'And love me still, Hester?'
'Do I look as if I had let the worm in the bud feed on my damask cheek?' said she, with a little gasping laugh; 'has my hair grown thin or white? How vain you are, Cousin Roland!'
'No, Hester' (how he loved to utter her name!); 'though I admit to having been a hopeless and thoughtless fool—no worse; but, forgive me, dear Hester; I ask you in the name of your good old father, who so loved us both, and in memory of our pleasant past at Merlwood.'
She made no answer; but her downcast eyes were full of tears; her breast was heaving, and her lips were quivering now.
'It ought not to be hard to forgive you, Roland, as you never said, even in that pleasant past, that you loved me; and yet, perhaps—but I must go now,' she said, interrupting herself, as she turned round wearily and vaguely.
'Go where?' he asked. 'But how came you to be here—here in Cairo—and whither are you going?'
'To where I reside,' she replied, with a soft smile; for, with all her love for him, and with all her supreme joy at meeting him again thus safe and sound, and in a manner so unprecedentedly peculiar, she was not disposed quite to strike her colours and yield at once.
'Reside!' thought Roland, with a flush of anger in his heart; 'as companion, governess, nursing sister, or—what?'
'To where I reside with Maude,' she added, almost reading his thoughts.
'Is Maude here, too?'