CHAPTER XXXIV.

THE PRESENTIMENT.

Among her letters one morning—though her chief correspondent was her father, the old Indian veteran at Merlwood, whose shaky caligraphy there was no mistaking—there came one which gave Hester a species of electric shock. It bore the postmarks 'Egypt' and 'Cairo,' with stamps having the Pyramids and Sphinx's head thereon.

'From Malcolm Skene!' she said to herself; 'Malcolm Skene, and to me!'

She hurried to her room that she might read it in solitude, for it was impossible that she could fail to do so with deep interest after all that Malcolm Skene had said to her, and the knowledge of all that might have been—yea, yet perhaps might be; but the letter, dated more than a month before at Cairo, simply began:—

'MY DEAR MISS MAULE,

'My excuse for writing to you,' he continued, 'is—and your pardon must be accorded to me therefore—that I am ordered on a distant, solitary, and perilous duty, from which I have, for the first time in my life, a curious, yet solemn, presentiment that I shall never return.

'This emotion may, please God, be a mistake; and I hope so, for my dear mother's sake. It may only be that superstition which some deem impiety; but we Skenes of Dunnimarle have had it in more than one generation—a kind of foreknowledge of what was to happen to us, or to be said or done by those we met. As some one has it, the map of coming events is before us, and the spirit surveys it, and for the time we are translated into another sphere, and re-act, perhaps, foregone scenes. Be that as it may, the unbidden emotion of presentiment seems to have some affinity to that phenomenon.'

'What a strange letter; and how unlike Malcolm—thoughtful and grave as he is!' was Hester's idea.

'I read a few days ago that some calamity had occurred at Earlshaugh; that my dear old friend and comrade Roland had met with an accident—had disappeared! What did that mean? But too probably I shall never learn now, and, as I have not again seen the matter referred to in print, hope it may all be a canard—a mistake.

'You remember our last interview? Oh, Hester, while life remains to me I shall never, never forget it? I think or hope you may care for me now in pity as we are separated—or might learn to care for me at a future time. Tell me to wait that time; if I return from my mission, Hester, and I shall do so—yea, were it seven years, if you wish it to be—if at the end of those seven years you would lay your dear hand in mine and tell me that you would be my wife.

'The waiting would be hard; yet, if inspired by hope, I would undergo it, Hester, and trust while life was spared to me. We are told that "the meshes of our destiny are spinning every day," silently, deftly, and we unconsciously aid in the spinning—scarcely knowing that—as we stumble through the darkness to the everlasting light—the dangers we have passed by, and the fires we have passed through, are all, in different ways, the process that makes us godlike, strong and free.'

Much more followed that was a little abstruse, and then he seemed to become loving and tender in spite of the manner in which he strove to modify his letter.

'I depart in an hour, and tide what may, my last thoughts will ever be of you—my last wish a prayer for your happiness! My life's love—my life's love, for such you are still—once more farewell!

'MALCOLM SKENE.'

Certainly the gentle-hearted Hester could not but be moved by this letter, coming as it did under all the circumstances from the writer in a remote and perilous land. She looked at the date after perusing the letter more than once, and her spirit sank with a dread of what might have transpired since then.

She recalled vividly the face of Malcolm Skene, and his eyes, that were soft yet full of power, more frequently grave than merry, and his firm lips. He was a man whose features and bearing would have been remarkable amid any group of men, and the first to arrest a woman's attention and arouse her interest.

But as she re-read his expressions of love she shook her handsome head slowly and gravely, and thought with Collins:

Friendship often ends in love,
But love in friendship never!'

To this letter a terrible sequel was close at hand. This she found in the newspapers of the following day, and while her whole mind was full of that remarkable and most unexpected missive to which she could send no answer:

'Captain Malcolm Skene, who with a native guide quitted Cairo some weeks ago, has not been heard of since he entered the Wady Faregh, at a point more than ten Egyptian shoni or thirty miles British, beyond Memphis, which was not in his direct way.

'This energetic and distinguished young officer is the bearer of despatches to the Egyptian Colonel commanding a Camel Battery and Black Battalion near Dayer-el-Syrian, which district he certainly had not reached when the latest intelligence came from that somewhat desolate quarter.

'Doubts are now—when too late—entertained as to the fidelity of Hassan Abdullah, his guide. A camel supposed to have been his has been found dead of thirst in the desert, and as there have been some dreadful sand-storms in that district, the greatest fears are entertained at headquarters that Captain Skene has perished in the wilderness—dying in the execution of his duty to his Queen and country, as truly and as bravely as if he had met a soldier's death in battle.'

The paper slipped from Hester's hands, and she sank forward till her forehead rested on the sill of a window near which she sat. She knew this paragraph meant too probably a terrible and unknown death, the harrowing details of which might—nay, too surely, never would—be revealed—death to one who had loved her but too well, and thus all her soul became instinct with a tender and fearful interest in him.

'Poor Malcolm—poor Malcolm Skene!' she murmured again and again, while her face, ashy white, was hidden in her hands.

Few women can fail to take a tender interest in the fate or future of any man who has been interested in them.

For a long time she sat still—nay, still as a statue, but for the regular and slow rising and falling of the ribbons and lace at her bosom, and the ruffling of her dark brown hair in the breeze that came through the open window, kissing her white temples and cooling her eyelids.

Then she recalled her father's strange and weird story of his father's dream, vision, or presentiment, before the storming of Jhansi, where the latter fell; and thought with wonder, could such things be?

She confided the letter and its contents to her bosom friend Maude; but she could not—for cogent reasons—bring herself to say a word on the subject to Roland, whose mind, however, was full enough of the newspaper report of his old friend's misfortune, or as he never doubted now—evil fate!

CHAPTER XXXV.

LOST IN THE DESERT.

Natheless his somewhat gloomy letter to Hester Maule, Malcolm Skene, though feeling to the fullest extent the influence of the presentiment of evil therein referred to, was too young, and of too elastic a nature, not to feel also a sense of ardour, enterprise, and enthusiasm at the confidence reposed in him by his superiors. With an inherent love of adventure and a certain recklessness of spirit, he armed himself, mounted, and quitted his quarters at Cairo just when the first red rays of the morning sun were tipping with light the summit of the citadel or the apex of each distant pyramid, and rode on his solitary way—solitary all save Hassan, the swarthy Egyptian guide provided for him by the Quartermaster-General's Department.

He had been chiefly selected for the duty in question—to bear despatches to the Amir-Ali, or Colonel, commanding the Egyptian force at Dayr-el-Syrian, in consequence of his proficiency in Arabic—the most prevailing language of the country.

He and his guide were mounted on camels. Skene's was one of great beauty, if an animal so ungainly can be said to possess it, with a small head, short ears, and bending neck. Its tail was long, its hoofs small, and it was swift of action. The rider was without baggage; he wore his fighting kit of Khakee cloth and tropical helmet with a pugaree. He had his sword and revolver, with goggles, and a pocket compass for use if his guide in any way proved at fault.

Unnoticed he traversed the picturesque streets that lay between the citadel and the gate that led by a straight road towards the castle and gardens of Ghizeh, passing the groups and features incident to Cairo: a lumbering train of British baggage waggons, escorted by our soldiers in clay-coloured khakee with bayonets fixed; an Egyptian officer in sky-blue uniform and red tarboosh 'tooling' along on a circus-like Arab; a whole regiment of darkies, perhaps with rattling drums and French bugles; strings of maimed, deformed, and blind beggars; private carriages with outriders in Turkish costumes of white muslin with gold embroideries, and bare-legged grooms; 'the gallant, gray donkeys of which Cairo is so proud, and which the Cairenes delight in naming after European celebrities, from Mrs. Langtry to Lord Wolseley;' singers of Nubian and Arabian songs and dealers in Syrian magic, all were left behind, and in the cool air of the morning Malcolm Skene found himself ambling on his camel under the shadows of the lebbek trees, with wading buffaloes and flocks of herons on either side of the road as he skirted the plain where the Pyramids stand—the Pyramids that mock Time, which mocks all things.

He was too familiar with them then to bestow on them more than a passing glance, and rode forward on his somewhat lonely way. Hassan, his guide, like a true Arab, uttered a mocking yell on seeing the vast stony face of the Sphinx—an efrit—fired a pistol, and threw stones at it, as at a devil, and then civilization was left behind.

Trusting to his guide Hassan, Skene was taken a few miles off his direct route southward down the left bank of the Nile, and while riding on, turning from time to time to converse with that personage, who was a typical Fellah—very dark-skinned, with good teeth, black and sparkling eyes, muscular of form, yet spare of habit, and clad simply in loose blue cotton drawers with a blue tunic and red tarboosh—it seemed that his face and voice were somehow not unfamiliar to him.

But where, amid the thousands of low-class Fellaheen in Cairo, could Malcolm Skene have seen the former or heard the latter? Never before had he heard of Hassan Abdullah even by name. But 'strange it is, for how many days and weeks we may be haunted by a likeness before we know what it is that is gladdening us with sweet recollections, or vexing us with some association we hoped to have left behind.'

Memphis, with its ruins and mounds, in the midst of which stand the Arab hamlets of Sokkara and Mitraheny, was traversed with some difficulty, though the site is now chiefly occupied by waste and marshes that reach to the sand-hills on the edge of the desert; but from Abusir all round to the west and south, for miles, Skene and his guide found themselves stepping from grave to grave amid bones and fragments of mummy cloth—the remains of that wondrous necropolis which, according to Strabo, extended half a day's journey each way from the great city of Central Egypt.

'Ugh!' muttered Malcolm Skene, as he guided the steps of his camel and lighted more than one long havannah, 'this is anything but lively! What a dismal scene!'

'The work of the Pharaohs,' said Hassan, for to them everything is attributed by the Fellaheen, who suppose they lived about three hundred years ago.

But Memphis was ere long left in his rear, and night was at hand, when—according to Hassan Abdullah's statement, on computation of distance—they should reach and halt at certain wells, about ten shoni distant therefrom, in the direct line to the Wady Faregh.

Memphis was, we say, left behind, and the two rode swiftly on. His former thoughts recurring to him, Malcolm Skene, checking his camel to let that of his guide come abreast of him, said to the latter:

'Your face is singularly familiar to me. Did we ever meet in Cairo?'

Hassan grinned and showed all his white teeth, but made no reply.

'Your face has some strange mystery for me,' resumed Skene, with growing wonder, yet fearing he might make the man think he possessed the evil eye; 'it seems a face known to me—the face of the dead in the garb of the living.'

'And it is so, Yusbashi (captain), so far as you are concerned,' was the strange reply of the Fellah as his black eyes flashed.

'What do you mean?'

'We met in the roulette saloon of Pietro Girolamo.'

'Right! I remember now; you are one of the fellows I fought with. I thought you were killed in that row!'

'Nearly so I was, and by you.'

This was an awkward discovery.

'But you escaped?'

'Yes; thanks to an amulet I wear—a verse of the Koran bound round my left arm.'

To trust such a rascal as Skene now supposed this fellow must be was full of peril. To return and seek another guide, when he had proceeded so far upon his way, would argue timidity, and tempt the 'chaff' of the more heedless spirits of the mess; thus it was not to be thought of.

He could but continue his journey with his despatches, and watch well every movement of his guide; but to have as such one of the ruffians and bullies of Pietro Girolamo was certainly an unpleasant discovery—one with whom he had already that which in these parts of the world is termed a blood feud, seemed to be the first instalment of his gloomy presentiment.

Hassan Abdullah had been—he could not conceive how or why—chosen or recommended as a guide by those in authority; and if false, or disposed to be so, he veiled it under an elaborate bearing of servility and attention to every wish and hint of Skene. Thinking that he could not make any better of the situation now, Malcolm was fain to accept that bearing for what it might be worth, and, to veil his mistrust, adopted a new tone with Hassan, and instead of listening to directions from him, began to give orders instead. But, ignorant as he was of the route, this system could not long be pursued.

As he rode on he thought of Hester Maule, and how she would view or consider his letter. Would she answer it? He scarcely thought she would do so—nay, became certain she would not. Under the circumstances in which they had parted after that interview in the conservatory at Earlshaugh, and with the grim presentiment then haunting him, it was beseeming enough in him perhaps to have written as he did to her; but not for her to write him in reply unless she meant to hold out hopes that might never be realized.

What amount of ground they had traversed when the sun verged westward Malcolm scarcely knew, as the way had been most devious, rough, and apparently, to judge of the guide's indecision more than once, very uncertain; but the former judged that it could not have been more than thirty miles from Memphis as the crow flies.

Dhurra reeds, date, and cotton-trees had long since been left behind, and before the camel-riders stretched a pale yellow waste of sand, strewed in places by glistening pebbles. Malcolm Skene thought they were now entering the lower end of the Wady Faregh, between El Benat and the Wady Rosseh, and on consulting his pocket-compass supposed the Dayr Macarius Convent must be right in his front, but distant many miles, and the post of Dayr-el-Syrian, for which he was bound, must be about ten miles further on; but Hassan Abdullah knew better; and when near sunset that individual dismounted and spread his dirty little square carpet whereon to say his orisons, with his face towards Mecca, his head bowed, his beads in his dingy hands, and his cunning eyes half closed. None would have thought that a Mussulman apparently so pious had only hate and perfidy in his heart for the trusting but accursed infidel, or Frenchi, as he called Skene—the general name in Egypt for all Europeans—as the latter seated himself by the side of a low wall half buried in the drifted sand—the fragment of some B.C. edifice—and partook of his frugal meat, supper and dinner combined.

Far, far away in the distance Memphis and the Valley of the Nile were lost in haze and obscurity; westward the sun, like a ball of fire—a blood-red disc of enormous proportions—shorn of every ray, was setting amid a sky of gold, crimson, and soft apple-green, all blending through each other, yet with light strong enough to send far along the waste they had traversed the shadows of the two camels of Skene and of Hassan.

The former recalled with a grim smile Moore's ballad:

'Fly to the desert, fly with me!'

and thought the desert looked far from inviting.

His only table appurtenance was the jack-knife hung from his neck by a lanyard, and as issued to all ranks of our troops in Egypt, and with that he cut his sandwiches, now dry indeed by this time, and opened a tiny tin of preserved meat, which he washed down by a mouthful from the hunting-flask, carried in his haversack.

As he sat alone eating his frugal meal, which from religious scruples Hassan declined to share with him—or indeed anything save a cigar—Skene, though neither a sybarite nor a gourmand, could not help thinking regretfully of the regimental mess-table in the citadel of Cairo, possessing, like other such tables, all the ease of a kindly family circle, without its probable dulness; of the dressing bugle, and the merry drums and fifes playing the 'Roast Beef of Old England;' the quiet weed after dinner, a stroke at billiards, a rubber of short whist while holding good cards; and just then civilization and all the good things of this earth seemed very far off indeed!

When he and Hassan started again to reach the wells—where they were to procure water for themselves and their camels, and were to bivouac for the night, no trace of these could be found, though the travellers wandered several miles in different directions; and, as the sun set with tropical rapidity, Skene—his water-bottle completely empty—with his field-glass swept the horizon in vain for a sight of those gum-trees which were said to indicate the locality of the springs in question; and then he began more than ever to mistrust the good faith, if not the knowledge, of Hassan Abdullah.

So far as their camels were concerned, Skene had no cause as yet for any anxiety, as these animals, besides the four stomachs which all ruminating quadrupeds possess, have a fifth, which serves as a reservoir for carrying a supply of water in the parched and sandy deserts they are so often obliged to traverse.

A well—one unknown to Hassan, apparently—they certainly did come upon unexpectedly, but, alas! it was dry. Malcolm Skene looked thirstily at the white stones that lined or formed it, glistening in the light of the uprisen moon, and with his tongue parched and lips hard and baked he thought tantalizingly of brooks of cool and limpid water, of iced champagne and bitter beer!

He haltered his camel, looked to his arms and laid them half under him, and resting his head against the saddle of his animal, strove to court sleep, against the labours of the morrow, thinking the while that the labours of Sisyphus were almost a joke to the toil of the duty he had undertaken.

At a little distance on the other side of the dried-up fountain, Hassan, whom he watched closely for a time, took his repose in a similar fashion.

The night in the desert was not altogether unpleasant, for that rarefied clearness of sky which renders the heat of the sun so intolerable by day, makes the sky of night surpassingly beautiful, and that is the time when, if he can, the traveller should really make his way over the sandy waste.

With early morning, and while the red sun was yet below the hazy horizon, came full awakening after a somewhat restless night, broken by periods of watchfulness and anxiety, and tantalized by dreams of flowing and sparkling water, which left the pangs of growing thirst keener than ever.

Hassan, however, seemed 'fresh as a daisy,' having, as Malcolm strongly suspected, some secret store of his own selfishly concealed about him.

They gave their camels a feed of their favourite food, the twigs of some thorny mimosa that grew near the dried-up well—scanty herbage of the desert—and then Malcolm, who distrusted the skill or fealty, or both, of Hassan Abdullah, while the latter was kneeling on his prayer carpet, turned to consult his pocket compass with reference to the direction in which to steer through the waste of sand which now spread in every direction around them.

It was gone!

Nervously, with fingers that trembled in their haste, he searched his haversack, turning out its few contents again and again, and cast keen glances all around where he had been overnight, but no sign or trace of that invaluable instrument, on which too probably his life depended, was there!

Fiercely he turned to Hassan, then just ending his morning prayer and folding up his carpet, suspecting that the soft and swift-handed Egyptian must have filched it from him during sleep—yet he had felt so wakeful that such could scarcely be the case.

'My compass!' he exclaimed.

'What of it, Yusbashi?'

'Have you seen it?'

'I—not I; and if I did, do you think I would touch it?'

'It is ifrit—the work of the devil—an affair of which I, as a true Mussulman, can know nothing.'

'But how about the way to go now?' said Malcolm Skene in genuine perplexity and alarm, looking all around the vicinity of the stony hole, called a well, for the twentieth time.

'The Frenchi will be told all of the way that his servant knows,' replied Hassan with a profound salaam, while bending his head to hide the leer of his stealthy and glittering eyes.

Skene thought for a moment. Should he take this fellow at his word; threaten him with death if he did not produce the pocket compass, or knock him down with the butt-end of his pistol and then search his pockets?

An open quarrel was to be avoided. Skene felt himself to be a good deal, if not wholly, at the fellow's mercy. The latter could only delude him so far, at the risk of perilling himself; but he might, on the other hand, lure and betray him into the hands of the enemy, several of whom, under a leader named Sheikh Moussa Abu Hagil, were hovering on the skirts of the desert in various directions—a man known to have been a faithful adherent and kinsmen of the captive Zebehr Pasha.

Nothing seemed to remain for Skene but to accept as before the guidance of Hassan Abdullah, so, after the latter had breakfasted on a few dates and the former on a simple ration from his haversack, once more they headed their course into what seemed to be an endless and markless waste of sand.

Apart from the bodily pangs of thirst, anger, doubt, and anxiety were gathering in the mind of Malcolm; but he sternly resolved that the moment he became assured of Hassan Abdullah deluding or betraying him he would shoot that copper-coloured individual dead, as if he were a reptile or a wild beast. And Hassan no doubt knew quite enough of life in his own country to be aware that he rode on with his life in his hands.

So another night and day passed away.

And now, as we have referred to the desert here and elsewhere in the Soudan, it may seem the time to give a description of what such a waste is, and the scene that now spread before the anxious and bloodshot eyes of Malcolm Skene; for it has been justly said that he who has never travelled through such a place can form no idea of a locality so wondrous—one in which all the ordinary conditions of human life undergo a complete change.

Once away from the valley of the Nile, all between the fourteenth degree and the shore of the Mediterranean, a tract of more than eight hundred thousand square miles is desert, treeless, waterless, without streams or rivulets, and almost without wells, which, when they exist, are scanty, few, and far apart. 'The first thing after reaching a well,' says a recent writer, 'is to ascertain the quantity and quality of its water. As to the former, it may have been exhausted by a preceding caravan, and hours may be required for a new supply to ooze in again. The quality of the desert water is generally bad, the exception being when it becomes worse, though long custom enables the Bedouins to drink water so brackish as to be intolerable to all except themselves and their flocks. Well do I remember how at each well the first skinful was tasted all round as epicures sip rare wines. Great was the joy if it was pronounced moya helwa, "sweet water;" but if the Bedouins said moosh tayib, "not good," we might be sure it was a solution of Epsom salts.'

The desert now traversed by Skene was composed of coarse sand, abounding in some places with shells, pebbles, and a species of salt. In some parts the soil was shifting, and so soft that the feet—even of his camel—sank into it at every step; at others it was hard as beaten ground. Here and there grew a few patches of prickly plants, such as he remembered to have seen in botanic gardens at home, with small hillocks of drifted sand gathered round them; and as he rode on he felt as if he had about him the awful sensations of vastness, silence, and the sublimity of a calm and waveless ocean—but an ocean of sand, arid, and gloomy, dispiriting and suggestive of death—but to the European only; as the Bedouins, whose native soil it is, are, beyond all other nations and races, gay and cheerful.

During August and September the winds in Egypt retain a northerly direction, and the weather is generally moderate; but Malcolm Skene was in the desert now, and under the peculiar influences of that peculiar region.

Then at times is to be encountered the mirage, or Spirit of the Desert, as the Arabs call it, when the eyes of the wanderer there are deluded by the seeming motion of distant waves; of tall and graceful palms tossing feathery leaves in the distance, when only the sun-scorched sand is lying, mocking him with the false show of what his soul longs for, and his overheated brain depicts in glowing colours.

Riding mechanically on—uncomfortably, too, all unused as he was to the strange ambling action of a camel—oppressed by thirst which he could see no means of quenching, and knowing not when he might be able to do so—oppressed, too, by the glare of a cloudless sun growing hotter and hotter—more mighty than ever it seemed to be before—Malcolm Skene was soon to become conscious that the sense of vision was not the only one by which the mysterious desert mocks its sojourner with fantastic tricks; and once he became sensible of that strange and bewildering phenomena referred to by the author of 'Eothen' in his experiences of Eastern travel.

He seemed, overpowered by the heat, to fall slowly asleep—was it for moments or minutes?—he knew not; but he seemed also to be suddenly awakened by the familiar but far-off sounds of drums beating, to the wailing of a bagpipe playing 'The March of Lochiel,' as he had often heard it played by the Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders, in the citadel of Cairo.

He started and listened, his first idea being naturally that he was partly under the power of a dream; but it seemed as if minutes passed ere these sounds, in steady marching cadence, became fainter and then died away.

Utterly bewildered, he was quite awake now. Under the same influence, and in the same place, it was the bells of his native village that were heard by the writer referred to, and who says: 'I attribute the effect to the great heat of the sun, the perfect dryness of the clear air through which I moved, and the deep stillness of all around me. It seemed to me that these causes, by occasioning a great tension and susceptibility of the hearing organs, rendered them liable to tingle under the passing touch of some new memory that must have swept across my brain in a moment of sleep.'

And so doubtless it was with Malcolm Skene, who, sunk in thought and lassitude, was pondering deeply over the strange dream—if dream it was—when he was roused by the voice of Hassan Abdullah, as it amounted to something like a shriek.

'The Zobisha—the Zobisha!' he exclaimed, with a terror that was too genuine to be affected in any way.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

ALONE!

It was about noon, now, and with a start, roused from his day-dream and half-apathy, Malcolm Skene looked about him and saw that he had then to face one of the most appalling, yet sublime, sights of the desert—a sand-storm—at that season when the Egyptian winds approach the Southern tropic, and they are more variable and tempestuous than during any other season of the year—a state in which they remain till February.

Distant about two miles, he suddenly saw the Zobisha, as Hassan called it—several lofty pillars of sand travelling over the waste with wondrous swiftness. The tallest was vertical, the others seemed to lean towards it, and, at the bases of all, the sand rose as if lashed by a whirlwind into a raging sea, amid which tough mimosa bushes were uprooted and swept away like feathers.

The whirlwind subsided, but the mighty cloud of sand and small pebbles which it had raised high in the darkened heavens, almost to the zenith, continued to tower before the two sojourners in the desert for more than an hour—purple, dun, and yellow in hue at times, and anon all blended together.

Brave though he was, a nameless dread such as he had never felt before possessed the soul of Skene at a sight so unusual and terrific; and there flashed upon his mind the recollection of his letter to Hester, and how true his presentiment seemed to be proving now, for he felt on the verge of suffocation.

Hassan Abdullah, who in his prayers usually sighed for the Paradise of the Prophet, with his seventy houris awaiting him in their couches of hollow pearl, the fruits of the Tree of Toaba, and springs of unlimited lemonade, now prayed only for his own safety, while both their camels forgot their usual docility, and became well nigh unmanageable with terror.

The air was full of impalpable dust. To avoid suffocation or blindness therefrom, Skene dismounted, tied his gauze pugaree tightly over his face, and placing his camel between him and the skirt of the blast, which now developed into a wind-storm, sweeping the column of sand with wondrous speed before it, stooped his head close to the saddle and held on to a stirrup-leather.

On came the wind-storm, and before he had time to think, to express wonder to Hassan as to what it could be, the tornado swept over the desert, carrying before it mimosa bushes and cacti, clouds of shining pebbles, the withered fragments of an old gum-tree, and the white bones of a dead camel.

How his animal withstood the sharp and sweeping blast that darkened all around them, Malcolm Skene knew not; but he found his hands torn from the stirrup-leather, and himself flung furiously and helplessly amid the sand, which half covered him.

After a time, gasping, with his throat, nostrils, and ears full of dust, he struggled to his feet and looked around him, and saw, already far distant, the sand-cloud borne away by the mighty wind, then in its wild career to some other quarter of the desert.

Above him the sky was again cloudless; the air all still and clear; the awful and angry rush of the wind-storm was past.

But where was Hassan Abdullah?

A speck vanishing away in the far distance showed but too plainly where he had gone with all the speed his camel could achieve—a natural swiftness now accelerated by the extremity of fear; and in another minute even that moving speck disappeared, and Malcolm Skene found himself alone—guideless and ignorant of which way to turn his steps in the appalling solitude of the desert.

What was he to do now?

Follow in the route Hassan had taken, and which that wily personage no doubt knew led to some haunt of men, or abode of such civilization as existed there?

Even that he could not do. The horizon showed no point to indicate where the speck he knew to be Hassan and his camel had vanished.

Malcolm's alarm for the future exceeded his just anger and indignation for the present at this sudden and unexpected desertion; but action of some kind became necessary, and though apparently he could not be worse off than where he was, every step he took might be leading further from the path he should pursue to Dayr-el-Syrian—further from a well or succour, and nearer to 'dusty death.'

After glancing at the trappings of his camel, he remounted and rode forward slowly, fain to suck for a moment even a hot pebble of the desert in hope to produce a little moisture in his mouth, while consulting a small pocket map he possessed.

If Hassan had not misled him wilfully, and they had not overshot the proper distance, to judge by the position of the sun, he supposed that Dayr-el-Syrian, where the Amir-Ali's command was encamped, should be somewhere on his right; but, if so, ere this he should have come to the sequestered Macarius Convent—so called from St. Macarius the Elder, of Egypt, a shepherd of the fourth century, who (so runs the story) dwelt for sixty years in the desert; but of that edifice he saw no sign or vestige, and he saw, by the same map, that if he had passed it and gone through the extreme end of the Wady Faregh, then before him must lie the 'Petrified Forest,' of which he knew nothing, and of which he had never heard before, lying apparently more than a hundred miles westward of Cairo—a distance which it seemed almost incredible he had so nearly travelled, and the very name of which was suggestive of something of horror and dismay.

Again and again, with hollow and haggard eyes, he swept the desert through his field-glass, seeking to note a bush or tree that might indicate where a fountain lay; but in vain, and the pangs of thirst increased till they became gnawing and maddening.

He would certainly die soon!

More than once he looked, too, in the desperate hope of seeing Abdullah returning; but equally in vain.

As he rode on under the scorching sun—scorching even while setting—with his head nodding on his breast through weakness, there came before him day-dreams of runnels of gushing water—their very sound seemed to be in his ears—of 'a wee burnie wimpling under the lang yellow broom,' in the shady woods of Dunnimarle, and the rustle of their leaves seemed overhead!

The poor old mother there, to whom he was as the apple of her eye—Hester too—would never know of all he endured and would have to endure inexorably till the bitter end came; and just then, more than even his mother, dove-eyed Hester Maule seemed all the world to him!

Well—'Time and the hour run through the roughest day.'

With that appreciation of trifles peculiar to us all in moments of dire perplexity or intense excitement, he was remarking the vast length of shadow thrown across the level waste, by the light of the now nearly level sun—the shadow of himself and his camel—when a sudden acceleration in the speed of the latter attracted his attention; it began to glide over the desert sand more swiftly than ever, guided by some instinct implanted in it by nature, and in a few minutes it brought him to a little spot of green—an oasis—amid which, fenced round by stones and large pebbles, lay a pool of water!

'A well—a well—water—water at last!' exclaimed Skene with a prayer on his lips, as he threw himself beside it. Forgetting thoughts of all and everything, past and future, in the mingled agony and joy of the present, he crawled towards it on hands and knees, tossed aside his tropical helmet and drank of it deeply, thirstily, greedily, laving his face and hands in it often, and he was not sure that his tears did not mingle with the water as he did so—tears of gratitude.

By nature and its physical formation, less athirst than his rider, the camel drank of the pool too, but scantily. Skene then filled his water-bottle with the precious liquid, as if he feared the well might dry up, even as he watched it; and then (after tethering his camel) he stretched himself beside it, and, utterly worn out by all he had undergone in mind and body, fell into a deep and dreamless slumber, undisturbed alike by flies or mosquitoes.

How long he slept thus he knew not, but day had not broken, and the waning moon was shining brightly when he awoke. He was already too much of a soldier to feel surprise on awaking in a strange bed or place; but some of his surroundings there were sufficiently strange to startle him into instant wakefulness and activity.

'It is the Frenchi—the Infidel!' he heard the voice of Hassan exclaim, and he found himself surrounded by a crowd of armed Arabs, foremost among whom stood Pietro Girolamo—the rascally Girolamo of Cairo, who, having made even that city too hot to hold him, had, for the time, sought refuge with the denizens of the desert.

Partly clad and partly nude, with plaited hair, forms of bronze colour, their teeth and eyes gleaming bright as the swords and spears with which they were armed, Malcolm Skene saw some twenty or more Soudanese warriors, on foot or camel-back, around him, and gave himself up for lost indeed, as his sword and revolver were immediately torn from him.

Uttering a yell, Girolamo was rushing upon him with upraised knife, when he was roughly thrust back by a tall and towering Arab, who dealt him a sharp blow with the butt-end of his Remington rifle—so much as to say, 'I command here.'

Clearly seen and defined in the light of a moon which was silvery, yet brilliant as that of day, Skene saw before him in this personage an Arab of the Arabs.

His bronzed face was nearly black by nature and exposure to the scorching tropical sun. His arms, legs, and neck were bare, and their muscles stood forth like whipcord. His nose was somewhat hawk-like; his eyes were keen as those of a mountain eagle, and his shark-like teeth were white as ivory, in contrast to the skin of his leathern visage.

His hair, which flowed under a steel cap furnished with a nasal bar, was black as night, and shone with an unguent made from crocodile fat by the fishers of Dongola; and save for his shirt of Dharfour steel and Mahdi tunic and trousers, he looked like a mummy of the Pharaohs resuscitated and inspired by a devil.

His arms were a long cross-hilted sword, a dagger, and a Remington rifle.

Such was the Sheikh Moussa Abu Hagil, kinsman of Zebehr Pasha—like Zebehr, almost the last of the great slave-dealers—and whose prisoner Malcolm Skene now found himself—whether for good or for evil, he could not foresee; but his heart too painfully foreboded the latter!

'Sheikh,' said he, 'you will consider me as a prisoner of war, I trust?'

'We shall see—there are things that are as bad as death, and yet are not death,' was the grim and enigmatical reply of Moussa Abu Hagil, which Skene knew referred to torture or mutilation, by having his hands struck off, like those of some prisoners he had seen.

For many a day after, the friends of Malcolm Skene searched the public prints in vain for further tidings of him than we have given three chapters back.

Applications to the War Office and telegrams to headquarters at Cairo were alike unavailing, and received only the same cold, stereotyped answer—that nothing was known of the fate of Captain Malcolm Skene but what the news papers contained.

His supposed fate and story were deemed as parallel with the Palmer tragedy on the shore of the Red Sea; but more especially with that of his countryman, Captain Gordon, an enthusiastic soldier, who, missing Colonel Burnaby's party which he was to accompany with the desert column, perished in the wilderness, far from the Gakdul track—but whether at the hands of the Arabs, or by the horrors of thirst, was never known.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

THE FIRST QUARREL.

In his anxiety to leave Earlshaugh, Roland writhed under his convalescence, thus retarding in no small degree his complete recovery, and keeping him chained to a sofa in his sitting-room, when otherwise he might have been abroad in the grounds, though the brown foliage and the falling leaves, with the piping of the autumn winds, were not calculated much to raise the spirits of the ailing.

The partridges had become wild; the pheasants were still in splendid order, and cub-hunting was beginning in those districts where it was in vogue; but no one in Earlshaugh House thought of any of these, yet cub-hunting, as an earnest of the coming season, had been one of Roland Lindsay's delights.

However, he had other more serious and bitter things to think of now; and for cub-hunting or fox-hunting, never again would he set out from Earlshaugh and feel the joyous enthusiasm roused by seeing the hounds 'feathering' down a furrowed field with all their heads in the air, or find himself crossing the fertile and breezy Howe of Fife, from meadow to meadow, and field to field, over burns, hedges, and five-foot drystone dykes, then standing erect in his stirrups and galloping as if for life after the streaming pack, as they swept over 'the Muirs of Fife' which merge in the rich and extensive plains of the famous East Neuk.

Hunt he might elsewhere in the future, but never again where he and his fathers before him had hunted for generations, though Mr. Hawkey Sharpe was then actually doing so, and with horses from 'his sister's' stables at Earlshaugh!

During this period of convalescence and enforced idleness Roland became conscious of a kind of change—subtle and undefinable—in Annot. She—in a spirit of maidenly reserve—was apparently in no hurry for the completion of arrangements about their marriage.

She left all these pro tem. in the hands of 'mamma' in South Belgravia; and the old lady's letters—changed in tone—were full of suggested delays, doubts, and difficulties in finally fixing a period to her daughter's engagement with Roland; the said letters, of course, bearing on the all-important matter of settlements, which—as circumstances now stood at Earlshaugh—he was utterly at a loss how to make without the advice, more than ever, of the family agent, old Mr. M'Wadsett of Thistle Court.

Meanwhile, full of themselves and their own affairs, and of their marriage, which was now fixed for an early day, and before Jack Elliot's return to Egypt, Maude and the latter were less observant than Hester of what transpired at Earlshaugh during Roland's convalescence.

Attended by old Buckle, Annot had gone to see the hounds throw off, and in following the field for some little way contrived to lose her venerable groom, whom no doubt she deemed a bore; and while he was searching for her hopelessly over a Fifeshire muir she came home to one of the park gates attended by a gentleman in hunting costume, with whom she seemed on pretty intimate terms—a circumstance which, when mentioned, she laughingly explained away.

But at a subsequent period she was seen by Maude and Hester riding in the park with one supposed to be the same stranger, but at a considerable distance.

The two girls could see that the pair were going slowly together—perhaps their cattle were tired, but, as Maude said, that was no reason why they should ride so near each other that his right hand could rest on her saddle-bow.

'Who is he? I don't like this,' said Maude.

But Hester remained silent and full of her own thoughts.

Other meetings between these two became whispered about, rather intangibly, however, and then rumour gave the gentleman the name of Hoyle.

'Hoyle?' thought Hester, and she remembered Annot's confidence about her Belgravian admirer, 'the Detrimental' Bob Hoyle.

Annot blushed deeply and painfully with a suffusion that dyed her snowy neck and face to the temples, and which was some time in passing away, when questioned on this matter by Maude, who she knew mistrusted her, and falteringly she asked:

'How did you learn his name?'

'It dropped from you incidentally when speaking to Elliot.'

'Did it?' said she, with a pallid lip.

'Yes, when hunting, at a house in the neighbourhood.'

'I—I know no one—I mean no harm—and Roland cannot ride to hounds just now,' urged Annot, a little piteously, and adopting her child-like manner.

'Then neither should you, Annot.'

'I will do so no more, Maude—and I give you my word,' she added emphatically, and with an air of perfect candour, 'that I shall never again see Mr. Hoyle!'

Then Maude kissed her, but, as she did so, it scarcely required so close an observer as Hester to detect the actual dislike—all sweet and lovely as her face was—that lurked under her cousin's affected cordiality.

But the latter's indignation returned when the pledge was broken.

Deeming all this most unfair to Roland, his sunny-haired sister consulted with Hester, but that young lady nervously declined to involve herself in the matter, though Roland nearly took the initiative one day (when Hester was arranging some fresh flowers in his room) with reference to Annot's now frequent absences and seeming neglect of him.

'Does the dear girl shrink from me, Hester,' said he, 'because I am pale and thin—wasted and feeble—after that cursed accident?'

'Surely not, Roland!'

'It seems very like it, by Jove!' he grumbled almost to himself.

In the dark violet eyes of Hester there shone at that moment, as she bent over the flower-vases, a strange light—the light that is born of mingled anger and love.

Maude thought it very strange that in all reports of the meets, hunting and county packs, etc., the name of Mr. Hoyle never appeared among others, nor were her suspicions allayed by the idea of Jack Elliot, that 'he was probably a duffer whose name was not worth mentioning.'

But gossip was busy, and Roland's loving and tender sister's complaints of Annot seemed to become the echo of his own secret and growing thoughts, which rose unpleasantly now on Annot's protracted absences from his society, and a new and undefinable something in her manner that, in short, he did not like.

The half-uttered hints of Maude—uttered painfully and reluctantly, trembling lest she should become a mischief-maker—stung him deeply, more deeply than he cared to admit.

'What has Annot done now?' he asked on one occasion, tossing on his sofa and flinging away a half-smoked cigar. 'It seems to me that if a woman is popular with our sex she becomes intensely the reverse with her own.'

'Roland,' urged Maude, 'you are unnecessarily severe, on me at least.'

'Well—perhaps the atmosphere of this place is corrupting her; I don't wonder if it is so; we live here in one of deceit,' said he bitterly. 'Poor little Maude,' he added more gently, 'home is no longer home to you now.'

'I shall soon have another,' said Maude, with brightness dancing in her eyes of forget-me-not blue.

'Bui I must have this matter out with Annot—ask her to come to me.'

And when Annot came, with all her strange and flower-like fairness of colour and willowy grace, how fragile, soft, and petite she looked, with her minute little face and wealth of golden hair, her bright inquiring eyes, their expression just then having something of alarm mingled with coyness in them!

How could he be angry with her? What was he to say—how to begin?

We say there was alarm in her expression, for she saw near Roland's hand his powerful field-glasses, with which he was in the habit of amusing himself in viewing the far stretch of country extending away to the distant hills. He could also view the park, which was much nearer.

She knew not whom he might have seen there, and the little colour she had died away.

'What is it, Roland?' she asked; 'you wish to speak with me.'

How terrible it is, says someone, to confront direct and apparently frank people! 'To state in precise terms the offences of all those who incur our displeasure would occasion a good deal of humming and hawing, and, it is to be feared, invention on the part of most of us in the course of twelve months. We have wrought ourselves up to the pitch of a very pretty quarrel, and it is dreadfully embarrassing to be called upon to state our grounds for it.'

So it was with Roland. He had worked himself up to a point which he failed just then to sustain, while in her manner there was a curious mixture of the caressing and the defiant; but when she tried some of her infantile and clinging ways, Roland became cold and hard in the expression of his mouth and eyes, though she hastened to adjust the sofa-cushion on which his head reclined.

'You wish to speak with me, Maude said,' remarked Annot, in a low voice, while looking down and somewhat nervously adjusting a flower in her girdle.

Roland did not reply at once. She eyed him furtively, and then laughed.

'I do not understand your mirth,' said he coldly.

'Nor I your gloom, Roland dear; but then you are far from well.'

He sighed, as if deprecating her manner.

'Am I to be scolded, like a naughty child?' she asked.

'You seem to feel that you deserve it.'

'But I won't be scolded—and for what?'

'Acting as you ought not to do.'

'How?'

'Riding to see the hounds throw off, without my knowledge, and escorted only by an old groom, whose place another has taken more than once.'

He paused, loth to say more. His proud soul revolted at the idea of being jealous—vulgarly, grotesquely jealous of anyone; yet he eyed her with pain and anger mingled.

'Oh, you refer to Bob Hoyle—poor Bob! Hester knows about him,' said Annot, after a little pause, in which she grew, if possible, paler, and certainly more confused.

'He is not a visitor here—and yet you have been seen with him in the park and lawn.'

'Yes. Can I be less than polite when he escorted me home from the meet—in the dusk, too?'

'And who the deuce is Bob Hoyle?'

'I have mentioned him to Hester,' replied Annot, still evasively.

'But who is he visiting in this locality?'

'I do not know.'

'Not know—how?'

'Simply because I never asked him.'

'Strange!'

'Not at all, Roland dear, when I think and care so little about him.'

She tried a tiny caress, but he turned from her, embittered and humiliated.

Disappointment, shame, sorrow, and mortification were all gathering in his heart, as doubts of Annot grew there too; and in his then weak and nervous state he actually trembled to pursue a subject so obnoxious. Was it to be the old story;

'Of one that loved, not wisely, but too well;
Of one not easily jealous, but, being wrought,
Perplexed in the extreme.'

A little silence ensued, during which, as he looked upon her in all her fair beauty, so unstable of purpose, and so humble in heart is one who loves truly that he felt inclined to throw himself upon her affection for him, and only beseech her to be careful.

She was—he thought—young, artless, rash, and perhaps knew not how unseemly, especially in a censorious country place, were these mistakes of hers. But her manner repelled him. The half-grown sensation of softness died away, and irritation came instead. So he said bluntly:

'Annot, I tell you plainly that there must be no more of this sort of thing.'

Her usually sweet little lips curled defiantly, and she eyed him inquiringly now.

'Dare you try to make me believe that what you admit is all that has occurred?'

'I do not wish to try and make you believe anything,' she replied sullenly, yet in a broken tone.

'This is worse and worse,' said Roland in a husky voice.

'Are you jealous of him?' she asked, with a laugh that had no mirth in it. 'Surely not; he is but a boy.'

'I am, and shall be, jealous of no one, Annot!'

'He speaks to me; it is not my fault—and is always polite. Do not let us squabble, dearest Roland—I do so hate squabbling,' said she, selecting a white bud from among the flowers at her waist and pinning it in his hole; but Roland's blood was too much up to be propitiated by a white bud, so Annot had recourse to a few tears; but, so far from there being peace between them, matters waxed more unpleasant still.

'Why has this Mr.—ah—Hoyle—as you name him, never called here, nor left even a card?'

'I cannot tell.'

Yet he is an old London friend, and has come almost to the house door!'

'I cannot tell,' repeated Annot.

'Ycu have met him on the skirts of the park?'

'By the merest chance.'

'These chances would seem to have occurred too often,' interrupted Roland, greatly ruffled now, yet feeling sick at heart; 'so let us come to an end!'

'By—by parting?' she asked, with pale lips.

'It is easily done; I am going back to the regiment in a little time, and gossips will soon cease to link my name with yours, when you——'

'How cruel of you, Roland!' she said, and she looked at him entreatingly for a moment with her small hands clasped, and then turned away her face.

'It may be merely flirtation or folly that inspires you; but beware, Annot, how you treat me thus, and remember that lovers' quarrels are not always love renewed.'

He felt and feared that a gulf which might never be bridged over was widening suddenly between them. Had she asked him just then, with all his anger, to kiss her once and forgive her, he would have yielded too probably; but the little beauty, all unlike her usually pliant, soft, and clinging self, held haughtily aloof and said:

'Am I to give you back your ring, and relinquish all that it involves?'

'No, Annot, no, no,' exclaimed Roland, not yet prepared for such a climax.

With an angry sob in her slender throat she tried to twist it off, but in vain; and they regarded each other with a curiously mingled expression which they never forgot—he sorrowfully and indignantly; she saucily and defiantly.

'Have you anything more unpleasant to say to me, Roland?' she asked.

'Only that I begin to wish, Annot—oh, my God—that we had never, never met!'

'Indeed! Good-bye.'

'Good-bye.'

She swept away. What a change—was it witchcraft?—had come ever the once playful, childlike, and winning little Annot! Roland's heart was sick and crushed, and he began to have a growing and unpleasant suspicion that he had made, as he thought, 'a confounded fool of himself.'

'Thank Heaven, Hester! I shall soon have the sea rolling between me and this place,' said he, when, after a time, he told his cousin, the early playmate and sweetheart of other days, the story of this interview and his complaint against Annot. 'Regrets are useless; we cannot change the past; but I have neither the inclination nor the capacity to face all the circumstances that seem to surround me in Earlshaugh now.'

'Why has he addressed me in his distress, and on this subject?' thought Hester almost angrily; 'how can I sympathize with him in the matter? And he comes to me at a time, too, when I know we may be soon parted for ever, and when my thoughts are as full of him as they were in that old time that can return no more.'

Piqued at and disappointed with Annot, a curious and confusing emotion came more than once into the mind of Roland—one described by a Scottish writer as feeling 'that had he not, and had he been, and if he could he might—in line, he thought the medley which many a man thinks when he knows that he loves one, and only one; but under suasion and pressure would find it just possible to yield to other distractions.'

Annot did not afford him many opportunities of recurring to their first quarrel or effacing its memory; and from that hour she kept indignantly and sullenly aloof, as much as she could in courtesy do, from Maude and Hester—to their surprise—spending most of her time in the apartments and society of Mrs. Lindsay.

But once again, in the long shady avenue near the Weird Yett, when Maude was idling there, under the cold blue sky of an October evening, with Jack Elliot—idling in the happiness a girl feels when on the brink of her marriage with the man she loves with all the strength of her warm heart—the man whose voice and the mere touch of whose hand gives joy—she felt that heart turn cold when she detected Annot—her brother's fiancée—bidding a hasty adieu to the stranger before referred to—clad in a red hunting coat, and leading his horse by the bridle.

So a crisis of some kind was surely at hand now!

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

THE CRISIS.

What did, or what could, Annot mean by this studied duplicity and defiance of propriety? thought Maude; but ere she could reflect much on the subject, or consider how to speak to Roland about it, or whether she should simply let him discover more for himself, the crisis referred to in our last chapter came to pass, and the possible 'other distractions' that had occurred, in his irritation, to Roland's mind were forgotten by him then.

Notwithstanding what had passed between them, the charm of Annot's manner, her graceful and piquant ways, impelled or allured him again, and his passionate love for her swelled up at times in his breast. Was he not to make one more effort, or was it too late to win her love again?

Like one who when drowning will cling to a straw, Roland, with all his just indignation at Annot, clung to his faith in her; but they had parted with much apparent coldness; and, as we have said, in that huge old rambling mansion of Earlshaugh, as it was easy for people to avoid each other it they wished to do so, he had not again met her alone.

Thus any explanation was deferred, and, with all his love, he felt painfully that if he once began fully to doubt her and surrendered himself to that idea, all would be lost; and yet he had little cause for confidence now, apparently.

From her own lips again he resolved—however galling to his pride—to hear his fate, of her wishes and of her love, if the latter still was his; and thus he asked her by note to meet him in the library, at a time when they were sure to be undisturbed, as Mrs. Lindsay was usually indisposed at the hour he selected, and Maude, Jack, and Hester would be, he knew, absent riding.

From his own lips Annot had been fully informed of how his father's will was framed, but her ambition went far beyond that of Becky Sharp when the latter thought she would be a good woman on five thousand a year, would not miss a little soup for the poor out of that sum, and could pay everybody when she had it.

Annot, though apparently passive no longer, feigned a desire to continue 'the entanglement,' for such she deemed it—this engagement to Roland, begun at Merlwood. She had a secret gratitude for the information that had come to her in time of his future prospects. She could have continued to love him after a fashion of her own, and perhaps as much as it was in her selfish nature to love anyone; but it must be as proprietor of Earlshaugh, of which she had an overweening desire to be mistress, and, moreover, she never meant to form or face 'a moneyless marriage.'

And now in this meeting with Roland she felt that a crisis in her fate had come; that the sooner it was over and done with the better; and with a power of will beyond what anyone could have conceived a girl so soft and fair, so small in stature and lovely in feature might possess, she kept her appointment; but, without referring even to Lucrezia Borgia, who was a golden-haired little creature, with a feeble and vapid expression of face (as Mrs. Jameson tells us), does not history record how often fair little women have been possessed of iron will and nature?

Annot accorded her soft cheek to Roland's lip so coldly that he scarcely touched it!

Both looked pale, though they stood, when regarding each other, in the red light of the October sunset, that streamed like a crimson flood through a deeply embayed old window near them.

Annot wore a dark dress, and round her slender throat a high ruffle of black lace, which, like the jet drops in her tiny ears, enhanced the marvellous fairness of her skin, as Roland remarked, for even such trifling details failed to escape him in that time of doubt and exceeding misery.

'You have not kept me waiting,' said she with a smile, and as if feeling a dire necessity for saying something.

'Was it likely I should do so, Annot, when I have counted every moment of time since I sent my little note to you?' replied Roland, feeling instinctively from what he saw in her eye and manner that the dreaded time had come!

'How silly—useless I mean, such impatience, when we meet daily somewhere—at meals and so forth!' said she, looking out upon the far expanse of green park, steeped in the hazy sunshine of one of the hot evenings of October.

'Annot,' said Roland impatiently, and striking a heel on the floor as he spoke, 'after what passed between us last—a conversation alike distasteful and painful—I can no longer endure the suspense, the agony your conduct and bearing cause me. Do you really wish all to be at end between us?'

His eyes were bent eagerly upon her face, the muscles of which certainly quivered with emotion—either love or shame, he knew not which—and he took her hands in his, but relinquished them; his own were hot and trembling as if he had an ague, white hers were firm and cold as they were white and beautiful.

'It was a joke—a petulant joke, your proposal to give me back your ring and break our engagement—was it not, darling?' he asked after a brief pause.

'It was no joke,' replied Annot, with still averted eyes, in which, however, there was not a vestige of those sympathetic tears, which, fur effect, she had usually so near the surface on trivial occasions; 'it cost me much to utter the few words I said—but I meant them.'

'You did?'

'Yes—Roland.'

'And that was to be your only reply to my remonstrances?'

'Made as these remonstrances were—yes. You are too exacting, Roland; and—and—' she added with a bluntness that jarred on his ear, 'it is so tiresome being long engaged, mamma says.'

'I am sorry you quote her; but we can end it without an unseemly quarrel, surely.'

She shook her head, and all her hair shone like a golden aureole in the sunlight; and with all his just anger Roland looked at her as if his mind were leaving him.

'In short, mamma also says——'

'Mamma again!—says what?'

'That we are evidently unsuited for each other.'

'When did she discover this? Her letters to me have never breathed a suspicion of it.'

Annot did not reply, but continued to trace the pattern of the carpet with a foot like that of Cinderella.

'When did she adopt this new view?' asked Roland, almost sternly.

'Recently, I suppose.'

'We know our own minds, surely, so what can her capricious ideas matter to us? If you love me, Annot, they can make no difference.'

She only winced a little, and averted her face still more, as if she dared not meet his dark, earnest, and inquiring eyes.

'Speak!' he exclaimed.

'Women change their minds often, it is said—why may not I, by advice?'

'God keep me, Annot! Then the change is with yourself? Has our past, so far as you are concerned, been all duplicity and falsehood?'

'As when last we spoke on this matter, your language is unpleasant, Roland,' said Annot, as if seeking a cause for indignation or complaint.

'Is this a time to mince matters? Surely you loved me?'

'You—you were so fond of me, that I could not help liking you in return, Roland,' said she, trembling and confusedly; 'we were thrown so much together, and—and you see——'

'That I have been befooled!' he interrupted her with bitterness and a gust of anger.

'Do not use such a rough expression,' said she, recovering herself; 'and please don't allow listeners to think we are rehearsing for amateur theatricals.'

For a moment concentrated fury flashed in Roland's dark eyes.

Then he regarded her wistfully again, and his gust of anger gave way to an emotion of infinite tenderness.

'Annot,' he exclaimed, caressing her hands, on which, truth to tell, his hot tears dropped. 'Oh, my darling, tell me that you do not mean all this—that you are not in cruel earnest and oblivious of all the past.'

'I never loved you——'

'Never loved me?' said he hoarsely,

'As you wished to be; it was to serve my own ends—my own purpose that I simulated—then—so hate me if you can!'

'Hate you,' he faltered, utterly crushed and bewildered by her words. His eyes were lurid now, for anger again mingled with love in them. 'Surely this is all some bad dream, from which I must awaken.'

'It is no dream,' said Annot, turning with an unsteady step as if she would pass him; but he barred her way.

'Do you mean that you loved some one else?' he asked.

'Do not ask me.'

'I have the right to do so!'

'No, Roland—you have not.'

'You surely did at one time love me, Annot, or your duplicity is monstrous, till—till this fellow Hoyle came upon the tapis? Was it not so?' he asked, almost piteously, for his moods varied quickly.

'Not quite; and I can't be poor, that is the plain English of it; I can't be a struggling man's wife, as I now know yours must be, as Earlshaugh——'

'Belongs to another, and not to me, you mean?'

She was silent. Selfish though she was to the heart's core, a blush crossed her cheek, a genuine blush of shame at her own blunt openness, and it was but too evident that she had schooled herself for all this—had screwed her courage to the sticking point.

'Then I have only been a cat's-paw, and you have loved, if it is in your nature to love, another all the time?' said Roland hoarsely, as he drew back a pace with something of horror and disgust in his face now.

Almost pitifully did this cruel girl regard his face, which had become ashy gray, the wounded and despairing love he felt for her passing away from his eyes, while his figure, she could not but admit, was straight, handsome, and proud in bearing as ever, when compared with that of the other, who was in her mind now.