The Balliol Scholarship was, however, too important a reality to leave the young candidate much time to consider his position—and Colin’s history would be too long, even for the patience of his friends, if we were to enter into this part of his life in detail. Everybody knows he won the scholarship; and, indeed, neither that, nor his subsequent career at Balliol, are matters to be recorded, since the chronicle has been already made in those popular University records which give their heroes a reputation, no doubt temporary, but while it lasts of the highest possible flavour. He had so warm a greeting from Sir Thomas Frankland that it would have been churlish on Colin’s part had he declined{338} the invitations he received to the Castle, where, indeed, Miss Matty did not want him just at that moment. Though she was not the least in the world in love with him, it is certain that between the intervals of her other amusements in that genre, the thought of Colin had often occurred to her mind. She thought of him with a wonderful gratitude and tenderness sometimes, as of a man who had actually loved her with the impossible love—and sometimes with a ring of pleasant laughter, not far removed from tears. Anything “between them” was utterly impossible, of course—but, perhaps, all the more for that, Miss Matty’s heart, so much as there was remaining of it, went back to Colin in its vacant moments, as to a green spot upon which she could repose herself, and set down her burden of vanities for the time. This very sentiment, however, made her little inclined to have him at the Castle, where there was at present a party staying, including, at least, one man of qualifications worthy a lady’s regard. Harry and his cousin had quarrelled so often that their quarrel at last was serious, and the new man was cleverer than Harry, and not so hard to amuse; but it was difficult to go over the well-known ground with which Miss Frankland was so familiar in presence of one whom she had put through the process in a still more captivating fashion, and who was still sufficiently interested to note what she was doing, and to betray that he noted it. Colin, himself, was not so conscious of observing his old love in her new love-making as she was conscious of his observation; and, though it was only a glance now and then, a turn of the head, or raising of the eyes, it was enough to make her awkward by moments, an evidence of feeling for which Miss Matty could not forgive herself.

Thus it happened that Colin was not thrown into temptation in the way his mother dreaded. The temptation he was thrown into was one of a much more subtle character. He rushed at his work, and the preparations for his work, with all the energy of his character; he felt himself free to follow out the highest visions of life that had formed themselves among his youthful dreams. He thought of the new study on which he was about to enter, and the honours upon which he already calculated in his imagination, as but stepping stones to what lay after, and offered himself up with a certain youthful effusion and super-abundance to his Church and his country, for which he had assuredly something to do more than other men. And then, when Colin had got so far as this, and was tossing his young head proudly in the glory of his intentions, there came a little{339} start and shiver, and that sense of the curb, which had struck him first after his confidence with his mother, returned to his mind. But the bondage seemed to grow more and more visionary as he went on. Alice had given him up, so to speak; she was debarred by her father from any correspondence with him, and might, for anything Colin knew, gentle and yielding as she was, be made to marry some one else by the same authority; and, though he did not discuss the question with himself in words, it became more and more hard to Colin to contemplate the possibility of having to abridge his studies and sacrifice his higher aims to the necessity of getting “settled in life.” If he were “settled in life” to-morrow, it could only be as an undistinguished Scotch minister, poor, so far as money was concerned, and with no higher channel either to use or fame; and, at his age, to be only like his neighbours was of all things the most irksome to him.

Those neighbours, or at least the greater part of them, were good fellows enough in their way. So far as a vague general conception of life and its meaning went, they were superior as a class in Colin’s opinion to that other clerical class represented by the gentle curate of Wodensbourne, whose soul was absorbed in the restoration of his Church, and the fit states of mind for the Sundays after Trinity; but there were also particulars in which, as a class, they were wonderfully inferior to that mild and gentlemanly Anglican. As for Colin, he had not formed his ideal on any curate, or even bishop, of the wealthier Church. Like other fervent young men, an eager discontent with everything he saw lay at the bottom of his imaginations; and it was the development of Christianity—“more chivalrous, more magnanimous, than that of modern times”—that he thought of. A dangerous condition of mind, no doubt; and the people round him would have sneered much at Colin and his ambition had he put it into words; but, after all, it was an ideal worth contemplating which he presented to himself.

In the midst of such thoughts, and of all the future possibilities of life, it was a little hard to be suddenly stopped short, and reminded of Mariana in her moated grange, sighing, “He does not come.” If he did come, making all the unspeakable sacrifices necessary to that end, as his mother seemed to think he should, the probabilities were that the door of the grange would be closed upon him; and who could tell but that Alice, always so docile, might be diverted even from the thought of him by some other suitor presented to her by her{340} father? Were Colin’s hopes to be sacrificed to her possible faith, and the possible relenting of Mr. Meredith? And, alas! amid all the new impulses that were rising within him, there came again the vision of that woman in the clouds, whom as yet, though he had been in love with Matty Frankland, and had all but married Alice Meredith, Colin had never seen. She kissed her shadowy hand to him by times out of those rosy vapours that floated among the hills when the sun had gone down, and twilight lay sweet over the Holy Loch—and beckoned him on, on, to the future and the distance where she was. When the apparition had glanced out upon him after this old fashion, Colin felt all at once the jerk of the invisible bridle on his neck, and chafed at it; and then he shut his eyes wilfully, and rushed on faster than before, and did his best to ignore the curb. After all, it was no curb if it were rightly regarded. Alice had released, and her father had rejected him, and he had been accused of fortune-hunting, and treated like a man unworthy of consideration. So far as external circumstances went, no one could blame him for inconstancy, no one could imagine that the engagement thus broken was, according to any code of honour, binding upon Colin; but yet—

This was the uncomfortable state of mind in which he was when he finally committed himself to the Balliol Scholarship, and thus put off that “settling in life” which the Mistress thought due to Alice. When the matter was concluded, however, the young man became more comfortable. At all events, until the termination of his studies, no decision, one way or other, could be expected from him; and it would still be two years before Alice was of the age to decide for herself. He discussed the matter—so far as he ever permitted himself to discuss it with any one—with Lauderdale, who managed to spend the last Sunday with him at Ramore. It was still only October but winter had begun betimes, and a sprinkling of snow lay on the hills at the head of the loch. The water itself, all crisped and brightened by a slight breeze and a frosty sun, lay dazzling between its banks, reflecting every shade of colour upon them—the russet lines of wood with which their little glens were outlined, and the yellow patches of stubble, or late corn, still unreaped, that made lights of the landscape, and relieved the hazy green of the pastures, and the brown waste of withered bracken and heather above. The wintry day, the clearness of the frosty air, and the touch of snow on the hills, gave to the Holy Loch that touch of colour which is the only thing ever{341} wanting to its loveliness; a colour cold, it is true, but in accordance with the scene. The waves came up with a lively cadence on the beach, and the wind blew showers of yellow leaves in the faces of the two friends as they walked home together from church. Sir Thomas had detained them in the first place, and after him the minister, who had emerged from his little vestry in time for half an hour’s conversation with his young parishioner, who was something of a hero on the Holy Loch—a hero, and yet subject to the inevitable touch of familiar depreciation which belongs to a prophet in his own country. The ............