CHAPTER XXIII.

THE CITY OF THE CALIPHS—OCTOBER IN THE LAND OF
THE PHARAOHS.

Malcolm Skene had been three weeks among 'the flesh-pots of Egypt,' as he wrote to Roland Lindsay, since he landed from a great white 'trooper' at Alexandria.

It was now nearly the close of what is called the first season in that part of the world—that of the inundation of the Nile—which extends from the first of July to the winter solstice, and when, till the month preceding Skene's arrival, the whole country appears like one vast sea, in which the towns and villages rise like so many islands, and when the air is consequently moist, the mornings and evenings foggy; and Malcolm thought of what brown October was at home in his native land, where new vistas of hamlet and valley are seen through the half-stripped groves, a few hardy apples yet hang in the orchards, and nests are seen in the hedges where none were seen before; where the flocks are driven to fold as the dim sunset comes and the landscape assumes its sober hue, while the call of the partridge and of the few remaining birds on the low sighing wind, fall sadly on the ear. He thought of all this, and of the thick old woods that sheltered his ancestral home, where Dunnimarle looks down on the northern shore of the Forth.

He often thought of Hester Maule too, and why she had refused him, after all—after all he had been half led to hope.

'So—so,' he reflected, 'we shall live out the rest of our lives each without the other—forgetting and perhaps in time forgot.'

Thought was not dead nor memory faint yet, and he seemed, just then, to have no object to live for, save to kill both, if possible, amid any excitement that came to hand, and such was not wanting at that crisis both in Alexandria and Grand Cairo.

No fighting—though such was expected daily—was going on in the Upper Province or on its frontier; and to kill time, Skene more than once resorted to the gambling booths of the Greeks and Italians, as most of our officers did occasionally—a perilous resource at times, as the reader will admit, when we describe some of the events connected with them; and, curious to say, it was amid such scenes that Malcolm Skene was to hear some startling news of his friends at Earlshaugh.

Long before this he had 'done' Cairo, and seen all that was to been seen in that wonderful city, which, though less purely Oriental than Damascus, yet displays a more lively and varied kind of Oriental life than Constantinople itself; for there are still to be found the picturesque scenes and most of the dramatis personæ of the 'Arabian Nights'—and found side by side with the latest results of nineteenth century civilization. 'The short quarter of an hour's drive from the railway station,' says M'Coan, 'transports you into the very world of the Caliphs—the same as when Noureddin, Abou Shamma, Bedredden Hassan, Ali Cogia, the Jew Physician, and the rest of them played their parts any time since or before Saladin.'

A labyrinth of dark and tortuous lanes and alleys is the old city still—places where two donkeys cannot pass abreast, and the toppling stories and outshoots shut out the narrowest streak of sky; while the apparently masquerading crowd below seems unchanged from what it was when Elliot Warburton wrote of it a quarter of a century ago; 'Ladies wrapped closely in white veils; women of the lower classes carrying water on their heads, and only with a long blue garment that reveals too plainly the exquisite symmetry of the young, and the hideous deformity of the old; here are camels perched upon by black slaves, magpied with white napkins round their heads and loins; there are portly merchants, with turbans and long pipes, smoking on their knowing-looking donkeys; here an Arab dashes through the crowd at almost full gallop; or a European, still more haughtily, shoves aside the pompous-looking bearded throng; now a bridal or circumcising procession squeezes along, with music; now the running footmen of some Bey or Pacha endeavour to jostle you to the wall, till they recognise you as an Englishmen—one of that race whom they think the devil can't frighten or teach manners to.'

Now the streets and the Esbekeyeh Square are dotted by redcoats; the trumpets of our Hussars ring out in the Abbassiyeh Barracks; the drums of our infantry are heard at those of Kasr-el-Nil; and the pipes of the Highlanders ever and anon waken the echoes of El Kaleh, or the wondrous citadel of Saladin, with the 'March o' Lochiel,' or the pibroch of 'Donuill Dhu.'

Skene and his brother-officers enjoyed many a cigar on the low terrace in front of Shepheard's now historical hotel, under the shade of the acacia trees, watching the changing crowds in the modern street, which, with all its splendour, cannot compare with the picturesqueness of older Cairo; but the dresses are strangely beautiful, and the whole panorama seems part of a stage, rather than real life; while among the veiled women, the swarthy men in turban and tarboosh, the British orderly dragoon clanks past, or groups of heedless, thoughtless, and happy young officers set forth in open cabs to have a day at the Pyramids—an institution among our troops at Cairo—especially early in the day, when the air has that purity and freshness peculiar to a winter morning in Egypt, and towering skyward are seen those marvels in stone, of which it has been said, that 'Time mocks all things, but the Pyramids mock time!' and where the mighty Sphinx at their base, 'the Father of Terrors,' has its stony eyes for ever fixed on the desert—the gate of that other world, where the work of men's hands ends, and Eternity seems to begin.

At this time several peculiar duties, exciting enough, though not orthodox soldiering, devolved on the troops, and more than once Malcolm Skene, as a subaltern, found himself with a part of the picket aiding the miserable Egyptian police in the now nightly task of closing and clearing out the Assommoirs and Brasseries, gambling and other dens, which were kept open with flaring lamps till gun-fire—a task often achieved by the fixed bayonet and clubbed rifle; and in the course of these duties he had more than once come unpleasantly in almost personal contact with Pietro Girolamo, a leading promoter and frequenter of such places, and one of the greatest ruffians in Cairo or Alexandria, under what is now known as the Band system.

One result of the leniency shown to the followers of Arabi Pacha, who were allowed to escape or disperse after Tel-el-Kebir, was a flooding of the country with armed banditti, by whom some districts were absolutely devastated, and with whom it was suspected that the native authorities were in league, as the police always disappeared with a curious rapidity whenever they were most required. A 'Flying Commission' was appointed to deal with these brigands, but without much avail, though certainly some were captured, tried, and hanged—even on the Shoubra Road, the 'Rotten Row' of the fashionable Cairenes.

The Band system, in which Pietro Girolamo figured so prominently, is a murdering one by no means stamped out by the presence even of our army of occupation, and is a result of the pernicious habit of carrying weapons among the lower class of Greeks and Italians; thus scarcely a week passes without a stabbing affray.

In the Esbekeyeh Gardens, outside the theatre, some high words passed one evening about a girl artiste, during one of the entr'actes, between an Italian and Girolamo, who laid the former dead by one blow of his poniard. For this he was tried before his Consulate and merely punished by a nominal fine, while nightly the actress appeared on the stage, draped in black for her lover, to sing her comic songs.

'Cairo and all the large towns' (says the Globe) 'are infested by the refuse of the Levant—hordes of Greeks of the criminal class and of the most desperate character, with no more respect for the sanctity of human life than a Thug. These men come here to spoil Egypt, and some of them are, in addition, retained by private persons as bullies, if not assassins. Appeal to the Greek Consul, and he will tell you that he can do nothing in regard to these idle and disorderly characters, though the French, Italian, and German authorities deport the same class of their own countrymen on the first complaint.'

The reason of Pietro Girolamo transferring the scene of his life, or operations, from Alexandria to Cairo was an outrage in which he had been concerned a year or two before this period.

In a café near the Place des Consuls were two respectable and very beautiful girls who served as waitresses, till one evening several carriages drove up and a number of ruffians, armed with yataghan, pistol, and poniard, entered, and instead of opposing them, every man in the café made his escape.

'This girl's smiles would inspire a flame in marble!' cried Girolamo, seizing one of the waitresses, whom his companions carried off to the Rosetta Gate, where she was savagely treated and left for dead by the wayside; and—according to a writer in the Standard—only one of her murderers—an Egyptian Bey—was punished by a fine.

'Life is short—what is the use of fussing about anything?' was the philosophic remark of Pietro Girolamo, who was a native of Cerigo (the Cythera of classical antiquity), and latterly the 'Botany Bay' of the Ionian Isles.

All unaware that this personage was in league with the proprietors—if not actually one—of a handsome roulette saloon, in a thoroughfare near the Esbekeyeh Gardens—a place from where it was said no man ever got home alive with his winnings—Malcolm Skene, then in the mood to do anything to teach him to forget, if possible, Hester Maule and that night in the conservatory at Earlshaugh, had spent on hour or so watching the fatal revolving ball, and risking a few coins thereon, after which he seated himself to enjoy a cigar, a glass of wine, and a London newspaper, at a little marble table, under a flower-decorated awning, in front of the edifice.

Malcolm had been deep in the columns of home news, while sipping his wine from time to time—wine that was not the Mareotic vintage so celebrated by Strabo and Horace, but of the common espalier trees in the Delta—before he became aware that he had a companion at his table similarly engaged, but in the pages of the obnoxious Bosphore Egyptien.

He was a striking and picturesque-looking fellow in the prime and strength of manhood. Though somewhat hawk-like in contour, his features were fine and dark; his eyes and moustache jetty black—the former keen, and his knitted brows betokened something of a stern and savage nature. He was well armed with a handsome poniard and pistols, and his dress resembled the Hydriote costume, which is generally of dark material, with wide blue trousers descending as far as the knee, a loose jacket of brown stuff braided with red, and an embroidered skull-cap with a gold tassel.

Furtively, above his paper, he had been eyeing from time to time the unconscious Skene, in whose grave face he was keen enough to trace a mixture of power and patience, of concentrated thought without gloom; a face well browned by exposure, a thick dark moustache, and expression that savoured of the resolution and perfect assurance of the genuine Briton; by all of which he was no way deterred, as the picturesque-looking rascal was no other than Pietro Girolamo, the perpetrator of so many unpunished outrages.

Malcolm Skene was intent on his paper, and read calmly from column to column, till a start escaped him on his eye catching the following paragraph:

'Misfortune seems to attend the sporting season at Earlshaugh, in Fifeshire. A short time since we had to record the accidental—or supposed accidental—shooting of one of the guests—a distinguished young officer; and now we have to add thereto, the mysterious disappearance of the host, Captain Roland Lindsay, who, when covert shooting last evening, disappeared, and as yet cannot be traced, alive or dead.'

Skene started, and for a moment the paper dropped from his hand.

'Dogs dream of bones and fishermen of fish, but what the devil are you dreaming of?' said a voice in rather tolerable English, and Malcolm found himself seated face to face with Pietro Girolamo!

With an unmistakable expression of annoyance and disdain, if not positive disgust in his face, Skene rose to leave the table, when the hand of the other was lightly laid on his arm, and Pietro said with mock suavity;

'The Signor will make his apologies?'

'For what?' asked Malcolm bluntly.

'Permitting his English paper to touch my boot just now.'

'Absurd; I merely dropped it,' said Malcolm Skene, turning away and about to look at the paragraph again.

'You must, you shall apologize!' cried the Levantine bully, his sparkling eyes flaming and his pale cheek reddening with rage and rancour.

'This is outrageous. Stand back, fellow!' cried Malcolm, laying his left hand on the scabbard of his sword to bring the hilt handy.

'I mean what I say, Signor,' cried the Greek, snatching away the paper and treading it under foot.

'And so do I,' replied Malcolm, making a forward stride.

The hand of the Greek was wandering to the poniard in his girdle. Malcolm knew that in another moment it would be out; but, disdaining to draw his sword in an open thoroughfare and upon such an adversary, he clenched his right hand and dealt him, straight out from the shoulder, a blow fairly under the left ear that stretched him senseless in a heap on the pavement beside the marble table.

Thinking that he had sufficiently punished the fellow's overbearing insolence, Malcolm, with his usually quiet blood at fever heat, muttering with a grim laugh, 'That was not a bad blow for a kail-supper of Fife,' was turning away to leave the spot, when a dreadful uproar in the café behind him made him pause, and hearing shouts for succour in English he at once re-entered it.

There he found a number of Europeans and of British officers—chiefly middies—who had come by rail from Alexandria for a 'spree' in the city of the Caliphs, engaged in a fierce mêlée with a number of those ruffians who frequent such places.

The vicinity of the wretched roulette-table had been very much crowded, and a dozen or so of these thoughtless young Britons, who could not get near enough to stake their money personally, had been passing it on from one to another to stake it on the colours. A trivial dispute had occurred, and then a Greek ruffian, who was well known to be a terror to every gambling saloon, rushed forward with his cocked revolver, savagely resolute, and demanded as his, 'every piastre—yea, every para on the tables'—a demand not at all uncommon by such persons in such places. Greeks came in from all points, armed with cudgels and poniards, and in a moment a battle-royal ensued. The roulette-table was overturned, the chairs smashed, and bloodshed became plain on every hand.

While plunging into the mêlée to rescue more than one lad in peril, Malcolm Skene towered above them all, in his herculean strength; and as he laid about him with a cudgel he had found, there floated through his mind a sense of rage and mortification at what Hester Maule would think if he perished in a brawl so obscure and disreputable.

'Take, cut, and burn!' was the cry of the Greek, a local laconism, signifying 'take their money, burn their houses, cut their throats!'

'Kill the Frankish dogs, these smokers and pilaff eaters!' shouted Girolamo, who had now gathered himself up and plunged into the fray, intent only on putting his poniard into Skene.

But the latter, now relinquishing the cudgel, achieved the feat which afterwards found its way into more than one British print.

From the gambling saloon there was only one issue, down a narrow passage, in which a number of the rabble had taken post on both sides, and with knife and club allowed none to pass, so that the place soon became a species of shamble. Perceiving this, Malcolm Skene—bearing back the seething mass of yelling Greeks, Italians, and Levantine scum, who, with glaring black eyes, set white teeth, and visages pallid and distorted with avarice and the lust of blood and cruelty, surged about him with knife and cudgel, impeding and wounding each other in their frantic efforts to get at him—dragged up a couple of Greeks, one in each hand, and by sheer dint of muscular strength lifting them off the floor, and using their bodies as shields on each side, he charged right through the passage and gained the street, where he flung them down, gashed and bleeding from cuts and stabs by the misdirected weapons of their compatriots, while he escaped almost without a scratch; gathered about him his companions, all of whom had suffered more or less severely, and getting cabs they drove to the barracks.

For this affair Pietro Girolamo was arrested in the Shoubra Road, and brought before the Greek Consul after twenty-four hours' incarceration in the Zaptieh; but as usual, like all the rogues of his nationality, he claimed protection under the Alexandrian Capitulations, and went forth free into the streets again.

Malcolm Skene soon dismissed the row from his thoughts, but not the newspaper paragraph in the perusal or consideration of which he had been so roughly interrupted; and he pondered deeply and vainly on what was involved by the mysterious and alarming—'disappearance at Earlshaugh.'

CHAPTER XXIV.

JACK ELLIOT'S PERIL.

We have anticipated some of the occurrences referred to in the last chapter, but shall relate them in their place.

Gathering in an excited group at the scene of the catastrophe, the sportsmen, keepers, and beaters found Elliot reclining against, or clinging to the stem of a tree in the old hedge, looking very pale, with his chest all bloody—at least his shirt dyed crimson, and divested of his coat and vest, which he had thrown off.

Spared by what he had done, the moment Hawkey Sharpe had seen his victim fall—the moment his finger had pulled the trigger—the savage and secret exultation that had filled his heart passed away.

He felt as if on the verge of a giddy precipice, over which he dared not look; yet he was compelled to confront the scene, and to proceed—but apparently with lead-laden feet—with the others, to where his victim was now supported in the arms of Gavin Fowler and Spens, the beater.

For a minute the intended assassin scarcely seemed to breathe, and to have but one wish—that the deed were undone, for the hot blood that prompted it was cool enough now, and the instincts of revenge had grown dull. Terror seized his soul, and his gaze wandered in the air, on the while flying clouds, on the yellow stubble fields and waving woods; but he nerved himself to approach the startled and infuriated group, whose menacing eyes were on him; and he nerved himself also to act a part, or, if not, lose his senses, and with them, everything.

He felt that beyond cheating, cardsharping, jockeying at horse races, and peculation at Earlshaugh, he had taken a mighty stride in crime, and that mingling curiously with his craven fear, there was an insane recklessness—a wild incoherence about his brain and heart, with a sickening knowledge that if Captain Elliot died, he—Hawkey Sharpe—would be that which he dared not name to himself, even in thought.

Hence his apparent sorrow and compunction seemed, and perhaps were, genuine pro tem., but the outcome of selfishness.

'How in Heaven's name came this to pass—how did it happen?' demanded Roland, his eyes blazing as he fixed them on Sharpe.

'It was an accident—an entire accident,' faltered the latter. 'The leaves of a turnip twisted round my right ankle, causing me to stumble and my rifle to explode.'

'A likely thing,' growled Jamie Spens, the beater, with a scowl in his eyes. 'Ye were oot o' the belt o' neeps at the time; but I've aye thocht ye wad pot some puir devil, as ye have done the Captain.'

'Silence, you poaching——,' began Sharpe in a furious voice; but Roland interrupted him.

'Stand back, sir. This is no time for words. "Accident," you say. To me it seems a piece of cowardly revenge—a case for the police and the Procurator-Fiscal.'

At these words Hawkey Sharpe grew, if possible, paler still, as they were the echoes of his own fears, and drew sullenly back.

'My poor, dear fellow—Elliot—Jack,' exclaimed Roland, kneeling down by his friend's side, 'are you much hurt—tell me?'

'I cannot say,' replied Elliot faintly. 'I feel as if my breast was scorched with fire—the charge, or some of it, seems thereabout.' Then, after a pause, he added in a husky voice: 'This horrible accident is most inopportune, when my leave is running out, and I am so soon due at headquarters.'

'Don't bother about that, dear Jack, I'll make all that right—meantime your hurt must be instantly seen to. Jamie Spens, run, as if for your life, my man, to the stables; get a good horse from Buckle, and ride to Cupar on the spur for the doctors—send a couple, at least.'

'Let me—let me go!' urged Hawkey Sharpe, in a breathless voice.

'You—be hanged!' cried old Fowler, who, like all the people on and about the estate, hated the tyrannical steward.

So the ex-poacher was away on his errand—speeding across the fields like a hare.

'Now, my lads,' cried Roland, after having, with soldier-like promptitude, secured a handkerchief folded as a pad, by another torn into bandages, across the wound; 'quick with that iron hurdle,' pointing to one in a gap of the hedge; 'hand it here to form a litter.'

Roland, like Elliot, had faced danger and death too often to be made a woman by it now, and his eyes seemed stern and fearless as he gave one long, steady, and withering glance at the cowering and white-faced Hawkey Sharpe; then he took off his coat, an example others were not slow in following, to make as soft a couch as possible of the iron hurdle, which four stout fellows lifted, as soon as the sufferer was laid thereon, and the sorrowful procession, which Hester from the window had seen approaching, set out for Earlshaugh.

'Fules shouldna hae chappin' sticks! I kent how it wad be wi' some o' us,' muttered old Gavin Fowler, as he sharply drew his cartridges, and unaware of Hawkey Sharpe's secret motives for action, added, 'Maister Roland, he has nearly made cauld meat o' me mair than ance; but ne'er again—ne'er again will I beat the coveys wi' him. It is as muckle as your life's worth!'

Slowly the shooting party wended their way, by field and hedgerow, towards the mansion-house; and, with his heart full of bitter and vengeful, if vague, thoughts, Roland strode by that blood-stained litter, thinking of the time when he had seen Jack Elliot similarly borne from the field of Tel-el-Kebir.

Seeing the deep commiseration of Roland, Elliot attempted to smile, and said:

'You know, perhaps, the old Spanish proverb—that a soldier had better smell of polvora rancho de Santa Barbara, than of musk or lavender.'

'But not in this fashion, Jack, at the hands of a blundering cad—if a blunder it was!'

The bearers had some distance to traverse, as the park stretched for a couple of miles around them, wooded and undulating, crossed by a broad silvery burn or stream, that flowed through the haugh, and past the Weird Yett to the hamlet of Earlshaugh.

Their arrival at the house elicited a shout of dismay from Tom Trotter, whose nerves were not of the strongest order, and consternation spread from the drawing-room to the servants' hall and from thence to the stable court, with many exaggerated reports of the very awkward part the obnoxious Mr. Hawkey Sharpe—for obnoxious he was to all—had played in the catastrophe; while the anguish of Maude, her suspicion and her loathing of the latter, may be imagined, as Elliot was borne past her to his rooms.

On hearing of an accident, neither Annot nor Hester had thought of Captain Elliot. The first dread of the former—a selfish one, we fear, and of the latter, a purer one, certainly—was for Roland Lindsay, who, accustomed to bloodshed, wounds, and suffering, was to all appearance singularly cool and collected.

'Don't be alarmed, Maudie, darling,' said he, endeavouring to look cheerful, as he drew his terrified sister almost forcibly aside; 'Jack will be all right in a few days.'

'But what—oh, what has happened?'

'He has been hit—shot—wounded, I mean—that is all, by Hawkey Sharpe, or some other duffer.'

'Oh, Roland, why did you have that horrid fellow to shoot with you? But need I ask why—we can help nothing now! But Jack—my darling—my darling!' she added with a torrent of tears; 'I had a presentiment—I knew something would happen, and it has happened! Oh heavens, Roland, our position here seems overstrained and unnatural. Would that we were out of Earlshaugh and his power!'

'Maude? Our father's house!'

'Our father's house no more.'

'That is as may be,' replied Roland, through his set teeth.

Meanwhile the author of all this dismay ascended the turret-stairs to his 'sanctum' and betook him without delay, with tremulous hands and chattering teeth, to a stiff and tall rummer of brandy and soda to steady his nerves, gather Dutch courage, and prepare to face the worst, while muttering as if to excuse himself.

'An insult of the sort he gave me can never be forgotten!' and he rubbed his right ear, which seemed yet to be conscious of Jack's finger and thumb when used by the latter as a fulcrum to twist him round; while, to do her justice, his sister Deborah grew paler than ever, and seemed on the point of sinking when she heard of what had occurred.

'It was all an accident—a horrible accident, Deb,' said he, an assertion to which he stuck vigorously; 'my ankle got twisted in a turnip shaw, don't you see—anyhow, don't get up your agitation-of-the-heart business just now, for my nerves may not stand it.'

She eyed him coldly—almost sternly, and not as she was wont to do; she read his real fear, and knew the full value of his sham contrition, and that it was born of alarm for himself; but his courage rose, and his secret wrath and hate returned apace, when the doctors, after a consultation and much pulling of nether lips, with also much mysterious and technical jargon, declared that the wound was not a serious one, though some of the charge (No. 5), which had crossed Jack's chest transversely, went perilously near the heart; and that unless suppuration took place, his constitution was so fine 'he would soon pull through.'

The doubt that he might not, or that a relapse might ensue, proved too much just then for the nerves of Mr. Hawkey Sharpe, who resolved on taking his departure for a time.

'And you go—for where, Hawkey?' asked his sister, not surprised that he should suddenly remember an engagement.

'To the western meeting—they make such a fuss over this accident, and you know I hate fuss. Besides, I have a pot of money on the Welter Cup, and if I lose——'

'Well?'

'Well—why, the timber of that old King's Wood may come to the hammer—that's all, Deb,' said he, as confidently as if it were his own.

'Now, girls, don't be foolish,' said Roland, in reply to the entreaties of Maude and Hester—the former especially—to be permitted to visit Jack, who was now abed, and in the hands of an accredited nurse.

'Why—may not I see him?' pled Maude.

'Not yet, certainly,' replied Roland, caressing her sunny brown hair, and patting her cheek, from which the faint rose tint was fled.

'I must see him, Roland, that I may know he is not—not—dead.

'Dead, you dear little goose! Such fellows as Jack Elliot take a long time in dying. You should have seen him as I did (though it is well, however, you did not), when doubled up by a grape-shot at Tel-el-Kebir. He'll be all right in a day or two, and meanwhile—

'What, Roland?' asked the trembling girl.

'I go to Edinburgh, to get at the real state of our affairs, what or however they may be; I feel inclined to shoot that fellow Sharpe like a dog if he crosses my path again at Earlshaugh!'

'Roland, Roland, you surely know all?' said his sister with intense sadness.

'No, I do not know all,' said he, drawing her head on his breast and caressing her; and feeling keenly that their father's roof was degraded by the presence of this fellow, after attempting such a crime—for a crime Roland felt and knew it to be; albeit that the perpetrator was the brother of their father's widow, and should, but for cogent reasons, be handed over to the mercies of the Procurator-Fiscal for the county.

By the very outrage he had committed, Sharpe had excited all the tenderness and commiseration for Elliot of which Maude's nature was capable, and for himself all the loathing and detestation which her usually gentle heart could feel. Thus he had lost much and won nothing; and notwithstanding his sister's position, influence, and interest at Earlshaugh, he felt himself very much de trop; and, unable to face the heavy fire of obloquy and blame that met him on every hand, he feigned the excuse—if such were wanting—of having to attend the Ayr races, which came off about that time, and departed ostensibly for the great western meeting on that famous course which lies southward of the ancient town of Ayr. His farewell words to his sister were:

'I'll be even with Roland Lindsay yet—yes, more than even, as you shall see, Deb!'

Whether he really went there was apocryphal, as he was seen ere long hovering about the vicinity of Earlshaugh, if not in the house itself.

And Hawkey Sharpe never did anything without a prime or ulterior object in view.

The event we have narrated marred the partridge shooting at Earlshaugh for a time; and as lately quite a crop of dances and drums, garden and music parties had sprung up in the vicinity, and attendance at these was marred too, Annot Drummond felt more exasperation than commiseration at the cause thereof.

CHAPTER XXV.

THE WILL.

In the pursuit of personal information, which should have been in his possession before, that somewhat too easy-going young soldier, Roland Lindsay, in the course of a day or two, found himself in the 'Gray Metropolis of the North,' or rather in that portion thereof which has sprung up within the last hundred and forty years or so.

The office of Mr. M'Wadsett, W.S., was amid a number of such 'wasps' nests,' in a small and rather gloomy and depressing arena known as Thistle Court, under the shadow of St. Andrew's great, sombre, and circular-shaped church.

The situation was a good one for a prosperous town lawyer's office, and Mr. M'Wadsett was a prosperous—and, as usual with many of them, effusively pious—lawyer, and all about him, whether by chance or design, was arranged to give clients—victims many deemed themselves—an impression that his practice was wide, select, and respectable—intensely respectable—while Mr. M'Wadsett never omitted church services at least twice daily, for the kirk was his fetish—the test of a decorous life, like his black suit and white necktie.

He was busily engaged just then, so Roland sent in his card and had to wait, which he felt as a kind of hint that he was not so important a client now as he might have been. The room he was ushered into was a dull one, overlooking the gloomy court; and slowly the time seemed to pass, for Roland was in an agony of impatience now to know the worst—the profound folly of his father, for whom his feelings just then were, to say the least of them, of a somewhat mingled cast.

Mr. M'Wadsett's office consisted of several rooms—the interior and upper floors of an old-fashioned house. In one of these, partly furnished like a parlour, the walls hung with fly-blown maps and prospectuses—a waiting-room—Roland was left to fume and 'cool his heels'; while in one somewhere adjacent he heard a curious clashing of fire-irons, and a voice giving the—to him—somewhat familiar words of command, but in a suppressed tone:

'Guard—point—two! Low guard—point—two!' etc., for it was evident that some of the clerks who were rifle volunteers were having a little bayonet exercise, till a bell rang, when they all vaulted upon their stools and began to write intensely, for then the voice of old Mr. M'Wadsett was heard, and Roland was ushered into his presence.

His room was snug and cosy, albeit its principal furniture consisted of green charter boxes on iron frames, all of which held secrets relating to the families whose well-known names were displayed upon them. How much, indeed, did he not know about all the leading proprietors of Fife and Kinross?

He received his visitor warmly and pleasantly enough, spoke of the war in Egypt, his health, the weather, of course, and then when a pause ensued, Roland stated the object for which he had come.

The lawyer, a fussy little man, with a sharp, keen manner, and sharp, keen gray eyes, raised his silver-rimmed glasses above his bushy white eyebrows, and said:

'My dear sir, I sent a copy of your respected father's will to Egypt.'

'Addressed to me?'

'Yes.'

'I never got it.'

'Why?'

'We were holding the lines in front of Ramleh at that time; the Arabs made free with the mail-bags, and lit their pipes with the contents, no doubt, in the desert beyond Ghizeh.'

'My dear sir, how lawless of them!'

'I have thought about this will at times, till I have become stupid—woolly in fact, and hated the name of it.'

'Your good father—

'Ah,' interrupted Roland, a little testily, 'I fear we only looked upon him latterly as the family banker, and he was useful in that way—very.'

'To your brother in the Guards perhaps too much so,' said the lawyer gravely.

'Well—about the cursed document itself?' began Roland a little impetuously.

'Strong language, my dear sir—strong language! The terms of your respected father's will are, I must say, a little peculiar, and were framed much against my advice; though his old family agent, I scarcely felt justified in drawing out the document.'

'I have heard that its conditions are outrageous.'

'They are—my dear sir—they are.'

'Such as no respectable lawyer should have drawn up,' said Roland sternly.

'Captain Lindsay, there you are wrong—severe—but I excuse you,' replied Mr. M'Wadsett, perking up his bald, shining head, as he drew the document in question from a charter box, after some trouble in finding the key thereof, and which Roland eyed—without touching it—with a very gloomy and louring expression.

'Dear me—dear me,' muttered M'Wadsett, as, seating himself in a well-stuffed circular chair, and adjusting his spectacles, he glanced over the document. 'He wrote: "I have delayed making my will so long as I have thought it safe to do so, but I am an old man now, and the gross and wilful extravagance of——" Shall I read it all, Captain Lindsay? The first few clauses are unimportant enough: £1,000 to Sir Harry Maule; some jewellery to his daughter Hester—bequests to the servants—Funnell the butler, Buckle the head groom, and then with the provisions appointed for your sister and yourself——'

'Comes the "crusher," I suppose,' interrupted Roland, crashing his right heel on the floor.

'Precisely so, my dear sir; I don't wonder that you feel it; but listen and I shall read it all.'

'Please don't,' cried Roland; 'lawyers make everything so lengthy, so elaborate, so full of circumlocution and irritating repetition. Cut it short—the gist of it.'

'Is—that all the estates, real and personal, are devised and bequeathed by the testator to his wife, Deborah Sharpe or Lindsay.'

'For life?

'No—to do with as she pleases in all time coming; the whole power of willing everything away is left in her hands, as you may read for yourself here.'

There was a silence of a minute.

'I thought such episodes—such outrages—never happened but in novels?' said Roland.

The lawyer smiled faintly and shook his head, and refolding the document, said:

'It is, of course, duly recorded.'

'And Earlshaugh will go to her heirs?'

'To Mr. Hawkey Sharpe, unless she devises otherwise.'

'A bitter satire!'

'A codicil was framed, or nearly so, revoking much that had gone before; but was never signed. By that omission——'

'I have lost all,' said Roland, starting to his feet; 'so the fortunes of the Lindsays of Earlshaugh are at their lowest ebb.'

'Unless you can find an heiress,' said the lawyer, with another of his weak smiles.

Annot was no heiress, Roland remembered.

'As for my father's folly,' he was beginning bitterly, when M'Wadsett touched his arm:

'Let us not speak ill of the dead,' said he; 'the late Laird may have been deceived, misled—let us not wrong him.'

'But he has wronged the living, who have to feel—to endure and to suffer!'

'The folly of your brother, the Guardsman—rather than your own—brought all this about, Captain Lindsay,' said the lawyer, rising too, as if the unprofitable interview had come to an end; and, a few minutes after, Roland found himself outside in the bustle and sunshine of George Street, that broad, stately, and magnificent thoroughfare, along which he wandered like one in a bad dream, and full of vague, angry, and bitter thoughts.

A deep sense of unmerited humiliation galled his naturally proud spirit, now that the truth of his real position had been laid before him without doubt.

The 'fool's paradise' in which he had been partly living had vanished; and he thought how much better it had been had he left his bones at Tel-el-Kebir, at Kashgate, or anywhere else in Egypt, as so many of his comrades had done.

What was he to do now?

His profession at least was left him. Would he return to his regiment at once, and go to Earlshaugh no more? It was impossible just yet to turn his back on what was once his home. There was Annot, his fiancée; there was Maude, his sister; there were Jack Elliot and other guests; before them a part must be acted as yet—and then—what then—what next?

A bitter malediction rose to his lips, but he stifled it.

Once matters were somehow smoothed over, back to the regiment he should, of course, go, and turning his back on Scotland for ever, try to forget the past and everything!

With incessant iteration the thought—the question—was ever before him how to explain to Jack Elliot and Annot Drummond that he—Roland Lindsay, deemed the heir, the Lord of Earlshaugh and all its acres of wood and wold, field and pasture, was little better than an outcast—admitted there on the sufferances of the sister of that most pitiful wretch, Hawkey Sharpe!

Viewed in every way the situation was maddening—intolerable. With regard to Annot, he could but trust to her love now. Should he ask Maude or Hester to break the matter to her gently? No—that task must be his own.

Most of the hopes of himself and his sister seemed to be based on the goodwill that might be borne them by Deborah Sharpe (how he loathed to think of her as Mrs. Lindsay), and she, too, evidently, was inimical to them both, and under the complete influence of her brother, Hawkey Sharpe.

Amid the turmoil of his thoughts he did not forget to procure as a souvenir of this wretched visit to Edinburgh a valuable bracelet for Annot Drummond, and then took his way—homeward he could not deem it—to Earlshaugh.

He had but one crumb of consolation, that at the last hour his father seemed to have repented the evil he had done him—at the last hour—but too late!

'Not always in life is it possible to unravel the mesh which our fingers have woven,' says a writer. 'Sometimes it is permitted to recall the lost opportunities of a few mistaken hours; sometimes, when all too late, we would willingly buy back with every drop of our heart's blood the moments we have so wilfully abused, and the chances we have so foolishly neglected. But it is too late!'

So it was too late when Roland's father thought to amend his fatal will.

CHAPTER XXVI.

MOLOCH.

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.

CHAPTER XXVII.

ANNOT'S MISGIVINGS.

Jack Elliot's mishap—accident though it could scarcely be called—thoroughly marred and shortened the partridge shooting at Earlshaugh, and the birds had quite a holiday of it.

'Never mind, Jack,' Roland had said on his departure for Edinburgh, 'you'll make amends when the pheasants are ready.'

Irritated by the event which had struck him down—exasperated by the whole affair, the secret motives for which had gradually become more apparent to him, Elliot tossed on his bed feverishly and wearily, at times scarcely conscious, in a sleepy trance, for he had lost much blood; but being a tough fellow, with a splendid constitution, he soon became convalescent, after the few grains of No. 5 that lodged had been picked out by the doctors.

Feverishly he called for cooling draughts, which were always at hand, prepared by old Mrs. Drugget, the buxom housekeeper, and even by grim, grave Mrs. Lindsay, whom the catastrophe had seriously startled and upset, as it showed the cruelty, cunning, and devilish villany of which her brother and protégé was capable.

Mrs. Drugget, influenced by Jack's love of Maude, whom she had known from infancy, scarcely left the patient for an instant, and ever sat motionless and watchful by his bedside, till he was safe, and in the way of a rapid recovery.

Many were the calls to know the progress of the invalid, whose 'accident' had made some noise and excited much speculation; carriages were always rolling up to the porte-cochère, the great iron bell of which was clanged incessantly, and on the same errand horsemen came cantering across the park; and one thing seemed certain, that, until the party then assembled at Earlshaugh left the place, Mr. Hawkey Sharpe would not show himself there in the field, nor under the roof of the house, it was confidently supposed.

Ere long Elliot was promoted from jellies and beef-tea to chicken and champagne, administered by the loving little white hands of Maude; and, with such a nurse, it seemed not a bad thing to lie convalescent to one like Jack, who had undergone enteric fever in the hospital at Ismailia, by the Lake of Tismah, and later still in the huts at Quarantine Island, by the burning shore of Suakim.

Maude grew bright and merry; she had got over the shock; but yet had in her heart all the terror and loathing it could feel for the hand that had dealt the injury—an injury which, but for the scandal it must have caused in the county generally, and in the 'East Neuk' in particular, might have been made a very serious matter for Mr. Hawkey Sharpe.

Actuated by some judicious remarks from the old Writer to the Signet of Thistle Court, Roland returned to Earlshaugh with the intention of endeavouring to 'tide over' the humiliation and difficulties of his position till he could turn his back upon that place for ever, without making any more unpleasantness, and, more than all, giving rise to any useless speculation or esclandre.

Mrs. Lindsay had somehow heard of his sudden, but certainly not unexpected, visit to Edinburgh, and divined its object, if indeed no casual rumour had reached her about it; and a smile of derision and triumph, that would greatly have pleased her obnoxious brother, stole over her pale and usually calm face when she thought of the utter futility of Roland's expedition; and something of this emotion in her eyes was the response to his somewhat crest-fallen aspect when she met him in the Red Drawing-room on his return.

But he was master of himself, if he was master of nothing more, and resolved to have a truce, if not a treaty of peace, with 'Deborah Sharpe,' as he and Maude always called her in her absence.

Strange to say, he found that, outwardly at least, her old animosity, jealousy, and spirit of defiance were much lessened, though he knew not the secret cause thereof; but she was a woman, and as he looked on the deathly pallor of her face, the ill-concealed agitation of her manner, and thought of the terrible secret disease under which she laboured, he felt something of pity for her, that was for the time both genuine and generous.

'You look pale,' said he gently as he took her hand and led her to a sofa, adjusting a cushion at her back; 'I hope you have not been exciting yourself about the state of my friend Elliot; Jack will be all right in a few days now.'

The soft grace of his manner and sweetness of his tone (common to him when addressing all women) impressed her greatly; her own brother, Hawkey Sharpe, never spoke thus, even when seeking his incessant monetary favours. If the latter watched her pallor or detected illness, his observation was rendered acute, not by fraternal tenderness, but by selfishness and ulterior views of his own; thus Roland's bearing vanquished, for a time at least, her innate dislike of him, for it is an idiosyncrasy in the hearts of many to dislike and fear those they have wronged or supplanted.

Thus Roland was superior to her.

'A more glorious victory cannot be gained over another than this,' says Tillotson; 'when the injury began on their part, the kindness should begin on ours.'

'I hope you have secured medical advice as to the state of your health?' said he after a little pause, and with a nameless courtesy in his attitude.

'Thank you so much for your kindness, Roland.' (She usually called him 'Captain Lindsay.') 'Just now you remind me so much of your father; and this is the anniversary of the day when he met with his terrible accident, and his horse threw him,' she added, looking not at him, but past him; yet the woman's usually hard disposition was suddenly moved by the touch of nature that 'makes the whole world kin.'

'Like my father, you think?' said Roland coldly.

'Yes—and for his sake it is perhaps not too late—too late——'

'For what?' he asked, as her lip quivered and she paused.

'Time will show,' she replied, as one of her spasms made her lip quiver again, and her breath came short and heavily.

'Is there anything Maude or I can do for you—speak, please?' said Roland, starting up.

'Nothing—but do give me your arm to the door of my own room, and ring for Mrs. Drugget.'

He gave her his escort tenderly and courteously; and thus ended a brief interview—the first pleasant one he had ever had with 'the usurper' of his patrimony, and which he was to recall at a future time.

Whether or not Annot Drummond was thinking over Hester's cloudy and alarming communications it is difficult to say; but she said to the latter after a most effusive meeting with her fiancé:

'What has come over Roland since his visit to Edinburgh? He looks shockingly ill—so changed—so triste—what does it all mean?'

'I told you he went there on business, and that seems to have always its worries—all the greater, perhaps, to those who detest or know nothing about it.'

'His moodiness quite belies the sobriquet of his name—"The Lindsays lightsome and gay;" but here he comes again. Roland,' she added, springing up and kissing his cheek, 'a thousand thanks, darling, for this lovely bracelet you have brought me. It was so kind—so like you to remember poor little me!'

'As if I could, even for a moment, forget,' was his half-maudlin response, while she drew up her sleeve a little way, coquetishly displaying a lovely arm of snowy whiteness, firmly and roundly moulded by perfect health and youth, with the bracelet clasped on her slender wrist; and while turning it round and round, so as to inspect it in every light and from every point of view, she was thinking that when—after the bestowal of so many other valuable gifts—he could bring her a jewel so expensive as this, surely Hester's hints about the will must have been nonsense, or the outcome of jealousy at her—Annot's—success with a handsome cousin, whom she knew that Hester was at least well disposed to regard with interest.

Yet, when she and Roland were together, to Annot's watchful eyes his manner did seem thoughtful and absent at times, and would have caused misgivings but that she thought, and flattered herself, that it was caused, perhaps, by his having to go prematurely to Egypt, like Malcolm Skene.

After Elliot had become convalescent, and Roland, with others, had resumed their guns, and betaken them again to the slaughter of the partridges, all went well apparently for a few weeks. There were gay riding parties in the afternoon to visit the ruined castles at Ceres and the muir where Archbishop Sharpe was slain; to the caves of Dura Den at Kemback; picnics to Creich and the hills of Logie; there were dances in the evening, and music, when Hester's rich contralto, Elliot's tenor, Maude's soft soprano, and Roland's bass, took principal parts.

'Young hearts, bright eyes, and rosy lips were there;
    And fairy steps, and light and laughing voices
Ringing like welcome music through the air—
    A sound at which the untroubled heart rejoices.'

Life seemed a happy idyl, and that of Annot—we must suppose that she had her special dreams of happiness too—was ever gay apparently; but Roland's soul was secretly steeped in misery!

Circumstanced as he knew himself to be, Annot's frequent praises of Earlshaugh and her delight with all therein galled and fretted him, and made him so strange in manner at times that the girl, to do her justice, was bewildered and grieved; and Hester, though she wished it not nor thought of it, was in some degree avenged.

'What can be the meaning of it?' was often Annot's secret thought.

Like Elliot and Maude, to her it seemed that perhaps they were too happy for commonplace speeches as they idled hand-in-hand about the grounds, wandering through vistas of thick and venerable hawthorn-hedges, away by the thatched hamlet, through the wooded haugh, where the 'auld brig-stane' still spanned the wimpling burn, while face turned to radiant face, and loving eye met eye.

In such moments what need had they, she thought, for words that might seem dull or clumsy? 'But, after all, words, though coarse or clumsy, are the coin in which human creatures must pay each other, and failing in which they are often bankrupts for life.'

Had Roland spoken then and said much that he left unsaid, perhaps much suffering might have been spared him at a future time—we says 'perhaps,' but not with certainty, as we have only our story to tell, without indulging in casuistry as to what might have occurred in the sequel.

The story of the will, Annot began to think, must have been a fallacy—a cruel and unpalatable one. By-and-by she refused to face the probability at all; but she could not help remarking that when their conversation insensibly turned upon the future, as that of lovers must do, upon their probable trip to London, his certain tour of service in Egypt, or on anything that lay beyond the sunny horizon of the present, Roland became strange in manner, abrupt and cloudy, and nervously sought to turn the subject into another channel.