Nor was it only the guardianship--there was the money too! Provision made for all of them by name--and nothing for her! She had made Sarah show her a copy of the will--she knew! Nothing indeed for any of them--the girls at least--till Lady Fox-Wilton's death, or till they married; but nothing for _her_, under any circumstances. "Well, why should there be?" Sarah had said. "You know you'll have Aunt Alice's money. _She_ won't leave a penny to us." All very well! The money didn't matter! But to be singled out and held up to scorn by your own father! A flood of bitterness surged in the girl's heart. And then they expected her to be a meek and obedient drudge to her mother and her elder sisters; to open her mouth and take what they chose to send her. She might not be engaged to Stephen--for two years at any rate; and yet if she amused herself with any one else she was to be packed off to Paris, to some house of detention or other, under lock and key. Her cheeks flamed. When had she first come across Philip Meryon? Only the day before that evening when Uncle Richard had found her fishing with him. She knew very well that he was badly spoken of; trust Upcote for gossip and scandal! Well, so was she!--they were outcasts together. Anyway, he was more amusing to walk and talk with than her sisters, or the dreadful young men they sometimes gathered about them. Why shouldn't she walk and talk with him? As if she couldn't protect herself! As if she didn't know a great deal more of the world than her stupid sisters did, who never read a book or thought of anything beyond the tittle-tattle of their few local friends. But Philip Meryon had read lots of books, and liked those that she liked. He could read French too, as she could. And he had lent her some French books, which she had read eagerly--at night or in the woods--wherever she could be alone and unobserved. Why shouldn't she read them? There was one among them--"Julie de Trecoeur," by Octave Feuillet, that still seemed running, like a great emotion, through her veins. The tragic leap of Julie, as she sets her horse to the cliff and thunders to her death, was always in Hester's mind. It was so that she herself would like to die, spurning submission and patience, and all the humdrum virtues. She raised herself, and the dog beside her sprang up and barked. The sun was just dropping below a bank of fiery cloud, and a dazzling and garish light lay on the red undulations of the heath. As she stood up she suddenly perceived the figure of a man about a hundred yards off emerging from a gully--a sportsman with his gun over his shoulder. He had apparently just parted from the group with whom he had been shooting, who were disappearing in another direction.