One evening matters had evidently reached a culminating point with this pair.
Returning at a somewhat late hour for her, when the gloaming was deepening into darkness, from visiting a poor widow, to whom she had taken some comforts, Hester, on reaching Merlwood, paused in a garden path to look around her, pleased and soothed by the calmness and stillness of the dewy August evening, when not a sound was heard but the ceaseless murmur of the unseen Esk far down below. Suddenly, amid the shrubbery, she heard familiar voices, to which she listened dreamily, mechanically, at first; then, startled by their tenor, she was compelled to shrink between the great shrubs, and—however obnoxious and repugnant to her—was compelled to overhear; and till indignation came, as she listened, there was a passionate, pleading expression in Hester's eyes, which was unseen in the dark; as was the quivering of the lip that came from the torture of the soul.
Roland was speaking in accents low and eager, and in others that were broken and tremulous Annot was responding.
'You have made me so happy, dearest Roland, by the first whisper that you—you loved me,' sighed the girl.
'I seem scarcely to recollect what happened to me before I met you here, Annot,' said he.
'How so?' she asked coyly.
'It seems as if I had only existed then.'
'And now, Roland?'
'I live, my darling! for
"In many mental forms I vainly sought
The shadow of the idol of my thought,"