While Roland's mind was agitated by a nervous dread of how to break to the ambitious little Annot—for ambitious he knew her to be—the real state of his position and his altered fortune, unknown to him, and in his absence, that young lady was receiving an inkling of how matters stood, and thus, when the time came, some trouble and pain were saved him.
Red-eyed, and apparently inconsolable for his absence for a single day, the 'gushing' Annot had cast her society almost entirely upon Hester, as Maude was too much occupied by her own thoughts and cares to give her sympathy.
'Why has he gone, why left me so soon after we came here?' she moaned for the twentieth time, with her golden head reclined on Hester's shoulder. 'What shall I do without him?' she added.
'For a few hours only. What will you say when winter comes or spring, and he is back in Egypt, if you think so much of a few hours now?'
'It is very silly of me, I suppose, but I cannot help it; but we have never been separated since—since——'
'You met at Merlwood,' said Hester coldly, and annoyed by the other's acting or childishness, she scarcely knew which it was. She added, 'Business has taken him to Edinburgh.'
'Business—he never told me! About what?'
'Something very unpleasant, I fear; but you know that a man of property—
Hester paused, not knowing very well how to parry the questions of Annot, who had put them to her frequently, and for a few minutes they promenaded together the long flowery aisles of the conservatory in silence.
Hester was so tall and straight, so proud-looking and yet so soft and womanly, her bearing a thing of beauty in itself, her dark velvety eyes so sensitive and sweet in expression that anyone might wonder how Annot Drummond, with all her fair and fairy-like loveliness, had lured Roland away from her, yet it was so.
Now and then, oftener than she wished, there came back unbidden to Hester's mind memories of those happy August evenings at Merlwood, ere Annot came, when she and Roland wandered in the leafy dingles by the Esk, by 'caverned Hawthornden' and Roslin's ruin-crowned rock; and when these memories came she strove to stifle them, as if they caused a pain in her heart, for such haunting day-dreams were full of tenderness, a vanished future and a present sense of keen disappointment.
And she remembered well, though she never sang now, the old song he loved so well, and which went to the air of the 'Bonnie Briar Bush':
'The visions of the buried past
Come thronging, dearer far
Than joys the present hour can give,
Than present objects are.'
And she felt with a sigh that her past was indeed buried and done with.
Honest and gentle, Hester had long since felt that she was unequal to cope with Annot Drummond, or the game the latter played—a damsel who possessed, as a clever female writer says, 'all the thousand and one tricks, in short, by which an artificial woman understands how to lay herself out for the attraction and capture of that noble beast of prey called man;' and Annot was indeed artificial to the tips of her tiny fingers.
'Hester,' said Annot, breaking the silence mentioned, and following some thoughts of her own, 'have you never had dreams—day-dreams, I mean—of being rich?'
'I don't think so.'
'Why is this?'
'Because I am quite content; and when one is so there is no more to be desired. As our proverb says: "Content is nae bairn o' wealth."'
'I cannot understand your point of view,' said Annot. 'I should like gorgeous dresses—Worth's best; fine horses, with skins like satin, and glittering harness; stately carriages, such as we see in the parks; tall footmen, well-liveried and well-matched; a house in Park Lane——'
'And lots of poor to feed?'
'I never think of them—they can take care of themselves, if the police don't.'
'Oh, Annot!'
'And I should like my wedding presents to be the wonder of all, and duly catalogued in all the 'Society' papers—services in exquisite silver, the épergne of silver and gold—spoons and forks without number—ice buckets and biscuit boxes—coffee sets in Dresden china, écru, and gold—toilette suites in crystal and gold—Russian sables, fans, gloves, jewels—a Cashmere shawl from the Queen, of course—a lovely suite of diamonds and opals from the brother-officers of the bridegroom—shoals of letters of congratulation, and a present with each!'
'In all this you say nothing of love,' said Hester, with a curl on her sweet red lip, 'and without it all these things were worthless.'
'And without them it were useless,' replied the mercenary little beauty, with a perfect coolness that kindled an emotion of something akin to contempt rather than amusement in the breast of Hester.
'As Claude Melnotte says, after describing his palace by the Lake of Como, "Dost like the picture?"' asked Annot laughingly.
'Not at all from your point of view,' replied Hester, a little wearily. 'The diamond and opal suite, to be the gift of the bridegroom's brother-officers, has reference, I suppose——'
'To Roland, of course.'
'Poor Roland!' said Hester, with a genuine sigh.
'Why do you adopt that tone in regard to him?' asked Annot, her eyes of bright hazel green dilating with surprise.
'For reasons of which, I fear, you know nothing,' replied Hester, unable to repress a growing repugnance for the questioner.
'But I surely must know them in time?'
'Perhaps.'
'There is no "perhaps" in the matter,' said Annot pettishly; 'what do you mean, Hester—speak?'
'Is it possible,' said the other with extreme reluctance, 'that you have never heard of the terms of his father's will?'
'Scotch-like, you reply to one question by another. Well, what will?'
'His father's most singular and unjust one.'
'No.'
'Not even from Roland?'
'No—never, I say!'
'Most strange!'
'You know that I cannot speak of it.'
'Of course not.'
'But mamma may. This estate of Earlshaugh——'
'Is the property by gift of his father to his second wife——'
'That grim woman, Deborah Sharpe?'
'Yes—to have and to hold—I don't know the exact terms.'
'How should you?' said Annot incredulously. 'You cannot be much of a lawyer, Hester!'
'Of course not—but this is not a lawyer's question now.'
'Why?'
'The will is an accomplished fact. Roland, when abroad, may have been misled—nay, has been misled—by words and delusive hopes; but these the family agent will shatter when he shows him the truth.'
Annot made no immediate reply to a startling statement, which she suspected was merely the outcome of natural female jealousy, and perhaps rancour in the heart of Hester Maule. But the memory of the latter went too distinctly back to that mournful day at Earlshaugh when the last laird had been borne to his last home on the shoulders of his serving men, while Roland was in Egypt, and poor Maude too ill to leave her own room; the solemn and substantial luncheon that was laid in the dining-hall for all who attended the funeral, and of the subsequent reading of the will by Mr. M'Wadsett in the Red Drawing-room to that listening group, over whom lay the hush and the shadow of selfish anticipation; the legacies to faithful old servants, those to her father, to herself, and other relations; and then the terrible clause which bequeathed to 'his well-beloved wife and ministering angel of his later days' everything else of which the testator died possessed. And then followed the buzz of astonishment and dissatisfaction with which the sombre assembly broke up.
Of these details Hester said nothing to Annot; but the latter had now something to reflect upon, which was too distasteful for consideration, and which she endeavoured resolutely to set aside.
Sooth to say, her selfish delight in the solid, luxurious, and baronial glories of Earlshaugh was too great to be easily dissipated, and she had still, as ever, a decided, repugnance to the recollections of her widowed mother's struggles with limited means; and their somewhat sordid home in South Belgravia, as she sought courageously to shut her bright eyes to the gruesome probabilities of Hester's communication.
With a sigh of sorrow, in which, notwithstanding the gentleness of her nature, much of contempt was mingled, Hester Maule regarded her town-bred cousin, who though apparently so volatile and thoughtless, was quite a watchful little woman of the world, with what seemed childish ways, and Hebe-like beauty, so fair, so soft, with rose-leaf complexion, and her petite face peeping forth, as it were, from among the coils and masses of her wonderful golden hair; and yet she was ever ready to sacrifice everything to society—that Moloch to which so many now sacrifice purity, happiness, and life itself.
For Annot believed in a union of hands and lands, with hearts left out of the compact.