Since the Laird's death, Hawkey Sharpe had loved well to pose as a man of influence and importance--more than all, as the probable and future proprietor of Earlshaugh; and liked to imagine how all would look up to him then and seek his favourable notice. His sister's secret and deadly ailment was to him a constant source of anxiety that was _not_ borne of affection; he dreaded, also, her 'kirk proclivities,' and the influence possessed over her 'by that old caterpillar, the minister.' 'I'll have to look sharp now after my own interests--old Deb is getting rather long in the tooth for me,' he would think at times. Treated as she had been by Maude and others of the family since her marriage, she could not have a very kindly feeling to the Lindsay line. 'Blood is warmer than water,' says our Scottish proverb; and Hawkey was the only kinsman she had in the world that she knew of; but, a scapegrace, a spendthrift, and toady to herself, as she knew him to be, some of her sympathies were just then rather more with the disinherited Roland Lindsay than Mr. Hawkey Sharpe would have relished, had he in the least suspected such a thing. And Annot's thoughts on reviewing her new position were rather of a mingled sort, and something of this kind: 'I am going to marry this man Hawkey Sharpe. Odious man! I cannot pretend, even to myself, to be much in love with him--if at all; yet I am going to marry him--and why? Because I love the splendid patrimony that, in time, will become his; this beautiful estate, this grand old house, the parure of family diamonds, and the settlements that must be made upon me. I always meant to marry the first wealthy man who asked me, and now I am only true to my creed--the creed mamma taught me. Can anyone blame me for that? Of course I would rather a thousand times have had poor Roland with Earlshaugh, because he is a man that any woman might love and be proud of; but failing him, I must put up with the person and name of--Hawkey Sharpe. Can anyone think it very wicked that I--a penniless little creature--should prefer such a well-feathered nest as this to that gloomy and small poky house in South Belgravia, with its one drab of a servant, cold meat, shabby clothes, and all its sordid concomitants? No; give me the ease, the prosperity, the luxury, and the flesh-pots of Earlshaugh, with its manor and lands, wood, hill, and field.' But it was a considerable relief to her mind--shamelessly selfish though she was--when within twenty-four hours after Roland's departure her two cousins and Jack Elliot (whose faces she cared never to see again) also left for the capital, and she remained behind the guest of--Mrs. Lindsay. 'As for Roland,' Annot thought, '_he_ will get over our little affair easily. He loved me, no doubt, but love we know to be only a parenthesis in the lives of most men.' CHAPTER XLI. THE CAPTIVE.