As he did so he felt her thrill beneath the touch of his lips, and though his nonchalant air of indifference was gone just then he said nothing more, but he thought: 'Is not this playing with fire?' CHAPTER V. THE COUSINS. Some days passed on after the little episode at the piano, and the intercourse between the cousins, if tender and alluring, was still somewhat strange, undecided, and doubtful--save in the recesses of Hester's heart. Rambling together, as in days past, among the familiar and beautiful sylvan scenery around Merlwood, times there certainly were, when eye met eye with an expression that told its own story, and each seemed to feel that their silence covered a deeper feeling than words could express, and that though the latter were not forthcoming as yet, their hearts and lives might soon be filled by a great joy, on the part of the untutored girl especially. At others, Roland, though not quite past seven-and-twenty, had, of course, seen too much of the world and of life, in and out of garrison, to be a hot-headed and reckless lover, or to rush into a position which left him no safe or honourable line of retreat. His passions were strong, but tempered by experience and quite under his control; and he was inclined to be somewhat of a casuist. 'Was this brilliant and attractive companion,' he sometimes asked himself, 'the same little girl who had been his playmate in the past, who had so often faded out of his boyish existence amid other scenes and places? And now did she really care for him in _that_ way after all?' His manner was kind and affectionate to her, but playful, and while lacking pointed tenderness, there was--she thought--something forced about it at times. When this suspicion occurred, her pride took the alarm. Could it be that she had insensibly allowed her heart to slip out of her own keeping into that of one from whom no genuine word of love had come to her? Then the fear of this would sting Hester to the soul, and make her at times--even after the _[oe]illades_ and eloquent silences referred to--cold and reserved; and old Sir Harry, who, for many reasons, monetary and otherwise, apart from a sincere and fatherly regard for his only nephew, would have been rejoiced to have him as a son-in-law, would mutter to himself: 'Do they know their own minds, these two young fools?' He often thought sadly and seriously of Hester's future, for he had been an improvident man; his funds and his pensions passed away with himself; thus it was with very unalloyed delight that he watched the pair together again as in the days of their childhood, and he wove many a castle in the air; but they all assumed the form of a certain turreted mansion in the East Neuk of Fife. Then he would add to Hester's annoyance by saying to her in a caressing and blundering way: