CHAPTER IV.
PLAYING WITH FIRE.
And now, a few days subsequently, while idling after dinner over coffee and a cigar, with his pretty cousin and Sir Harry, in the latter's study, a little room set apart by him for his own delectation, where he could always find his tobacco jars, the Army Lists, East Indian Registers, and so forth, ready at hand—a 'study' hung round with whips and spurs, fishing and shooting gear, a few old swords, and furnished with Singapore chairs, tiger skins, and a couple of teapoys, or little tables, Roland Lindsay obtained a little more insight into family matters that had transpired daring his absence while soldiering against the False Prophet in the East.
Sir Harry was a tall and handsome man, nearer his seventieth than his sixtieth year, with regular aquiline features, keen gray eyes, and closely shaven, all save a heavy moustache, which was, like his hair, silver white; and though somewhat feebler now by long Indian service and wounds, he looked every inch, an aristocratic old soldier and gently but decidedly he spoke to his nephew of troubles ahead, while Hester's white hands were busy among her Berlin wools, and she glanced ever and anon furtively, but with fond interest, at her young kinsman, who apparently was provokingly unconscious thereof.
The old fox-hunting laird, his father, though a free liver, had never been reckless or profligate; had never squandered or lost an acre of Earlshaugh; never drank or gambled to excess, nor been duped by his most boon companions; but on finding that he was getting too heavy for the saddle, and that the world, after all, was proving 'flat, stale, and unprofitable,' had latterly, for a couple of years before his death, buried himself in the somewhat dull and lonely if stately mansion of Earlshaugh, where he had for a second time, to the astonishment of all his friends, those of the Hunt particularly, betaken himself to matrimony, or been lured thereinto by his late wife's attractive and, as Sir Harry phrased it, 'most strategic' and enterprising companion, who had—as all the folks in the East Neuk said—contrived to 'wind him round her little finger,' by discovering and sedulously attending to and anticipating all his querulous wants and wishes; and thus, when he died, it was found that he had left her—as already stated—possessed of all he had in the world, to the manifest detriment and danger of his only son and daughter; and, worse still, it would seem that the widow was now in the hands of one more artful than herself—said to be a relation—one Mr. Hawkey Sharpe, into whose care and keeping she apparently confided everything.
Roland's yearly allowance since he joined the army had not been meddled with; but deeming himself justly the entire heir of everything, it could scarcely be thought he would be content with that alone now.
'A black look-out, uncle,' said he grimly; 'so, prior to my return to Earlshaugh, to be forewarned is to be fore-armed.'
'Yes; but in this instance, my boy,' said Sir Harry, relinquishing for a moment the amber mouthpiece of his hookah, 'you scarcely know against what or against whom.'
'Nor can I, perhaps, until I see a lawyer on the subject.'
'Oh, d—n lawyers! Keep them out of it, if possible. The letters S.S.C. after a man's name always make me shiver.'