talked to him privately.

“I hope there will be no difference, Mr. Moubray,” she said; “I hope you will not let it make any difference that I am here.”

“Difference?” said John, startled a little. He had already felt the difference, but had made up his mind to it as a thing that must be.

“I know,” said the lady, “that I’m not clever enough to take your sister’s place; but so far as a good meaning goes, and a real desire to be a mother to the children, and a friend to you, if you will let me, nobody could be better disposed than I am, if you will just take me at my word.”

The minister was so unprepared for any such speech that he stammered a little over his reply.

“My sister,” he said, “had no pretensions to be clever. That was never the ground my poor Jeanie took up. She was a good woman, and very dear to——very dear to those she belonged to,” he said, with a huskiness in his voice.

“That’s just what I say. I come here in a way that is hard upon a woman, with one before me that I will always be compared to. But this one thing I must say, that I hope you will come about the house just as often as you used to do, and in the same way, coming in whenever it enters your head to do so, and believing that you are always welcome. Always welcome. I don’t say I will always be here, for I think it only right to keep up with society (if it were but for Effie’s sake) more than the last Mrs. Ogilvie did. But I will never be happy if you don’t come out and in just in your ordinary, Mr. Moubray, just as you’ve always been accustomed to do.”

John Moubray went home after this address with a mingled sense of humour and vexation and approval. It made him half angry to be invited to his brother-in-law’s house in this way, as if he required invitation. But, at the same time, he did not deny that she meant well.

And she did mean well. She meant to make Effie one of the most complete of young ladies, and Gilston the model country-seat of a Scots gentleman. She meant to do her duty to the most minute particular. She meant her husband to be happy, and her children to be clothed in scarlet and prosperity, and comfort to be diffused around.

All these preliminaries were long past at the point at which this narrative begins. Effie had grown up, and Eric was away in India with his regiment. He had not been intended for a soldier, but whether it was that Mrs. Ogilvie’s opinion, expressed very frankly, that the army was the right thing for him, influenced the mind of the family in general, or whether the lad found the new rule too unlike the old to take much pleasure in his home, the fact was that he went into the army and disappeared, to the great grief of Effie and Uncle John, but, so far as appeared, of no one else, for little Roderick had just been born, and Mr. Ogilvie was ridiculously delighted with the baby, which seemed to throw his grown-up son altogether into the shade.

It need scarcely be said that both before and after this event there was great trouble and many struggles with Effie, who had been so used to her own way, Mrs. Ogilvie said, that to train her was a task almost beyond mortal powers. Yet it had been done. So long as Eric remained at home, the difficulties had been great.

And then there was all but the additional drawback of a premature love story to make matters worse. But that had been happily, silently, expeditiously smothered in the bud, a triumph of which Mrs. Ogilvie was so proud that it was with difficulty she kept it from Effie herself; and she did not attempt to keep it from Mr. Moubray, to whom, after the lads were safely gone, she confided the fact that young Ronald Sutherland, who had been constantly about the house before her marriage, and who since that had spent as much of his time with the brother and sister out-of-doors as had been possible, had come to Mr. Ogilvie a few days before his departure—“What for, can you imagine?” the lady said.

Now Ronald was a neighbour’s son, the companion by nature of the two children of Gilston. He had got his commission in the same regiment, and joined it at the same time as Eric. He was twenty when Eric was eighteen, so much in advance and no more. The minister could have divined, perhaps, had he set his wits to the task, but he had no desire to forestall the explanation, and he shook his head in reply.

“With a proposal for Effie, if you please!” Mrs. Ogilvie said, “and she only sixteen, not half-educated, nor anything like what I want her to be. And, if you will believe me, Robert was half-disposed—well, not to accept it; but to let the boy speak to her, and bring another bonny business on my hands.”

“They are too young,” said Uncle John.

“Too young! They are too—everything that can be thought of—too ridiculous I would say. Fortunately Robert spoke to me, and I got him to make the lad promise not to say a word to Effie or to any one till he comes back. It will be a long time before he can come back, and who knows what may happen in the meantime? Too young! There is a great deal more than being merely too young. I mean Effie to make a much better match than that.”

“He is a good boy,” said Mr. Moubray; “if he were older, and perhaps a little richer, I would not wish a better, for my part.”

“If all ministers were as unworldly as you!—it is what is sorely wanted in the Church, as Robert always says. But parents may be pardoned if they look a little more to interest in the case of their children. I will very likely never have grown-up daughters of my own. And Effie must make a good match; I have set my heart on that. She is growing up a pretty creature, and she will be far more quiet and manageable for her education now that, heaven be praised, those boys are away.”

“As one of the boys carries a large piece of my heart with him, you will not expect me to be so pious and so thankful,” the minister said.

“O Uncle John! I am sure you would like Effie to get the best of educations. She never would have settled down to it, never! if that lad had got his way.”

Mr. Moubray could not say a word against this, for it was all true; but he could not meet Effie’s wistful eyes when she crept to his side, in his study or out-of-doors whenever they met, and hung upon his arm, and asked him where he thought they would be by now? It was Eric chiefly they were both thinking of, yet Effie unawares said “they.” How far would they be on their journey? It was not then the quick way such as we are happily used to now, but a long, long journey round the stormy Cape, three lingering months of sea, and so long, so long before any news could come.

The uncle and niece, who were now more close companions than ever, were found in the minister’s study one day with a map stretched out before them, their heads closely bent over it, his all clad with vigorous curls of gray, hers shining in soft locks of brown, their eyes so intent that they did not hear the opening door and the rustle of Mrs. Ogilvie’s silk gown.

“What are you doing with your heads so close together?” that lady said. And the two started like guilty things. But Uncle John explained calmly that Effie was feeble in her geography, and no more was said.

And so everything settled down. Effie, it was true, was much more manageable after her brother was away. She had to confine herself to shorter walks, to give up much of that freedom of movement which a girl can only be indulged in when she has a brother by her side. She was very dull for a time, and rather rebellious; but that too wore out, as everything will wear out if we but wait long enough.

And now she was nineteen, on the threshold of her life—a pretty creature, as her stepmother had said, not a great beauty like those that bewitch the world when they are seen, which is but rarely. Effie was pretty as the girls are by dozens, like the flowers, overflowing over all the face of the country, making it sweet. Her hair and her eyes were brown, like most other people’s. She was no wonder or prodigy, but fair and honest and true, a pleasure to behold. And after all those youthful tribulations she was still a happy girl enough at home.

Mrs. Ogilvie, when all was said, was a well-meaning woman. There was no tyranny nor unkindness in the house.

So this young soul expanded in the hands of the people who had the care of it, and who had cared for it so far well, though not with much understanding; how it sped in the times of action, and in the crisis that was approaching, and how far they did their duty by it, we have now to see.