After shooting in the morning and forenoon, as there were three sets of lovers among the party at Earlshaugh, much of the time was spent in riding, driving, and rambling about the grounds and their vicinity, while Roland found a congenial task in teaching Annot to ride, as he had procured a most suitable pad for her, by the aid of old Johnnie Buckle, at the Cupar Tuesday Fair; and just then nothing seemed to exist for him but Annot's white soft cheek, her golden hair, and the graceful little figure that made all other women look, to his eyes, angular and peculiar; and then truly he felt that 'there are days on which heaven opens to us all, though to many of us next day it shuts again.' And shut indeed it seemed to Malcolm Skene, who followed Hester like her shadow, and whose eyes often wore a tender and wistful intensity as he gazed upon her soft dark ones without winning one responsive glance; and he would seek to lure her into the subject that was nearest his own heart--his great love for her--while with the rest, but always somewhat apart, they would ramble on by the silvery birches in the Fairy's Den, by the King's Wood, with its great old oaks and heaven-high Scottish firs that towered against the blue sky; in the leafy dingles where the white-tailed rabbits skurried out of their sandy holes, where the birds twittered overhead, the black gleds soared skyward in the welkin, the dun deer started from the rustling bracken and underwood, and so on to where the woods grew more open, and there came distant glimpses of the German Sea or perhaps of the Firth of Tay, rippling in the glory of the evening sun as it set beyond the Sidlaw Hills. Unlike Maude and Elliot, who took their assured regard with less demonstration, Roland and Annot Drummond--owing doubtless to the impressible and effusive nature of the latter young lady--were so much together, everywhere and every way, as to provoke a smile among their friends and an emotion of amusement, which certainly Hester Maule did not share. 'Why did I come here after all?' she often asked of herself, as her mind harked back to old days and dreams. 'I could have declined that woman, old Deborah's invitation, and Roland's too. Save papa's suspicions, there was no compulsion upon me. Fool that I have been to come--yet,' she would add with a bitter smile, 'I shall not wear my heart on my sleeve.' Thus she seemed to lead the van in every proposed scheme for amusement, and the attentions of her old admirer, Malcolm Skene, if they failed to win, at least pleased and soothed her; and, watching her sometimes, Roland would think-- 'Well, after all, I am glad to see her so happy.'