'Annot seems to have taken a great fancy to Roland; but the fancies of town-bred girls are often mere moonshine.'
'Not the fancies of such girls as Annot, with a home-like Earlshaugh in prospective,' said Hester, with a forced laugh, as she recalled Annot's several confidences.
'Ah!' muttered the old gentleman dubiously, while tugging his wiry white moustache; 'still, it may be a fancy that will pass,' he continued, still pursuing his own thoughts; 'and things always come right in the end.'
'On the stage and in novels, papa,' replied Hester, laughing outright.
'But they do wind up rightly, dear, even in real life sometimes.'
'You know, papa, it is always said that no man ever marries his first love.'
'It may be so, Hester—it may be so; but one thing you may be sure of, if he is a true man.'
'And that is—
'He never can forget her.'
Sir Harry's eyes kindled, and his voice grew soft as he said this; for his thoughts were wandering away to the wife of his youth—she who now lay in the old kirkyard above the Esk—and of whom Hester seemed then a living reproduction, or the old man thought so; and when he spoke thus in the love and chivalry of his heart, he revived in Hester a moth-like desire to go to Earlshaugh after all, such is the idiosyncrasy of human nature; and as some one has it, 'to suffer that self-immolation, which is common to unhappy lovers. She longed to see Roland once more'—to feast her eyes upon the man who seemed happy with another, no matter what the after-pain might be.