'Good-night, Hester dear,' said he, still lingering. 'Adieu, Annot. I shall be off to-morrow by gunfire, as we say in barracks, when all are asleep in Merlwood.' 'Good-night.' And so they parted, but not finally. Early though the hour next day, Hester was too active by habit, too much of a housewife, and too kind of heart to permit him to depart without being down betimes to give him a cup of coffee and to see him ere he went, despite his laboured apologies. How fresh and bright Hester seemed in her white morning dress, with all its frills--fresh from her bath, and both clear-skinned and fair, as only a dark-haired and dark-eyed girl usually looks at such a time, requiring none of that powdering and other odious process now known as 'making up.' Annot's low curtains remained closely drawn, and there was no sign of that young lady, for the sun was barely over the woods of Hawthornden. Hester tendered her soft cheek for Roland's farewell salute, and carried it bravely off--better even than he did, as with a wave of the hand he was driven away. He was gone--_gone_, and had ceased to be hers. Lingeringly the girl looked around her. To Hester every flower and shrub in the garden seemed to have a voice and say so. Every inanimate object told her so again and again. Fragments of his cigar lay about the gravel walks; there yet swung his hammock between the trees; and there was almost no task she could attempt now that was not associated with him, and, worse than all, with Annot Drummond. Long did Hester sit on a garden sofa, as the former could see from her window, while brushing out her marvellous hair--sit with cold and locked hands and pathetic eyes, motionless and miserable, as she listened like one in a dream to the singing of the birds, the humming of the bees around her, and the pleasant murmur of her native Esk. The fair and beautiful girl saw this and knew the cause thereof; yet in her great love and passion, if not in her artful design, she was pitiless! She was too well trained, she thought, by her mother to be otherwise. Taught from her cradle to look upon wealth, and all that wealth could obtain, as the chief object of life, she had from the days of her short frocks and plaited hair, heard only of 'excellent matches,' of 'moneyed marriages,' and 'eligible men,' and so her mind was framed in another world from Hester's. Men, thought the latter, cared little for a love that was easily won, she had read. Perhaps Roland valued hers lightly thus. Well, she would assert herself--might even go to Earlshaugh, meet him beneath his own roof, and in his own home show herself that she was heart-whole, could she but act the part her innate pride suggested.