Maude only shook her pretty head; but his heart told him too probably _why_, and for a time his conscience smote him. 'Don't you think she was foolish?' asked Maude; 'I certainly told her that I thought so, as Malcolm is such a lovable fellow.' 'And what did she say?' 'Replied, with a feeble laugh, that she meant to die an unappropriated blessing.' 'What is that, Maudie?' 'An old maid.' 'Nonsense--a handsome girl like Hester!' To do the latter justice, she asked herself more than once why had she refused him, and for _what_? Many may deem that Hester acted a foolish part: but her heart was too sore, and still too full of regard for another to find a place in it for the love of Malcolm Skene, though she knew it had been hers in the past, ready to lay at her feet. Steadfast of purpose, she was, in some respects, a remarkable girl, Hester Maule. Roland, her companion in childhood, as we have elsewhere stated, was the one love of her life. 'All of hers upon that die was thrown,' and her heart was not to be caught on the rebound, through pique, pride, soreness, or disappointment. But now that Malcolm was gone, Hester in solitude could not but give a few tears as she thought of his true regard for her; his stately presence, his soft earnestness, and his sad, tender eyes--thought over all that--but for Roland's image--might have been; and of the high compliment Skene's honest and gallant heart had paid her; but all--even could she have wished it otherwise--was over now, and he had gone to that fatal land of battle and disease, where so many found their graves then! Did Roland jest when he asked if Melancholy had marked her for its own? If so, it was a species of wound, and she felt that 'it is only wounds inflicted by those we love whose sting lasts.' Maude and Annot, with the old groom, Johnnie Buckle, as their _Escudero_, had gone for a 'spin' on their pads as far as Kilmany, to visit the Gaules-Den, a deep ravine through which a river runs; Mrs. Lindsay was in the seclusion of her own room, as usual at that time of the day, when she took some kind of drops for her heart, and Hester, left alone to silence and solitude, mentally followed Malcolm Skene in his journey southward. Her hands were folded idly in her lap; a kind of sad listlessness was all over her, and her soft dark eyes were dreamily fixed on vacancy, and seemed to see--if we may say so--visions, while, as on yesternight, the perfume of the lily of the valley, of the stephanotis, and other flowers was floating round her. She thought she might have seen him once again had she gone downstairs at the usual time--but have seen him to what end or purpose, constituted as her mind was then? Better not. In these days it seemed to Hester that there was not one of her actions which she did not repent of before it was half conceived or half acted upon.