While Malcolm Skene was counting the days wearily and anxiously, and, in common parlance, 'eating his heart out,' in that distant zereba, near the Third Cataract of the Nile, time and events did not stand still with some of his friends elsewhere; among these certainly were Roland Lindsay and Hester Maule, and the latter did indeed mourn for the hard and unknown fate of one whose love she never sought but surely won. Roland did not start immediately for Egypt after turning his back in mortification and disgust on Earlshaugh, but for a brief time took up his quarters at the United Service Club in Edinburgh with Jack Elliot. The speedy marriage of the latter and Maude, who had gone to Merlwood with Hester, was then on the tapis, and fully occupied the attention of all concerned. It was impossible for anything like love to exist long, after the rude shock--the terrible awakening--Roland had received; yet ever and anon he found himself rehearsing with intense bitterness of spirit the memory of scenes and passages between himself and Annot--drivelling scenes he deemed them now! How had he said to her more than once: 'My darling--my darling! Be true to me; the day when I cease to believe in you will kill me--you are such a child--you know so little of the world, sweet one!' 'So little of the world--a child!' thought he. 'What an ass I was! I am not killed by it, and she has been false as the devil. How came I to say things that seemed so prophetic?' Thus, as he thought over all the love and blind adoration he had lavished on her, he felt only rage and sickness at his own folly. He saw it all now, when it was too late--too late! What human heart has not learned the bitterness of these two bitter words, in many ways, through life? Yet, tantalizingly, she would come before him in dreams, and thus recall him to the words of an old sonnet-- 'Half pleading and half petulant she stands; Her golden hair falls rippling on my hands; Her words are whispered in their old sweet tone. But neither word nor smile can move me now-- There is an unseen shadow on her brow. I cannot love, because all trust is gone!' It was a very awkward subject for Hester to approach, yet, seeing him so moody, so silent and trist, when first again he came to Merlwood, she said to him timidly and softly: 'Forget the past, Roland. She made no real impression on your heart, but affected your imagination only.' And now he began to think that such was indeed the case; while to Maude it seemed strange indeed that Annot Drummond should be at Earlshaugh, posing as the future mistress thereof, while she and her disinherited brother were a species of outcasts therefrom.