We two were left together; my new cousin was about my own age I thought--though indeed he was older--but while I had the courage of health and high spirits, of an unreproved and almost uncontrolled childhood, the boy was timid as a weak frame, a susceptible temper, and a lonely orphanhood could make him. We sat far apart from each other, in the large dark room, and did not speak a word; a strange sudden bitterness and resentment against this intruder had come to my heart. I looked with contempt and dislike at his slight form and pallid face. I raised my own head with a double pride and haughtiness--this was the heir of Cottiswoode and of the Southcotes, this lad whose eye never kindled at sight of the old house--and I was disinherited! It grew gradually dark, but I sat brooding in my bitterness and anger, and never thought of getting lights. The trees were stirring without, in the faint night wind which sighed about Cottiswoode, and I could see the pensive stars coming out one by one on the vast breadth of sky--but nothing stirred within. Edgar was at one end of the room, I at the other--he did not disturb me, and I never spoke to him, but involuntarily all this time, I was watching him--he could not raise his hand to his head but I saw it; he could not move upon his chair without my instant observation; for all so dark as the room was, and so absorbed in my own thoughts as was I. At length my heart beat to see him rise and approach towards me. I was tempted to spring up, to denounce and defy the intruder, and leave him so--but I did not--I only rose and waited for him, leaning against the window. He came up with his soft step stealing through the darkness. "Cousin," he said, in a low voice, which sounded very youthful, yet had a ring of manhood in it, too, "cousin, it is not Edgar Southcote who has come to Cottiswoode, but a great misfortune--what am I to do?--you took part with me, you believed me, Hester: tell me what I am to do to make myself something else than a calamity to my Uncle and to you?" He spoke very earnestly, but his voice did not touch my heart, it only quickened my resentment. "Do nothing except justice," said I, in my girlish, passionate way. "We are Southcotes, do you think we cannot bear a misfortune? but you do not know your race, nor what it is. If you are the heir of Cottiswoode do you think anything you could do, would make my father keep what is not his? No, you can do nothing except justice. My father is not a man to be pitied." "Nor do I mean to pity him," said the boy, gently, "I respect my father's brother, though my father's brother doubts me. Will _you_ throw me off then? you judge of me, perhaps, by my companion. Ah! that would be _just_; I do not care for justice, cousin Hester; I want that which you reject so bitterly--pity, compassion, love!" "Pity is a cheat," said I, quoting words which my father had often said, "and when you have justice you will not need pity."