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                                 HESTER

                      A STORY OF CONTEMPORARY LIFE

                                   BY

                             MRS. OLIPHANT


                  "A springy motion in her gait,
                  A rising step, did indicate
                  Of pride and joy no common rate
                          That flush'd her spirit:
                  I know not by what name beside
                  I shall it call: if 'twas not pride,
                  It was a joy to that allied
                          She did inherit.

                       *    *    *    *    *

                  She was trained in Nature's school,
                          Nature had blest her.
                  A waking eye, a prying mind,
                  A heart that stirs, is hard to bind;
                  A hawk's keen sight ye cannot blind,
                          Ye could not Hester."

                                         CHARLES LAMB.


                            IN THREE VOLUMES
                                VOL. II

                                 London
                           MACMILLAN AND CO.
                                  1883

         The Right of Translation and Reproduction is Reserved




                                 LONDON
                       R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR,
                           BREAD STREET HILL.




                               CONTENTS


                 CHAPTER I. THE YOUNG AND THE OLD.
                 CHAPTER II. A FAMILY PARTY.
                 CHAPTER III. CONFIDENCES.
                 CHAPTER IV. ROLAND.
                 CHAPTER V. WARNING.
                 CHAPTER VI. DANCING TEAS.
                 CHAPTER VII. THE FIRST OF THEM.
                 CHAPTER VIII. A NEW COMPETITOR.
                 CHAPTER IX. A DOUBLE MIND.
                 CHAPTER X. STRAIGHTFORWARD.
                 CHAPTER XI. A CENTRE OF LIFE.
                 CHAPTER XII. WAS IT LOVE?
                 CHAPTER XIII. CHRISTMAS.
                 CHAPTER XIV. THE PARTY AT THE GRANGE.




                                HESTER.




                                HESTER.




                               CHAPTER I.
                         THE YOUNG AND THE OLD.


"I like your Roland," said Miss Vernon. She had come to pay one of her
usual visits to her old relations. The grandson whom Hester had made
acquaintance with without seeing his face, had now been nearly a week at
the Vernonry and was known to everybody about. The captain's precautions
had, of course, come to nothing. He had gone, as in duty bound, to pay
his respects to the great lady who was his relation too, though in a
far-off degree, and he had pleased her. Catherine thought of nothing
less than of giving a great pleasure to her old friends by her praise.
"He is full of news and information, which is a godsend to us country
folks, and he is very good-looking, _qui ne gâte rien_."

Mrs. Morgan looked up from her place by the fireside with a smile of
pleasure. She sat folding her peaceful old hands with an air of
beatitude, which, notwithstanding her content, had not been upon her
countenance before the young man's arrival.

"That is a great pleasure to me, Catherine--to know that you like him,"
said the old lady. "He seems to me all that, and kind besides."

"What I should have expected your grandson to be," said Catherine. "I
want him to see the people here, and make a few acquaintances. I don't
suppose that our little people at Redborough can be of much importance
to a young man in town; still it is a pity to neglect an opportunity. He
is coming to dine with me to-morrow--as I suppose he told you?"

The old lady nodded her head several times with the same soft smile of
happiness.

"You are always good," she said; "you have done everything, Catherine,
for me and my old man. But if you want to go straight to my heart you
know the way lies through the children--my poor Katie's boys."

"I am glad that the direct route is so easy," Miss Vernon said in her
fine, large, beneficent way; "at least in this case. The others I don't
know."

Captain Morgan came and stood between his wife and the visitor. To be
sure it was to the fire he went, by which he posted himself with his
back to it, as is the right of every Englishman. His countenance wore a
troubled look, very different from the happiness of his wife's. He stood
like a barrier between them, a non-conductor intercepting the passage of
genial sentiment.

"My dear Catherine," he said, with a little formality, "I don't wish to
be unkind, nor to check your kindness; but you must recollect that
though he is poor Katie's boy, she, poor soul, had nothing to do with
the up-bringing of him, and that, in short, we know nothing about him.
It has been my principle, as you know, of late years, to insist upon
living my own life."

"All that, my kind old uncle, is understood," said Catherine. "There are
a great many people, I believe, who are better than their principles,
and you are one of them--that is all. I understand that you know nothing
about him. You are only a man, which is a great drawback, but it is not
to be helped: _we_ know, though we have seen no more of him than you
have. Isn't it so?"

She leaned forward a little, and looked across at the old lady, who
smiled and nodded in return. Old Mrs. Morgan was not disturbed by her
husband's disagreement. It did not even make her angry. She took it with
perfect composure, beaming over her own discovery of her grandson, and
the additional happiness it had brought.

"My old man," she said, "Catherine, has his own ways of thinking, we all
know that; and sometimes he will act upon them, but most commonly not.
One thing I know, he will never shut his doors on his own flesh and
blood, nor deny his old wife what is her greatest pleasure--the thing
that has been wanting to me all the time--all the time! I scarcely knew
what it was. And if the boy had been distant or strange, or showed that
he knew nothing about us, still I should have been content. I would have
said, 'Let him go; you were right, Rowley, and not I.' But it is not
so," the old lady went on after a pause, "there's love in him. I
remember when the girls were married there was something I always seemed
to want, I found out what it was when the first grandchild was born. It
was to feel a baby in my arms again--that was what I wanted. I don't
know, Catherine," she added with humility, "if you will think that
foolish?"

"If I will understand--that is what you are doubtful of--for I am an old
maid, and never had, so to speak, a baby in my arms; but I do
understand," said Catherine, with a little moisture in her eyes. "Well,
and this great handsome fellow, a man of the world, is he your baby that
you wanted so much?"

"Pooh!" said the old captain. "The great advantage of being an old maid,
as you say, is that you are above the prejudices of parentage. It is
possible to get you to hear reason. Why should my life be overshadowed
permanently by the action of another? That is what I ask. Why should I
be responsible for one who is not me, nor