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.