Jack Elliot, as he selected a cigar to smoke and think the situation over, deemed that Roland was well out of the whole affair; Maude, who was preparing for her departure from Earlshaugh, like Hester, was furiously indignant; but, for reasons of her own, the thoughts of the latter were of a somewhat mingled nature.
CHAPTER XL.
THE NEW POSITION.
Though, by her own admission, not entirely ignorant of Annot's secret springs of action, that social buccaneer, Mr. Hawkey Sharpe, was exultantly defiant about his victory over, and revenge on, Roland Lindsay, for such he deemed the new position to be; and in his pale gray eyes, as he thought over it, there gleamed a savage light, such as it is said 'men carry when the thirst for blood possesses them.'
Roland, whom latterly Mrs. Lindsay had learned to like better than was her wont, was now gone, and would nevermore, she was assured, repass the door of Earlshaugh, and she actually felt as much regret for him as it was in her hard, cold nature to feel. He had been kind, her heart said to herself, and his soft, gentle, and polished manners contrasted most favourably with those of the few men she met now, and especially with those of her brother Hawkey.
'The self-contained bearing, the habitual repose of one who mixes in good society, invariably displays,' it is said, 'a striking dissimilarity to those who, immersed in the business of life, have not such opportunities. Women note these things keenly; especially do they regard the carriage of those whom they believe to move in circles above their own.'
With regard to Annot, as one connected by marriage with the Lindsay family, she was not sorry at the turn affairs had taken with regard to that enterprising young lady and her brother, Hawkey Sharpe. Socially, Annot was far beyond, or above, the bride he could ever have hoped to win, and she might be the means of raising him, steadying and curing him of his horsy, low, and gambling propensities, which had made him prove a great anxiety in many ways, with all his usefulness to herself, since, on her husband's death, she became mistress of Earlshaugh.
'Thanks, Deb, old girl,' said he, as he pocketed a cheque of hers for fifty pounds, and thought gloomily over the two thousand that would in time become inexorably due and must be paid, or see him stigmatized as a welsher!
'Little does the outer world know of all I have to put up with from you, Hawkey,' said she, with a sigh, as she locked away her cheque-book, and he surveyed her with a cool and discriminating stare through his eyeglass—the use of which be affected in imitation of others—screwed into his right eye.
'It is too bad of you to talk to me in that way, Deb,' said he, 'when I have cut out and relieved you of the presence of that impudent beggar, Lindsay. Miss Drummond, as an only daughter, must, I suppose, be the heiress to something or other.'