'I should like,' he began, 'to stay a little longer, of course, but I must go; the covert shooting is at hand, and Earlshaugh must wait me.'
'It is more than some do there, papa thinks.'
'The more reason for me to go, cousin,' said he, with darkening face.
'Go—and the sooner the better,' thought Hester bitterly; 'there is now no middle course for me—for us; we must be everything or nothing to each other—and nothing it is!'
'Good-night, Hester dear,' said he, still lingering. 'Adieu, Annot. I shall be off to-morrow by gunfire, as we say in barracks, when all are asleep in Merlwood.'
'Good-night.'
And so they parted, but not finally.
Early though the hour next day, Hester was too active by habit, too much of a housewife, and too kind of heart to permit him to depart without being down betimes to give him a cup of coffee and to see him ere he went, despite his laboured apologies. How fresh and bright Hester seemed in her white morning dress, with all its frills—fresh from her bath, and both clear-skinned and fair, as only a dark-haired and dark-eyed girl usually looks at such a time, requiring none of that powdering and other odious process now known as 'making up.' Annot's low curtains remained closely drawn, and there was no sign of that young lady, for the sun was barely over the woods of Hawthornden.
Hester tendered her soft cheek for Roland's farewell salute, and carried it bravely off—better even than he did, as with a wave of the hand he was driven away.
He was gone—gone, and had ceased to be hers. Lingeringly the girl looked around her. To Hester every flower and shrub in the garden seemed to have a voice and say so. Every inanimate object told her so again and again. Fragments of his cigar lay about the gravel walks; there yet swung his hammock between the trees; and there was almost no task she could attempt now that was not associated with him, and, worse than all, with Annot Drummond.