Her pretty ways and glittering golden hair, which had misled better men than the wretched Sharpe, were palling even upon him, now; and her studied artlessness had given place to a bearing born of vanity and her own success and ambition, the sequel of which she was yet to learn, but withal she was not yet lady of Earlshaugh. But, as a writer says of a similar character, 'a self-love, that demon who besets alike the learned philosopher with his own pet theories; the statesman with his pet political hobbies; the man of wealth with his own aggrandisement; and the man of toil with his own pet prejudices--that insidious demon had entire hold now of this silly little girl's heart, and closed it to anything higher.' Married now, and safe in position as she thought herself, Annot was no longer the coaxing and cooing little creature she had been to Hawkey Sharpe; and rough and selfish though he was, a flash of her eyes, or a curl of her lip cowed him at times. She treated him as one for whom she was bound to entertain a certain amount of marital affection, but no respect whatever, and when she contrasted him with Roland Lindsay and other men she had known, even poor, weak Bob Hoyle, her manner became one of contempt and, occasionally, disgust. But she had preferred the _couleur d'or_ to the _couleur de rose_ in matrimony, and had now, as Hawkey said, 'to ride the ford as she found it.' 'Men like Roland,' said Annot to Mrs. Lindsay when discussing her whilom lover, 'especially military men, see a good deal of life, and experience teaches them how passing a love affair may be.' 'You mean----' began Mrs. Lindsay, scarcely knowing what to say. 'I mean that he must have played with fire pretty often,' said Annot, laughing, but not pleasantly, 'and will forget me as he must have forgotten others. I suppose our likes and dislikes in this world are based upon the point that somebody likes or dislikes ourselves.' Hawkey Sharpe's debts and demands since his marriage had exhausted the patience if not quite the finances of his sister: and now the bill, erewhile referred to--the racing debt--was falling inexorably due, and how to meet it, or be stigmatised as a 'welsher' on every course in the country, became a source of some anxiety to that gentleman. To meet his other requirements, all the fine timber in the King's Wood was gone--a clean sweep had been made from King James's Thorn to the Joug Tree, that bears an iron collar, in which for centuries the offenders on the domains of Earlshaugh had suffered durance, and the once finely foliaged hill now looked bare and strange; and for angry remarks thereat, Willie Wardlaw, the gardener, and Gavin Fowler, the head gamekeeper, aged dependants on the house of Earlshaugh, as their fathers had been before them, had been summarily dismissed by Mr. Hawkey Sharpe.