She found that her daily thoughts ran more anxiously and tenderly upon her father, and about his fast-failing health, than on any other subject now.
She lost even a naturally feminine interest in her own beauty. Who was there to care for it? she thought.
So on Sundays she sat in her pew, in the kirk on the wooded hill, and there listened to the preacher's voice blending with the rustle of the trees and the cawing of the rooks in the ruined fane close by; but with an emotion in her heart never known before—that of feeling that ere long she would have a greater need of some one to lean on—of something to cling to in the coming loneliness that her heart foreboded to be near now.
At last there came a day she was never to forget—a day that told her desolation was at hand.
Seated in his Singapore chair at breakfast one morning, her father suddenly grew deadly pale; a spasm convulsed his features; his coffee-cup fell from his nerveless hand; and he gazed at her with all the terror and anguish in his eyes which he saw in her own.
'Papa—papa!' she exclaimed, and sprang to his side. He gazed at her wildly, vacantly, and muttered something about 'the Jhansi bullet.' Then she heard him distinctly articulate her name.
'Hester—my own darling—you here?' he said, with an effort; 'how sweet you look in that white robe. I always loved you in it, dear.'
'My dress is rose-coloured—a morning wrapper, papa,' said Hester, as the little hope that gathered in her heart passed away.
'So white—so pure—just like your marriage-dress, Hester! But you wore it the first day I saw you, long ago—long ago—at Earlshaugh, when you stood in the Red Drawing-room—and gave me a bouquet of violets from your breast. My own Hester!'
'Oh, papa—papa!' moaned the poor girl in dire distress, for she knew he spoke not of her but of her mother, who had reposed for years under the trees in the old kirkyard on the hill; and a choking sob of dismay escaped her.