'It is without flaw, Annot. My father left her all he possessed, with the power of bequeathing it to whom she pleases, without hindrance or restriction.'
'Cruel and infamous! And who, my poor Roland, is her heir?'
'That reptile, Hawkey Sharpe, I presume.'
Something between a gasping sigh and a nervous laugh escaped Annot, who said, after a little pause, during which he regarded her fair face with intense and yearning anxiety:
'I thought you as prosperous a gentleman as the Thane of Cawdor himself; but this is terrible—terrible!'
And as she spoke there was something in her tone that jarred painfully on his then sensitive and overstrung nerves.
Annot assured him of her unalterable love, whatever lay before them—whatever happened or came to pass—was he not her own—her very own! She wound her arms about his neck; she caressed him in her sweet, and to all appearance, infantile way, striving to reassure him; to soothe, console, and implant fresh confidence in his torn and humbled heart; but with all this, there was a new and curious ring in her voice—a want of something in its tone, and erelong in her eye and manner, that stung him keenly and alarmed him.
What did this mean? Did she resent his supposed duplicity as to his means and position? But he consoled himself that he would soon have her away from Earlshaugh, with all its influences, associations, and the false hopes and impressions it had given her, and then she would be his own—his own indeed.
'How loving, how true, gentle, and good she is! Do I indeed deserve such disinterested affection?' were his constant thoughts.
He disliked, however, to find that Annot had begun to cultivate the friendship of Mrs. Lindsay—"Deb Sharpe" as she was uncompromisingly called by Maude, who was always on most distant terms with that personage; and to find that she was ever in or about her rooms, doing little acts of daughter-like attention such as Maude, with all her sweetness of disposition, had never accorded; even to fondling, feeding, and washing her snarling pug Fifine; and Mrs. Lindsay, of whom other ladies had always been rather shy, and towards whom they had always comported themselves somewhat coldly and with that cutting hauteur which even the best bred women can best assume, felt correspondingly grateful to the little London beauty for her friendship and recognition.