ERNEST BEGINS TO SEE THE VALUE OF LIFE.
Three weeks after the occurrences narrated in the last chapter, Ernest
Ivraine, his right arm in a sling and his face paler and thinner than
ever, ascended the broad staircase of Mr. Merapie’s house with the air
of one who found even that slight exertion an immense trouble; and, in
truth, so he did, for he was still weak and suffering.
For many days previously, indeed, he had been permitted by Dr. Richards
to cross the hall and exchange his own chamber for the more cheerful
dining-room; but now, for the first time, he was essaying the bold step
of reaching the apartment on which Mrs. Frazer had set the stamp of her
taste, and he felt fatigued accordingly.
He marvelled how completely a few short weeks had prostrated him, and it
seemed as if, until then, he had never felt half so forcibly how
extraordinary it was that he should be now, after a fashion,
domesticated with people of whose very names he had a month previously
been ignorant; of whom he still knew literally nothing; who were utter
strangers to him, but who had, notwithstanding, nursed and watched and
tended and cared for him, as though he had been a near and dear
relative; who had been kinder to him than any friend he possessed in the
world, save Henry, would have been, and whose attention had in all human
probability been, under Providence, the means of saving his life.
Life! Was the prolongation of existence, then, a boon for which he ought
to thank them?
Ernest smiled bitterly as he opened the drawing-room door and entered
the apartment, which, being tenantless, he felt he was at perfect
liberty to make himself thoroughly comfortable in, and, accordingly, he
took possession of one of the ancient sofas Mrs. Frazer had got “done
up” in damask, and modernized, soon after her arrival in Belerma Square,
and stretching his weary person at full length upon it, he began musing
_à loisir_ on the events of the last three weeks.
They might not be many, but they were important: first, there was he,
Ernest Ivraine, who for years previously had never known any
ailment,—save that common one, the heartache,—a languid listless
invalid, who found it a trouble to raise even his uninjured arm to his
head, which would, in spite of his own inclinations and Dr. Richard’s
unremitting exertions, keep everlastingly tormenting him with harbouring
a dull, ceaseless, throbbing sort of pain, which unfitted him for the
slightest labour of any kind, and made him feel moping and indolent, in
spite of various efforts to rouse himself and try to be, as he
occasionally said to Malcolm Frazer, “a man again.”
Then, in the next place, he, the eldest son of a miserly Lincolnshire
baronet, had formed a sort of friendship for a wild careless boy, who
introduced himself as the descendant of a perfect swarm of old
Highlanders, with all sorts of heathenish and unpronounceable Christian
names, which Highlanders, it seemed, from Malcolm’s account, had been
great in the land before Ben Nevis was heard of; and he knew, by
something more conclusive than the young Scotchman’s vague ancestral
assertions, that he was a guest in the house of Malcolm’s English uncle,
who resided in a very unfashionable gloomy part of London, who was a
merchant, reported to be immensely rich, and whom he had not yet seen,
in consequence of his protracted absence upon important business in the
flat, rich, marshy land of Holland.
And if the “events” had finished here, none of them need ever have been
chronicled, for broken arms will knit, and broken heads will mend, and
strength will return, and the pulse, after a temporary weakness, will
throb rapidly as it was wont to do; and the friendship he felt for
Malcolm was neither so deep nor so intense as to make the prospect of a
speedy parting appear perfectly unendurable to him; and he felt he could
say farewell to Mrs. Frazer and Miss Caldera without a faltering tone;
and as to the house itself, why it was a vast deal more comfortable than
Paradise, the furniture and appointments being twice as good, and the
style of living and so forth infinitely better: but then he did not
expect the owner of it to leave him anything, and he fully anticipated
the inhabitants of his father’s abode would bequeath sufficient to
render him and Henry independent for ever of the smiles or frowns of
fortune. But Ernest Ivraine knew something more had happened during the
course of those three weeks than illness of body, the making of friends,
or the growth of the, to him, hitherto unexperienced sensation that ties
half the world together one day in bonds which, alas! for human nature,
snap asunder too frequently the next—gratitude.
The melancholy man closed his weary eyelids and sunk hopelessly back as
he reluctantly admitted the miserable truth that he had commenced to
care for something besides Henry, his brother; that he had made but one
rapid stride from freedom of heart to sorrow of soul; that a new care, a
fresh trial had been created for him by the pale slight girl, who had
nursed and watched him like a sister during his illness, and scarcely
spoken ten words to him during his convalescence; who, least of all in
the house, obtruded herself on his notice or sought to drag him out from
the armour of silent reserve, in which, for years, it had been his
pleasure habitually to encase himself; who seemed pining to be away from
that dreary Square, just as Henry had pined to leave Paradise; and who,
if not handsome, or striking, or fascinating, had a mild beautiful pair
of eyes that might have pleased any one, and a look of sad, earnest
thought in her face, which interested the baronet’s son more than the
gayest, brightest expression of a happy woman could have done. For
though a glad kind glance might, for a moment, have won an answering
smile from Ernest, still the smile would have faded from his lips the
next, leaving no more trace behind in his soul than that left by a
chance sunbeam on the surface of some darksome river, whilst the look
that dwelt almost continually in Mina’s face had become part of his
thoughts, and having, by some means, found an entrance, it remained in
his heart, for nothing that once took silent possession of that gloomy
citadel, whether good or evil, pleasant or disagreeable, could ever
afterwards be completely eradicated therefrom.
His feelings, affections, hates, grew to be as much portions of himself
as the blood in his veins, which had been half stagnated during his long
residence at Paradise. Though he was so weak and ill, it seemed to
Ernest, at times, as if the stream of life circulated more freely
through his frame in the more wholesome London atmosphere than it had
been wont to do amongst the swamps of “home;” and even whilst he mourned
over it, he could not conceal from himself the fact that a better
feeling than love of gold, or the craving, sickening desire for a
father’s death, had got possession of him,—love, yea, verily love, for
Mina Frazer.
Ernest Ivraine felt himself constrained to care for her, and though he
told his rebellious heart that she was not and could never be anything
to him, still his heart declined to believe the assertion. Wherefore,
Mina, all unconsciously, retained her place there, and the baronet’s son
mourned because of the fresh trouble that had fallen upon him.
“Your sister does not seem very strong,” he had remarked one day to
Malcolm; and the answer which was returned to this observation pained
him more than he would have cared to acknowledge.
“No,” said Malcolm, who always liked to speak of his “clan,” “she pines
and sickens for home and a sight of our relatives there. The English air
has never suited her nor never will; her body is here and her heart
there: but whenever my uncle returns, I intend to go myself and take her
to the Highlands.”
“Not to remain for a permanency, though?” exclaimed Ernest hastily; then
added more quietly, “Mrs. Frazer could scarcely do without her.”
“And me,” supplied the youth, pulling up his shirt collar with a
self-satisfied air, which proved to Ernest he knew he should be the most
missed. “Oh, no! not for a permanency, at least, not at present; when I
am older and have seen a little more of the world and feel tired of
excitement and that sort of thing, I shall probably settle there, buy an
estate (where I hope you’ll come and shoot), and be, like my uncle, a
small sovereign in some remote Highland principality; but just now, you
see, I am rather in the ‘black books’ here, and want to be out of sight
of St. Paul’s till the fog clears away. And Mina, poor child! I have not
yet told her of my intention, but she will be wild with delight at the
prospect of seeing Craigmaver once more. She was quite young when she
left it; but it has been what novelists call ‘an enduring thought’ with
her ever since.”
What could he, the silent, melancholy, Lincolnshire misanthrope ever be
to Mina Frazer, the rich city merchant’s niece, with her Highland
partialities and prejudices, her old strong attachments, her
unconquerable dislike to her mother’s country, her wild yearning for the
hills and the moors and the mountains of her beautiful fatherland! What
had he, whose eyes were weary with gazing over fens and swamps and flat
low fields, to do with one who had in childhood looked on the bold
scenery of her birthplace till she had come to claim affinity with it,
and to feel that it was a sort of living death to dwell far from rushing
waterfalls and spreading lakes and rocks and caves and glens! Why should
he, whose relatives were so sordid and mean and calculating, even think
of her who had spent the most impressionable part of life amongst those
whose hearts were pure and fresh and free as the wind that wandered over
the heath-clad hills! He was nothing—could be nothing to her, Ernest
Ivraine constantly reflected; and yet, with a sort of soul sickness, he
found day by day that she was growing to be much to him.
Too much—a being to remember, to carry a sad memory back to Paradise, to
dream of in after days, to long to see, to marvel concerning. She would
return to the Highlands with Malcolm, ay, and stay there, probably, and
lose the melancholy expression which had first attracted him to her: in
time she would marry, perhaps, and be mistress of some lovely Scottish
home, whilst he remained for ever moping and pining amid the dreary
swamps surrounding the ancient gloomy brick pile he had called, since
infancy, “home.”
“I ought to go,” Ernest murmured, half aloud, as the whole truth dawned
upon him; and he raised himself on one elbow and looked hopelessly at
the window, as if beyond it lay freedom from care, as though through it
he proposed making his final exit,—“I ought to go.”
Perhaps, indeed, for one moment he actually thought of doing so, but
exhausted nature laid a detaining hand upon him, obscured his eyes with
a sort of semi-darkness, and once again Ernest sunk back on the sofa,
feeling that something stronger than his will—stern necessity, to
wit—kept him a not reluctant captive in that house.
Then, when the temporary excitement had passed away, and the sort of
calm that great weakness always induces had succeeded thereto, the
invalid became conscious that there were persons in the adjoining
apartment speaking eagerly and hurriedly together.
There were only folding doors separating Ernest from them—folding doors
but imperfectly shut—and the last few sentences of the conversation
being uttered in rather a high key, its purport flashed instantly across
his mind. He was no eavesdropper, was too honourable to wish to hear
what was not intended to reach his ears; but almost ere he had time to
comprehend the interview was a private one, it had concluded and the
talkers stood beside him.
“I gave you a decided answer once before,” was the first hurried
sentence he heard, “and I wish you clearly to understand that my present
is a final one.”
“So be it,” answered Mr. Westwood bitterly; “believe me, I should be
glad to help you to a grander or a better match.”
“You are too kind,” said Mina, with something wonderfully resembling a
sneer; and, pushing open the doors as she uttered these words in an
irritated tone, she beheld Mr. Ivraine, who had, perhaps, never during
the whole course of his life felt himself placed in such an unpleasant
position before.
“I hope you feel better, sir,” said Mr. Westwood, who, having noticed
Mina’s sudden start as she crossed the threshold of the two rooms, had
followed her in, and now stood the only apparently unembarrassed person
present. “I hope you feel better.”
“A great deal, thank you,” answered Ernest, a very poor apology for a
smile flickering over his grave face; “still a little weak, but I shall
get over that in a day or two.”
“Hope to see you quite well again in a short time,” said Mr. Merapie’s
partner, with quite an air of interest; “but you have been most
dangerously ill, and these things are not to be shaken off all at once.
I suppose I can do nothing for you in the city. Oh! Mina, I quite forgot
what I came in especially to say to Mrs. Frazer, but will you be kind
enough to tell her I had a letter from your uncle this morning, and he
expects to be home to-morrow or the day after.”
“Confound your impudence,” thought Ernest, a sort of tingling sensation
pervading the fingers of even his right hand, as the above sentence
smote on his ear; whilst Mina, looking angrily into Mr. Westwood’s face,
answered briefly “I will;” and, apparently, not in the least ruffled or
disconcerted by what had occurred, the _ci-devant_ clerk bowed to the
invalid, and hastened off to the office of “Merapie and Westwood,”
vowing all sorts of vengeance against his insensible “ladye love,” and
wishing, for no very good reason, excepting, perhaps, because he was
thoroughly out of temper, that “that dark proud Lincolnshire squire had
been ‘finished’ instead of cured by gruff little Dr. Richards,” who
declared the baronet’s son had a constitution like a lion, which would
stand the wear and tear of a thousand years; a declaration Ernest had
almost groaned over, as he reflected that it was from his father’s side
of the house he inherited “this incapability of being killed.”
There was an awkward pause for a moment after Mr. Westwood left the
room, during which Mina looked at the carpet, and the invalid at her;
but before he had time to recover sufficiently from his embarrassment to
frame a sentence, or utter a single commonplace observation, the post
brought relief to both, in the shape of an imposing looking packet
directed to Ernest Ivraine, Esq., and bearing unmistakeable signs
indicating that it had travelled far over the sea, over the land through
many countries, from India to the former home of its writer, England.
“I will leave you to read it,” said Mina, noticing how eagerly he
clutched the missive; and thankful to get away, even for a few minutes,
she hurried out of the apartment, and proceeded more slowly to her
mother’s chamber, to inform the much enduring lady that their visitor
was at length able to come upstairs, and had actually accomplished the
bold undertaking.
“Well, my dear, I shall be down to see him directly,” said Mrs. Frazer,
coughing in a genteel manner, which clearly proved she was suffering
from influenza. “What in the world, child, makes you look so pale?” she
added, gazing languidly at Mina from beneath the lace borders of a most
ladylike and becoming morning cap; “I never was pale at your age; I’m
sure I am not so even now;” and the widow glanced complacently at the
mirror, as was her wont whenever she had a convenient opportunity of
admiring herself, whilst Mina answered,
“I am always pale, you know, mamma, and besides, I do not feel well,
which I suppose makes me be paler than usual; I have not been strong for
a good while past.”
It was about the first time in her life the girl had ever complained of
bodily illness, and, perhaps, it was this fact which induced her mother
to gaze at her for a moment ere she responded,
“Ill! yes, that’s just what Malcolm was saying this morning, and he
wants me to let you go to Craigmaver with him for a little, when I am
better, and your uncle returns; but I really do not see how you can
leave me.”
Mina stretched out both hands imploringly to her mother, as she cried,
“To Craigmaver! oh! let me go, do, pray let me. The air of the Highlands
will give me new life; I feel almost as if I should die of excess of joy
to see that place once more. I am sure Malcolm would not like to be
there without me; won’t you let me go with him.”
“What a strange unaccountable being you are, Mina,” said her mother,
with a puzzled and but ill-satisfied air; “I cannot conceive why you
should like that horrid place, miles and miles from a town, where there
is nothing to see or hear or buy, and nobody to speak to. It is not
natural at your age: I do not understand you, I confess.”
“Nothing to see!” echoed Mina, and then the long pent-up loves and
longings of her soul burst forth, and fell on the ear of one who could
not understand her, and who had never done so. “Nothing to see! oh!
mother, think of this, and then of that; think of the hills and the
heather and the pines and the free pure air; think of the garden at
Craigmaver, filled with flowers and birds and perfumes, where, even in
winter, the sun seemed always shining; think of the view down into the
silent dark little lake, and of the valleys beyond, and the mountains
rising above, peak upon peak, till, in the distance, they seemed to meet
the sky, and become lost in heaven; think of the moors where the bees
swarmed in myriads; where the scent of wild thyme filled the air, and
the eye grew almost tired of the gorgeousness of the purple carpet;
where for miles and miles there was no human habitation, no road,
scarcely a path, but over which one never got weary of roaming. Nothing
to hear! when I was a child, papa and I used to sit down on some old
grey stone and listen for hours to the chirping of the grasshoppers and
the scream of the eagle, and the dashing of distant waterfalls and the
murmuring of nearer streams. Oh! the land that he loved, where he is
buried, is dearer to me than any other could ever become; and when,
besides all this, I think of seeing my kind old uncle, and Allan and
Saunders and all the people who knew my father as a boy, and love his
children for the sake of the dead,—I feel as if my heart would break
with joy—as if I should never live to meet them all again.”
A colour had come up into the usually pallid cheek during the progress
of this rapid sentence, and the dark eyes were moistened with tears when
Mina concluded.
“You are just your father over again, child,” said Mrs. Frazer, and the
widow sighed deeply as she made this announcement, evidently considering
Mina’s likeness to her late husband a dreadful misfortune.
“But I may go with Malcolm?” persisted Mina, a wild joy and a great fear
contending for mastery in her bosom; “may I not, mamma?”
“I do not know, I cannot say,” answered Mrs. Frazer, vaguely, who
possibly might have more speedily acceded to the request had her
daughter not been so extremely anxious for it to be granted; “we can see
about it when your uncle comes home.”
“He is to be here to-morrow or the day after,” said Mina.
“I’m sure I am thankful to hear it, for the responsibility of being
alone in the house with that poor invalid I have felt to be most
dreadful; indeed it has been decidedly injurious to my health,” said the
widow, who had let her sympathy for Ernest evaporate in words since the
first evening her son carried him into the breakfast parlour, until now,
when he sate alone in the drawing-room; “and, Mina, you had better go
down stairs again and give him my compliments and say how glad I am to
hear he is so much stronger, and that I hope to see him presently;” in
compliance with which maternal injunction the girl descended the stairs
and re-entered the apartment where she had left Mr. Ivraine, and where
she now found him, sitting with an open letter in his hand, and an
expression of such pain on his face, as caused her almost involuntarily
to demand if he were ill.
He started at her words, and hastily crumpling up the papers, answered
“no,” so abruptly, that Mina, fearing she had annoyed him, asked no
further question, but, drawing an embroidery frame near to her,
commenced working without delivering her mother’s message.
She could not understand Mr. Ivraine; she had felt very sorry for him,
and done all that lay in her power to soothe his sufferings and restore
him to health; and, at first, when weak and almost helpless, he was
lying on the sofa in the dining-room, it had seemed as if they were
likely to “get on” well enough; but one unhappy day he repelled her most
unintentionally, but still most completely, and Mina never recovered a
shock of the kind. Thus it came to pass:
Mrs. Frazer and her daughter were sitting, out of compliment to their
guest, in the apartment where John Merapie had been wont to take a
comfortable sleep after his dinner and port wine, the widow entertaining
the invalid with some of the latest fashionable intelligence, which she
thought might prove at once interesting and amusing, when, during one of
the lulls in her sensible conversation, Mr. Ivraine turned to Mina, who
had sat mute as a statue for fully twenty minutes, and asked if she
would be so kind as to write a letter to his father for him.
“You see,” he added, glancing at his arm, “it is a duty I am unable to
perform myself.”
Most truthfully Mina answered that she would be very glad, and,
immediately producing writing materials, she drew a chair and table near
to the sofa and sat for a minute or two waiting, with a pen in her hand,
ready to write down whatever he might choose to dictate. But, after a
puzzled pause, Ernest, a very curious expression flitting over his
countenance as he spoke, said,
“I believe, Miss Frazer, I shall not trouble you; perhaps your brother
would write it for me instead.”
He never added a single syllable of explanation, and Mina felt hurt and
mortified. Why she felt so, she did not exactly know; but the effect
produced by the simple sentence was such that, whilst Malcolm and Mrs.
Frazer, and even Miss Caldera, grew to like the stranger, and he, in his
turn, came to converse freely and easily with them, they two scarcely
spoke to each other ten times in the course of the day, for she fancied
he was proud and stern; and he, imagining she could care for nothing
which was not an importation direct from Scotland, knowing his own
position, and feeling, moreover, how dangerously large a portion of his
thoughts she occupied, sedulously avoided much association with, and
kept away from her, as men of strong minds do keep away from things and
people whom, even whilst they long to be near, they dread for their own
peace sake becoming very dear to them.
And so Mina could not understand the silent uncommunicative man, and
thinking, therefore, he did not wish to be interrupted in his
meditations, she bent her head over her work, and, as the rapid needle
sped on its course, she gave herself up to pleasant imaginings,
concerning her visit to the North and meetings and greetings with the
never-to-be-forgotten friends who dwelt there.
Meanwhile, Ernest Ivraine, a blacker and sadder shadow than ever
darkening his brow, sat watching her; for the first time in his life, a
doubt of the prudence of his choice, years before, occurred to him; for
the hundredth time, he felt the galling slavery of his position
unendurable: he was sickening for liberty to act as he listed, to speak
as his heart prompted him. For the moment he almost desired to cast
Paradise and the golden shackles that bound him to it and drew him
reluctantly back there, from his soul, and to rush forth hopeful and
self-reliant, as Henry had done, into the world.
For, without his aid, Henry had succeeded; the brave heart and the
strong arm had triumphed and brought to their honest manly possessor
fame, station, comparative wealth, at last.
There lay the letter before him, scarcely legible with the glad high
words of fulfilled hope, of thankful rejoicing, with inducements to his
brother to come and do likewise, with sentences of affection and dreams
of still higher fortune; there it lay, and there also lay the money
Henry did not now require to aid him in his ascent, and Ernest gazed
alternately at them and Mina.
It is easier—oh, woe for the soul of man!—easier by far to weep with
those who weep than to rejoice with those who rejoice: easier to clasp
the hand of a friend in sorrowful sympathy than to wring it in cordial
congratulation; for grief is so perpetual a visitor to the hearts of
most, that its advent to that of another only seems to draw the chords
of attachment closer, and to cause the same mournful melody to vibrate
in greater unison, whilst—so contradictory is human nature that a throb
of joy, agitating the bosom of one even dearly loved, nineteen times out
of twenty causes a sensation of pain to distract, for an instant, the
peace of the other.
Ernest Ivraine had suffered and sorrowed for and with Henry; with all
the intensity of his nature he loved his brother; he had longed for him
to be great and respected and fortunate; and yet now, when success flung
her bright smiles on the path of the younger brother and threw a sort of
sunshiny track far away into the future for him, Ernest’s first feeling
was regret, not that Henry was happy, but that his own lot was not
equally so.
“Good heavens!” he thought, “what a wretch dwelling amongst swamps must
have made me, when I do not feel my heart bound with triumph to hear
Henry is climbing at last, and without my assistance.” And Ernest
crumpled up the letter, and strove to put it and the rebellious feeling
aside, whilst he talked to her who was the cause of the latter, for she
had made him wish and thirst for liberty and success, as he had never
previously done for aught save gold.
“Miss Frazer,” he began, and the strong effort he was making to master
his emotions made him seem a little graver and sterner than ever: “Miss
Frazer, I believe I soon must leave this house, where I have received so
much kindness and——”
“Oh, no!” interrupted Mina, looking up with a happier look in her face
than Ernest had ever seen there before—she had been thinking of sunshine
on the Scottish hills, but he did not know that;—“oh, no! Dr. Richards
said you were not to attempt to move till you were quite strong again.”
“But I am much better now, thank God!” said Ernest, “and I feel I cannot
intrude any longer. Mr. Merapie——”
“Will be delighted for you to stay till it is quite safe for you to
travel, at any rate,” once more interposed Mina. “We have all regretted
not being able to make you more comfortable,” she added in a slightly
hesitating tone; “this place is so dreary and stupid, it is not good for
an invalid.”
Ernest mentally reflected, it was a sort of heaven in comparison with
his own home, and sighed as he did so.
“Then you do not like Belerma Square?” he said, after a moment’s pause.
“No,” briefly responded Mina; and the “No” was, as Malcolm would have in
some cases approved, decided.
“Nor London?” proceeded Ernest.
“Nor London,” she acquiesced.
“Nor England?” he inquired, by way of a finale.
A sort of perplexed look came over the girl’s face for an instant, but
then she frankly replied,
“It would not be exactly polite for me to say to you that I dislike
England, particularly as I know so little of it; I am not very fond of
your country, it is true, but I might like it better if I did not love
my own so much.”
“Then you would not desire to pass your life here?”
“Here! no!” she responded. “I wish my uncle would retire and buy an
estate in the Highlands, but he thinks no place is so pleasant as
London, and I could not bear to be always away from him now: that is the
worst of removals, one cannot carry every friend one makes away, nor
collect every desirable thing together: those are the happiest who live
and die and remain always in the one spot.”
“If they care for that spot,” supplied Ernest.
“Every one is fond of the place he was born in,” said Mina.
“Some dislike it for that very reason,” answered Ernest drily; “but,” he
added, turning the current of the conversation very abruptly back into
the course from whence he himself had diverted it, “I fear your uncle
will think my long illness must have completely exhausted your patience,
and that my protracted visit has been perfectly unreasonable and
unjustifiable.”
“When you were unable to go away, whether you would or not,” broke forth
Malcolm, who had sauntered into the room in time to catch the conclusion
of the foregoing sentence. “Ah! you do not know my uncle; he will say
bringing you here is the first sensible action he has known me perform
for some years past, and he will add, he hopes you will consider this
your home until you are well enough to return to a better; and he will
ask you if we have taken as good care of you as any one, excepting your
own relatives and himself, could have done; and he will regret his
absence from London, feeling quite sure he could have made you twice as
comfortable as his scapegrace of a nephew has endeavoured to do; and he
will think that, on the whole, I am not so bad as he thought me before
his departure for Holland. And Mina and I will set off to the Highlands
early in the spring, leaving him as well pleased with us as ever he was;
and I shall look out for a fine site for the house I mean to build when
I get on into middle life, of which Mina is to be mistress, and where we
shall be delighted to see you whenever you travel north.”
Having concluded which safe and hospitable invitation to his Scottish
_chateau en espagne_, Malcolm Frazer sank down lazily into an easy
chair, whilst Ernest, to whom the cause of Mina’s unwonted cheerfulness
and communicativeness was now no longer an enigma, mournfully thought of
the place where he should be dwelling when they were wandering over
Highland mountains; and his heart grew faint and sick as he did so.