'Do you think he loves you as well as I do?' urged Hawkey Sharpe, bending over her. Still she was silent. 'If so, why has he ever left you, even for an hour, to shoot and so forth, as he has often done? Speak, Annot. Surely I may call you Annot now.' Still there was no reply. It seemed as if she was thinking deeply--thinking how best to reply, to play her cards or to temporize; but to what end, when all was over between her and Roland now? 'You _were_ engaged to him?' said Hawkey again, with a little impatience of manner. 'By a chain of circumstances over which I had no control,' replied Annot in a faltering voice; 'in his uncle's house at Merlwood I was----' 'Was--is it ended?' 'Yes--for ever.' 'Thank God for that! Did you think you loved him?' asked Hawkey with a grin. 'I believe that I did--or ought--I was so silly--so simple--so----' 'There--there--I don't want to worry you.' 'But he loves me, I know that,' said Annot in a low voice--true to her vanity still. 'That I can well believe--who could see you and not love you?' said Hawkey gallantly. 'I could never marry a poor man,' said Annot candidly. 'Well--he is poor enough.' 'And live on, eating my heart out in struggles such as some I have seen,' continued Annot as if to herself. 'Though here in Earlshaugh just now, what is he, this fellow Lindsay, but a penniless pretender!' exclaimed Sharpe, fired with animosity against Roland; who thus heard his name, his position, and the dearest secrets of his heart openly canvassed by this presumptuous and low-born fellow, and with Annot too--she who, till lately--but he could not put his thoughts in words--they seemed to choke him; and the whole situation was degrading--maddening! 'Well,' chuckled Sharpe, 'he is out of the running now; and then you and I understand each other so well, my little golden-haired pet! so true it is that "when a woman of the world and a man of the world meet, whatever the circumstances may be, or the surroundings, in a moment there is rapport between them, and all flows along easily." I thought when Lindsay fell into the Cleugh,' he added, with a coarse laugh, 'that he had betaken himself off to something that suited him better than fighting the Arabs. But it is long ere the deil dies--now he is well and whole again, and looks every inch like the Lindsay in the gallery, with the buff coat and a dish-cover on his head, that led a brigade of horse against the English at Dunbar. Well, the old place has done with that brood now; and after Deb, Earlshaugh must be mine--mine--shall be _ours_, Annot, for ever and aye!' The breeze caught the lace of her sleeve, and, lifting it, showed the perfect and lovely contour of her soft white arm, on which Hawkey Sharpe fastened his coarse lips with a fervour there could be no doubting.