'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.