'He treats me as a child still!' she thought in anger, and said sharply: 'Well?' 'Shall we go along the river bank and see the trout rising?' 'Why?' 'Well--it is certainly better than doing nothing.' 'But is useless,' said she coldly. 'Why? It is now my turn to ask.' 'Because you know very well, or ought to know, that there are none to be seen after June, and that the mills have ruined angling hereabout.' 'Let us look for ferns, then--there are forty different kinds, I believe, in Roslin Glen.' 'Ferns--how can you be so childish, Roland!' exclaimed the girl with growing pique, as she thought--'If he has aught to say of more interest, surely he can say it here,' and she kept her eyes averted, looking down the wooded glen through which the river brawled, with her heart full of affection and love, which her cousin was singularly slow to see; then furtively she looked at him once or twice, as he lounged on his back, smoking and gazing upward at the patches of blue sky seen through the interlaced branches of the overarching trees. 'Gentleman' was stamped on every feature and in every action of Lindsay, and there was an easy and quiet deliberation in all he did and said that indicated good breeding, and yet he had a bearing in his figure and aspect in his dark face that would have become Millais' 'Black Brunswicker.' Hester Maule is difficult to describe; but if the reader will think of the prettiest girl she or he ever saw, they have a general idea of her attractions. A proud and stately yet most graceful-looking girl, Hester had a lissom figure a trifle over the middle height, hair of the richest and deepest brown, dark violet-coloured and velvety-like eyes with full lids, long lashes, and brows that were black; a dazzling complexion, a beautiful smile when pleased, and hands and feet that showed race and breeding beyond all doubt. Roland was quite aware that Hester was no longer a child, but a girl almost out of her teens, and one that looked older than her years. He had seen her at intervals, and seen how she had grown up and expanded into the handsome girl she had become--one of whom any kinsman might be proud; and with all his seeming indifference and doubt of his true emotions, it was evident now that propinquity might do much; and times there were when he began to feel for her some of that tender interest and admiration which generally form a sure prelude to love. Moreover, they were cousins, and 'there is no denying that cousinship covers a multitude of things within its kindly mantle.' Hester was the only daughter of his maternal uncle, the old General, whose services had won him a K.C.B.--an improvident and somewhat impoverished man, who for years had been a kind of invalid from ailments contracted after the great Indian Mutiny--chiefly from a bullet lodged in his body at Jhansi, when he fought under the famous Sir Hugh Rose--Lord Strathnairn in later years.