But she had preferred the couleur d'or to the couleur de rose in matrimony, and had now, as Hawkey said, 'to ride the ford as she found it.'
'Men like Roland,' said Annot to Mrs. Lindsay when discussing her whilom lover, 'especially military men, see a good deal of life, and experience teaches them how passing a love affair may be.'
'You mean——' began Mrs. Lindsay, scarcely knowing what to say.
'I mean that he must have played with fire pretty often,' said Annot, laughing, but not pleasantly, 'and will forget me as he must have forgotten others. I suppose our likes and dislikes in this world are based upon the point that somebody likes or dislikes ourselves.'
Hawkey Sharpe's debts and demands since his marriage had exhausted the patience if not quite the finances of his sister: and now the bill, erewhile referred to—the racing debt—was falling inexorably due, and how to meet it, or be stigmatised as a 'welsher' on every course in the country, became a source of some anxiety to that gentleman.
To meet his other requirements, all the fine timber in the King's Wood was gone—a clean sweep had been made from King James's Thorn to the Joug Tree, that bears an iron collar, in which for centuries the offenders on the domains of Earlshaugh had suffered durance, and the once finely foliaged hill now looked bare and strange; and for angry remarks thereat, Willie Wardlaw, the gardener, and Gavin Fowler, the head gamekeeper, aged dependants on the house of Earlshaugh, as their fathers had been before them, had been summarily dismissed by Mr. Hawkey Sharpe.
A well-known firm of shipbuilders on the Clyde had offered for the wood, and to the former the most attractive part of the transaction, in addition to the good price, was the fact that the money was paid down at once but it was far from satisfying the wants of Mr. Hawkey Sharpe.
'You know I disliked having that timber sold—that I hated the mere thought of having it cut!' said Deborah to him reproachfully, as she looked from the window into the sunshine.
'Why?' he asked sulkily; 'what the devil was the use of it?'
'It was the favourite feature in the landscape——'