'One no doubt derived from the gipsies, when two used one horn spoon. Annot, with all her apparent amiable imbecility, is a remarkably acute young woman.' 'She is--and does credit to my taste, Deb.' 'One whom it is impossible to dislike, I admit.' 'Of course.' 'And also quite impossible to love.' 'Oh, come now, poor Annot!' said Hawkey, with a kind of mock deprecation; and then to gain favour he said, 'I do wish, dear Deb, that you would see the doctor again--about yourself.' 'I have seen him; the old story, he can do nothing but order me to avoid all agitation, yet you have not given me much chance of that lately.' 'But just once again, Deb--about this money----' 'Another word on the subject and we part for ever!' she exclaimed, and giving him a glance--stony as the stare of Medusa--one such as he had never before seen in her small, keen, and steely-gray eyes, she flung away and left him. He gnashed his teeth, smashed his pipe on the floor, then lit a huge regalia to soothe his susceptibilities, and thought about _how_ the money was to be raised. He knew his sister had thousands idle in the bank, and have it he should at all hazards! He had meant, too, if successful, and he found her pliable, to have spoken to her again about making her will; but certainly the present did not seem a favourable occasion to do so. 'Deb will be getting her palpitation of the heart, nervous attacks, low spirits, and the devil only knows all what more, on the head of this!' he muttered with a malediction. Hawkey had watched her retire through the deep old doorway (under the lintel of which tall Cardinal Beatoun had whilom stooped his head) and disappear along the stately corridor beyond. Then he dropped into an easy-chair--stirred the fire restlessly and impatiently, and drained his glass, only to refill it--his face the while fraught with rage and mischief. He drew a letter or two from a drawer--they were from his sister--and he proceeded to study her signature with much artistic acumen and curiosity. 'Needs must when the devil drives!' said he, grinding his teeth and biting his spiky nails; 'I have done it--and that she'll know in time!' Done what? That the reader will know in time too. CHAPTER LIV. THE LONG-SUSPENDED SWORD. Sorrow is said to make people sometimes, to a certain extent, selfish; thus sorrow in her own little secluded home was, ere long, to render Hester, for a space at least, less thoughtful of the grief which affected her cousin Maude. Hester was somewhat changed, and knew within herself that it was so. She found that her daily thoughts ran more anxiously and tenderly upon her father, and about his fast-failing health, than on any other subject now. She lost even a naturally feminine interest in her own beauty. Who was there to care for it? she thought.