So it was too late when Roland's father thought to amend his fatal will.
CHAPTER XXVI.
MOLOCH.
While Roland's mind was agitated by a nervous dread of how to break to the ambitious little Annot—for ambitious he knew her to be—the real state of his position and his altered fortune, unknown to him, and in his absence, that young lady was receiving an inkling of how matters stood, and thus, when the time came, some trouble and pain were saved him.
Red-eyed, and apparently inconsolable for his absence for a single day, the 'gushing' Annot had cast her society almost entirely upon Hester, as Maude was too much occupied by her own thoughts and cares to give her sympathy.
'Why has he gone, why left me so soon after we came here?' she moaned for the twentieth time, with her golden head reclined on Hester's shoulder. 'What shall I do without him?' she added.
'For a few hours only. What will you say when winter comes or spring, and he is back in Egypt, if you think so much of a few hours now?'
'It is very silly of me, I suppose, but I cannot help it; but we have never been separated since—since——'
'You met at Merlwood,' said Hester coldly, and annoyed by the other's acting or childishness, she scarcely knew which it was. She added, 'Business has taken him to Edinburgh.'
'Business—he never told me! About what?'