Playing with Fire: A Story of the Soudan War

by James Grant

Hester made some inaudible reply; so he resumed:

'I have heard it said by some—by whom matters not—that you are engaged, Miss Maule?'

'Then they know more than I do—but to whom have my good friends assigned me?'

'To your cousin.'

'Roland!'

'Yes.'

'I am not engaged to Roland certainly,' replied Hester, her lips and eyelashes quivering as she spoke.

'I thought not,' said Malcolm Skene, gathering courage; 'Miss Drummond seems to me his chief attraction. If he is as happy as I wish him, he will be the happiest of deserving men.'

'The phrase of a novel writer, Mr. Skene,' said Hester, a little bitterly, as she thought over some episodes at Merlwood; 'but do not talk so inflatedly of what men deserve. The best of them are often unwise, unkind, unjust.'

'Do not blame all men for the faults perhaps of one,' said Skene at haphazard, and a little unluckily, as the speech went home to Hester's heart. She grew pale, as if he had divined her secret.