'From me--your cousin--Hester?' he asked softly but reproachfully, and paused. Beyond the gift he gave no distinct sign as yet, and it flashed on Hester's mind that with the jewels there was no ring. Could that be an omission? Scarcely. Then, seized by a sudden impulse, he abruptly, yet softly and caressingly, drew her towards him and kissed her more than once. He had often saluted her before at meeting and parting, but always in a cousinly way; but this seemed very different now. Breathless, dazed apparently, the trembling girl pushed him from her, and he gazed at her with some surprise as she said: 'Why did you do that, Roland? It is cruel--unkind of you,' she added, with trembling fingers essaying, but in vain, to unclasp the necklet. 'Cruel and unkind--between us, Hester?' 'Yes,' she said, blushing deeply, and then growing very pale. 'I forgot myself for a moment, dearest Hester, in my fondness of you.' She was trembling very much now, and as he took her hands caressingly within his own, her eyes grew full of tears. 'Hester, you know--you know well,' he began, with a voice that indicated deep emotion. 'Know what, Roland?' said she, trying to withdraw her hands. 'That I love you,' he was about to say, and would no doubt have said, but that Sir Harry most inopportunely came limping heavily in, so Roland was compelled to pause. The few words that might have changed all the story we have to tell were left unuttered, and next moment Hester was gone. 'He does love me!' she thought in the solitude of her own room; 'love me as I love him, and wish to be loved!' Long she pondered over the episode and gazed on his gift ere she retired to rest that night. She hoped in time to bind him to her more closely, for she thought he was a man who would love once in a lifetime with all the strength of a great and noble nature. Sweetly and brightly the girl smiled at her own reflection in the mirror as with deft fingers she coiled up her rich brown hair for the night; while slowly but surely she felt herself, with a new and joyous thrill, to be turning her back upon the past, yet a happy and an innocent past it had been, and that she was standing on the threshold of a new and brighter world of dreams. At last she slept. Roland Lindsay had been on the point of declaring his love, but something--was it Fatality?--withheld him; then the interruption came, and the golden moment passed! Would it ever come again? But a change was at hand, which neither he nor Hester could foresee. CHAPTER VI. ANNOT DRUMMOND. Next morning when Hester, in the most becoming of matutinal costumes, pale rose colour, which so suited her dark hair and complexion, was presiding over the breakfast table, and Sir Harry was about to dip into his newspapers, selecting a letter from a few that lay beside her plate, she said: