'I can scarcely realize it,' said Skene, whose thoughts were not with the birds certainly. 'In a fortnight, I shall be again in my fighting kit and in the land of the Pharaohs.' Ignorant of what had so suddenly transpired, Hester, for whom he looked anxiously and wistfully, was lingering in her room, till the shooting party should have gone forth, unwilling to face Malcolm Skene after the interview of last night, and full of a determination to return at once to Merlwood, to her old life by the wooded Esk, with her silver-haired father, his bubbling hookah, and his Indian reminiscences--oh! how well she knew them all! But Maude, and even the selfish and apparently volatile Annot, regarded the handsome fellow with deep interest, and the lips of the former were white and quivering as she bade him adieu. 'Good-bye, all you fellows;' he exclaimed, when old Buckle came with the trap to the _porte-cochère_. 'Good-bye, Roland and you, Jack--when shall we three meet again? In thunder and all the rest of it, no doubt. Farewell, Miss Lindsay--Maude I may call you just now--bid Hes--, your cousin, adieu for me, and God keep you all till we meet once more--if ever!' he added, under his moustache. Another moment he was gone, and no trace remained of him but the wheel-tracks in the avenue. 'Good-bye--good-bye;' it sounded like a dirge in the air of the warm autumn morning. 'Poor Malcolm--he is the king of good fellows,' said Roland to his friends who were gathered in the entrance-hall, just as Hester Maule, pale as a lily, after vainly practising a little the art of smiling and looking happy in her mirror, appeared at the foot of the staircase, and heard what had occurred. 'Yes--Skene has just gone, poor fellow. Should you not have liked to have bade him farewell?' 'Yes--of course,' said Hester, with colourless lips; but thought, 'it is better not--better not _now_.' 'His last message was to _you_,' whispered Maude. 'Well--it will be my turn next, and yours too, Elliot,' said Roland as he lit a cigarette. 'It but reminds me of Wolfe's song,' added Elliot cheerily, as he sang in a tragic-comic way-- 'Let mirth and wine abound. The trumpets sound, And the colours flying are, my boys! 'Tis he, you, or I, Whose business is to die; Then why should we be melancholy, boys, Whose business is to die?' Come along--here are the dogs.' 'Skene's departure seems to have upset you girls,' said Roland, 'and now, Hester, my dear cousin,' he added in a blundering way, 'you look as pale as if Melancholy had marked you for her own.' 'Don't jest, Roland,' said Maude; 'Malcolm Skene looks like one who has a history behind him, and a strange destiny before him. Only think, Roland,' she added in a whisper, as she drew her brother aside; 'he proposed to Hester in the conservatory last night!' 'And--and she----' 'Refused him.' 'Why?'