'I don't mean a fancy--a real love!' 'Annot?' 'Did you ever ask a girl to marry you?' 'Never--never! My darling--my pet--my little fairy--you alone have crept into my heart and made it all your own! With all their real length, how short have seemed the August days since you came hither, Annot!--how brief and swift the hours we spend together! But--but--you must say nothing of all this, our hopes and our future, to Hester.' 'No--oh no; I love you too fondly to have a confidant in the world.' 'I must seal your lips, dearest Annot,' interrupted Roland. Then came a pause and many caresses and many endearing names, as they slipped softly away towards the lighted windows of the villa, and left the agonized and startled listener free--for startled she was, and, curiously enough, for all she had seen and suspected, she was scarcely prepared for such a scene as this; and every caress she saw had seemed to sink like a hot poniard into her heart, as she stole away to her room, and strove to think, as one might in a dream. Vague and numb was the first impression the episode made upon her, till feverish jealousy and mortification made her clasp and wring her hot, dry hands, and gnaw her nether lip, while burning tears rolled down her cheeks, with the assurance that all was over now! 'After all--he meant nothing--nothing after all!' she muttered; 'why did you make me love you so, Roland!' The man she had loved--who fully, as far as manner and almost words went, had answered her love for him, had meant nothing, but _pour passer le temps_. He had been, he thought perhaps, only kind, friendly, cousinly, while she--great Heavens!--had been on the point of laying her affectionate heart at his feet. Oh, what humiliation was hers! In explanation of the lateness of their return, they had been a long walk, the loiterers said, away below Roslin Chapel; but said nothing of what the walk had somewhat suddenly evolved. When the gloaming was considerably advanced, and, though a ruddy sunset lingered in the north-west, there was no moon in the sky, where the evening star shone brilliantly, they had wandered down the river-side--its current flowing like molten silver when seen between and under the dark, overshadowing, and weird-like trees--to where, on the summit of its high and grassy knoll, the beautiful chapel of Roslin towered up between them and the sky-line--the solemn scene, as Scott has preserved it, of one of the most thrilling and poetical of all family presages of death and war; a legend deduced from the tomb-fires of the Norsemen, and, doubtless, transplanted from our stormy Northern Isles to the sylvan valley of the Esk by that old Prince of Orkney, whose bride, Rosabelle, perished, and when the chapel seemed filled with flame. 'O'er Roslin all that dreary night, A wondrous blaze was seen to gleam! 'Twas broader than the watchfire's light, And redder than the bright moonbeam.