THERE followed after this a time of such tranquillity¹ as never yet entered into Mrs. Ochterlony’s life. Mary had known joy, and she had known sorrow, as people do to whom life comes with full hands, giving and taking; but it had always been life, busy and personal, which left her little leisure for anything beyond the quickly recurring² duties of the hour and the day. She had had no time to watch the current how it flowed, being as it were part of it, and going along with it in its ceaseless course. But now all this was changed. After Winnie’s marriage a sudden tranquillity fell upon the ladies in the Cottage. Life had gone on and left them; they were no longer going with the tide, but standing³ by upon the bank watching it. They were not unhappy, nor was their existence sad,—for the three boys were world enough to satisfy the two women and keep them occupied and cheerful; and when the children were asleep, Aunt Agatha and her niece were, as people say, company for each other, and talked over their work as they sat by the evening lamp, or in the twilight⁵ garden, which was always so green and so sweet,—and were content, or more than content; but still sometimes Mrs. Ochterlony would bethink herself, and it would seem as a dream to her that she, too, had once taken her part with the others and gone with the stream, and suffered cruel sufferings and tasted sudden joys, and been Hugh Ochterlony’s wife. Was it so? Or had she never been but with Aunt Agatha by the little river that ran steadily⁶ one day like another under the self-same trees? This strange sense of unreality in the past turned her giddy by times, and made her head swim and the world to go round and round; but, to be sure, she never spoke⁷ of these sensations, and life continued, and the boys grew, and everything went very well at Kirtell-side.
 
Everything went so well that Aunt Agatha many a day pitied the poor people who were out in the world, or the young men who set out from the parish to begin their career, and would say, “Oh, if they but knew how much better everybody is at home!” Mary was younger, and perhaps she was not quite of the same mind; but still it was peace that had fallen upon her and was wrapping her all round like a garment. There was the same quiet routine every day; the same things to do, the same places to walk to, the same faces to see. Nothing unforeseen ever arrived to break the calm. When Hugh was old enough to begin serious lessons, a curate turned up in the course of nature who took pupils, and to whom Islay, too went by-and-by, and even little Wilfrid, who was always delicate. The boys went to him with shining morning faces, and came back growing louder and stronger, and, as Peggy said, more “stirring” every day. And Sir Edward made his almost daily visit, and let a thin and gentle echo of the out-of-door din⁴ into the Cottage quiet. He told them in his mild way what was going on, and talked about the news in the papers, and about the books reviewed, and about the occasional heavenly visitant in the shape of a new publication that found its way to Kirtell-side. There were few magazines then, and no cheap ones, and a single Blackwood did for a good many families. Sir Edward himself, who had been always considered intellectual, took in the Edinburgh all for himself, and lent it to his neighbours; but then it could not be expected that many people in a district could be so magnificent as that. When the Curate, on the other hand, came to tea (he was not the sort of man, as Aunt Agatha said, that one would think of making a dinner for), it was all about the parish that he talked; and as Mrs. Ochterlony was a perverse⁸ woman in her way, and had her own ideas about her poor neighbours, such conversation was not so interesting to her as it might have been. But it was in this sort of way that she spent the next ten or twelve years of her life.
 
As for Winnie, she was having her day, as she had said, and was, it is to be supposed, enjoying it. She wrote letters regularly and diligently⁹, which is one point in which a woman, however little elevated she may be above her masculine companion in other respects, always has the better of him. And she possessed¹⁰ a true feminine gift which ought also to be put in the compensating¹¹ scale against those female drawbacks which are so often insisted upon. Sometimes she was ill-tempered, sometimes bitter in her letters, for the honeymoon¹² happiness naturally did not last for ever; but, whatever mood Winnie might be in, she always threw an unconscious halo of interest around herself when she wrote. It was, as everybody might see, an instinctive¹³ and unpremeditated act, but it was successful to the highest extent. Whether she described her triumphs or her disappointments, her husband’s kindness or his carelessness, their extravagant¹⁴ living or their want of money, Winnie herself, in the foreground of the picture, was always charmingly, and sometimes touchingly¹⁵, posed. A word or two did it, and it was done to perfection; and the course of her history thus traced was followed by Aunt Agatha with unfailing enthusiasm. She herself went through it all in the person of her favourite, and Mary connected herself with a vague but still fairer future in the persons of her boys. And thus the peaceful existence went on day by day, with nothing more serious to trouble it than a transitory childish ailment¹⁶, or a passing rumour¹⁷ that the Percivals were “going too fast,” or did not “get on,”—clouds which only floated mistily¹⁸ and momentarily about the horizon, and never came down to trouble the quiet waters. It was a time which left no record, and which by times felt languid and lingering to the younger woman, who was still too young to be altogether satisfied with so dead a calm in the middle of her existence; but still, perhaps, it was, on the whole, the happiest time of Mary’s life.
 
This halcyon¹⁹ time lasted until the boys were so far grown up as to bring the disturbing plans and speculations²⁰ of their beginning life into the household calm. It lasted until Islay was sixteen and ready to pass his examination for Woolwich, the long-headed boy having fixed²¹ his affections upon scientific soldiership in a way which was slightly disappointing to his mother, who, as was natural, had thought him capable of a more learned profession. It roused the Cottage into something like a new stage of existence to think of and prepare for the entry of its nursling into that great vague unseen sphere which Aunt Agatha called the world. But, after all, it was not Islay who was the troublesome member of the family. He had fixed his thoughts upon his chosen profession almost as soon as he knew what was meant by his father’s sword, which had hung in Mrs. Ochterlony’s room from his earliest recollection; and though there might be a little anxiety about how he would succeed at his examination, and how he would get on when he left home, still Islay was so steady that no one felt any alarm or absolute disquiet²² about him.
 
But it was rather different with Hugh. Hugh was supposed to be his uncle’s heir, and received as such wherever he went, with perhaps more enthusiasm than might have fallen to his share merely as Mary’s son. He was heir presumptive, recognised to a certain extent at Earlston itself as elsewhere in that capacity; and yet Mr. Ochterlony had not, so far as anybody was aware, made any distinct decision, and might still alter his mind, and, indeed, was not too old to marry and have heirs of his own, which was a view of the subject chiefly taken by Aunt Agatha. And, to aggravate²³ the position, Hugh was far from being a boy of fixed resolutions, like his brother. He was one of the troublesome people, who have no particular bias²⁴. He liked everything that was pleasant. He was not idle, nor had he any evil tendencies; he was fond of literature in a way, and at the same time fond of shooting and hunting, and all the occupations and amusements of a country life. Public opinion in the country-side proclaimed him one of the nicest young fellows going; and if he had been Francis Ochterlony’s son, and indisputably the heir of Earlston, Hugh would have been as satisfactory a specimen²⁵ of a budding country gentleman as could have been found. But the crook²⁶ in his lot was, that he was the heir presumptive, and at the same time was generous and proud and high-spirited, and not the kind of nature which could lie in wait for another man’s place, or build his fortunes upon another man’s generosity²⁷. His own opinion, no doubt, was that he had a right to Earlston; but he was far too great a Quixote, too highly fantastical in youthful pride and independence, to permit any one to say that it was his uncle’s duty to provide for him. And withal, he did not himself know what manner of life to take up, or what to do. He would have made a good soldier, or a good farmer, different though the two things are; and would have filled, as well as most people, almost any other practical position which Providence²⁸ or circumstances had set clearly before him. But no intuitive perception of what he was most fit for was in him to enlighten his way; and at the same time he began to be highly impatient, being eighteen, and a man as he thought, of waiting and doing nothing, and living at home.
 
“If we could but have sent him to Oxford²⁹,” Aunt Agatha said; “if I had the means!”—but it is very doubtful whether she ever could have had the means; and of late Aunt Agatha too had been disturbed in her quiet. Her letters to Winnie had begun to convey enclosures of which she did not speak much, even to Mrs. Ochterlony, but which were dead against any such possibility for Hugh.
 
“If I had been brought up at school where I might have got a scholarship, or something,” said Hugh; “but I don’t know why I should want to go to Oxford. We must send Will if we can, mother; he has the brains for it. Oxford is too grand an idea for me——”
 
“Not if you are to have Earlston, Hugh,” said his mother.
 
“I wish Earlston was at the bottom of the sea,” cried the poor boy; “but for Earlston, one would have known what one was good for. I wish my uncle would make up his mind and found a hospital with it, or marry, as Aunt Agatha says——”
 
“He will never marry,” said Mary; “he was a great deal older than your father; he is quite an old man.”
 
“Indeed, Mary, he is not old at all, for a man,” said Aunt Agatha, with eagerness. “Ladies are so different. He might get a very nice wife yet, and children, for anything any one could tell. Not too young, you know—I think it would be a great pity if he were to marry anybody too young; but a nice person, of perhaps forty or so,” said Aunt Agatha; and she rounded off her sentence with a soft little sigh.
 
“He will never marry, I am sure,” said Mary, almost with indignation; for, not to speak of the injustice³⁰ to Hugh, it sounded like an imputation³¹ upon her brother-in-law, who was sober-minded, and not thinking of anything so foolish; not to say that his heart was with his marble Venus, and he was indifferent to any other love.
 
“Well, if you think so, my dear——” said Miss Seton; and a faint colour rose upon her soft old cheek. She thought Mary’s meaning was, that after his behaviour to herself, which was not exactly what ............