But yet for all that, there was full time for that slip between the cup and the lip which so often comes in, contrary to the dearest expectations, in human affairs. CHAPTER XVII. The slip between the cup and the lip came in two ways. The first was the arrival from India--in advance of Eric who was to get the short leave which his stepmother thought such a piece of extravagance, in order to be present at the marriage of his only sister--of Ronald Sutherland, in order to take possession of the inheritance which had fallen to him on the death of his uncle. It was not a very great inheritance--an old house with an old tower, the old “peel” of the Border, attached to it; a few farms, a little money, the succession of a family sufficiently well known in the countryside, but which had never been one of the great families. It was not much certainly. It was no more to be compared with the possessions in fact and expectation of Fred Dirom than twilight is with day; but still it made a great difference. Ronald Sutherland of the 111th, serving in India with nothing at all but his pay, and Ronald Sutherland of Haythorn with a commission in her Majesty’s service, were two very different persons. Mrs. Ogilvie allowed that had old David Hay been so sensible as to die three years previously, she would not have been so absolutely determined that Ronald’s suit should be kept secret from Effie; but all that was over, and there was no use thinking of it. It had been done “for the best”--and what it had produced was unquestionably the best. If it had so happened that Effie had never got another “offer,” then indeed there might have been something to regret; but as, on the contrary, she had secured the best match in the county, her stepmother still saw no reason for anything but satisfaction in her own diplomacy. It had been done for the best; and it had succeeded, which is by no means invariably the case. But Mrs. Ogilvie allowed that she was a little anxious about Ronald’s first appearance at Gilston. It was inevitable that he should come; for all the early years of his life Gilston had been a second home to him. He had been in and out like one of the children of the house. Mrs. Ogilvie declared she had always said that where there were girls this was a most imprudent thing: but she allowed at the same time that it is difficult to anticipate the moment when a girl will become marriageable, and had better be kept out of knowing and sight of the ineligible, so long as that girl is a child. Consequently, she did not blame her predecessor, Effie’s mother, for permitting an intimacy which at six was innocent enough, though it became dangerous at sixteen.