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Title: The Master of Aberfeldie, Volume 1 (of 3)

Author: James Grant

Release date: June 14, 2021 [eBook #65615]

Language: English

Credits: Al Haines


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MASTER OF ABERFELDIE, VOLUME 1 (OF 3) ***






  THE MASTER OF ABERFELDIE



  BY

  JAMES GRANT

  AUTHOR OF
  "THE ROMANCE OF WAR," "THE CAMERONIANS,"
  "THE SCOTTISH CAVALIER,"
  ETC. ETC.



  IN THREE VOLUMES.
  VOL. I.



  LONDON:
  HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS,
  13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET.
  1884.

  _All rights reserved._




  Contents

  Chapter

  I. Stalking the Deer
  II. Hawke Holcroft
  III. Uncle Raymond's Will
  IV. The Grahams of Dundargue
  V. Olive and Allan
  VI. The Chagrin of Love
  VII. Le Chagrin d'Amour
  VIII. The Riding-Party
  IX. The Picnic at Dunsinane
  X. The Golden Bangle
  XI. Eveline's Suitor
  XII. A Revelation to Holcroft
  XIII. Allan Proves Mysterious
  XIV. Olive Changes Her Mind
  XV. The Carpet-Dance, and What Came of It




THE MASTER OF ABERFELDIE.



CHAPTER I.

STALKING THE DEER.

'I don't know what Olive will think, or how she may view my loitering
here, after all these years of absence, instead of hastening home to
meet her; but, truth to tell, the temptation to have a shot on the
purple heather after sweltering so long in India was so great----'

'What does it matter what she thinks?' interrupted the elder man,
laughing.  'When two persons are to spend the whole term of their
natural lives together, they can surely spare a few days for pleasure
apart!'

'But consider, I have not seen my little _fiancée_ for seven years.'

'You will find her a pretty tall _fiancée_ now,' replied the other,
'and as handsome as any girl in Scotland, Allan.'

The speakers were Lord Aberfeldie (he was viscount in the Peerage)
and his son Allan, the Master, then at home on leave from the Black
Watch, in which he was a captain; and now, side by side, they were
creeping up a steep and stony corrie in search of the red deer, but
paused for a few minutes to breathe and converse.

The Master--so entitled as the son of a Scottish baron (we may add
for the information of most English readers even in these days)--was,
like his father, a tall and soldier-like fellow, with closely-shorn
dark brown hair, straight features, and an almost black moustache,
which partly concealed lips that were handsomely curved, and
expressive of no small degree of firmness and decision.  He carried
his head erect, and spoke rather with the air of one used to command
when addressing men, but with great and subtle softness when
conversing with women of every station and degree; and already, under
home influences, his dark hazel eyes were losing the keen and
somewhat hawk-like expression they had worn when daily facing death
and suffering on active service.

Both father and son were handsome, though there were nearly thirty
years between them in age, and both were, from head to foot,
unmistakably thorough-bred men--the latter tanned deeply by a
tropical sun, and his forehead scarred by a wound from a tulwar blade.

Lord Aberfeldie, now above fifty, had taken a turn of service for a
few years in the Black Watch till his succession to the title
required his presence at home, though an enthusiastic soldier; and
soon after his place in the regiment which he loved so well was taken
by his only son and heir, the Master, then fresh from college.

Father and son both wore plain shooting-kilts and jackets of coarse
heather-coloured stuff, with handsomely-mounted sporans and skeins;
other ornaments they had none, unless we except the crest of
Graham--their surname--an eagle taloning a stork, in their
glengarries; and the peer, who was a keen fisherman, had his
head-dress further garnished by various flies and old fish-hooks.

When _en route_ home to the family seat at Dundargue, in the Carse of
Gowrie, the Master had been tempted by his father to join him at
their shooting-box among the lovely Perthshire hills, where, at
present, the party consisted of only four--Mr. Hawke Holcroft, an
English guest, and Evan Cameron, a sub. of the Black Watch, also on
leave; and these two, attended by a keeper and gillies, were creeping
up another corrie, rifle in hand, about half a mile distant.

'You have had this--a--Mr. Holcroft with you for some time at
Dundargue!' said Allan Graham, questioningly.

'Yes--for some weeks--before we came up to the hills here.'

'He cannot know anything about the implied engagement--that of Olive
Raymond with me?'

'Implied?'

'Well--the peculiar arrangements that exist under her father's
eccentric will.'

'Probably not--nay, undoubtedly not,' replied his father, eyeing him
keenly; 'it is no business of his--so, whence the question, Allan?'

'Because he showed me, rather vauntingly, a very fine photo he keeps
in his pocket-book.'

'A photo of Olive?'

'Yes.'

'The deuce he does.  I have thought her sometimes too _épris_ with
our horsey friend Hawke Holcroft, and thus longed for your return.
They renewed at Dundargue, an acquaintance formed last season in
London, when Olive made some sensation, I assure you; and, now that
you have seen her photo, what do you think of her--pretty?'

'Pretty!  She is downright beautiful!'

'Ah--wait till you have seen her.  She does credit to your mother's
rearing and her governess's tutelage; but you have not exhibited much
impatience hitherto.  Gad, when I was your age----'

'You forget that she was such a child when we parted,' interrupted
Allan, stroking out his long dark moustache.  'But was it not rather
cool of him to show me her likeness?'

'Perhaps; but then it was done in ignorance of the situation, and it
is probably the result of some conservatory flirtation.'

'But just as he showed it to me, was it not strange that I heard the
cry of a plover overhead, and----'

Lord Aberfeldie interrupted his son by a hearty laugh, and tossed
away the end of his cigar.

'After eight years' soldiering with the Black Watch, do you actually
retain the superstition that the plover is a type of inconstancy, and
the bird of ill-omen Burns, Scott, and Leyden describe it as being?'

Allan laughed, too; but now, when among his native mountains and the
scenes of his childhood, he could not help old Scottish impressions
returning to him, though certainly the ranks of his regiment were the
last place in which he was likely to forget them.

The silver-haired and silver-bearded old game-keeper, Dugald Glas
(whose real name was Mackinnon), a hawk-eyed Celt, with a
weather-beaten visage, and bare knees that were brown as mahogany,
now urged silence and no more smoking.  He had discovered by the aid
of his binoculars a couple of deer grazing, but pretty far apart,
upon the hill-side; and once again by private signal the two parties
began mutually their stealthy approach upward in the two corries that
concealed them in the _forest_, for so it was called, though
destitute now of trees.

'A forest, as the word was strictly taken in ancient times,' says Sir
Thomas Dick Lauder, 'could not be in the hands of anyone but the
king, yet in later periods forests have become the property of
subjects, or have been erected by them, though without being
protected by forest laws.  The royal forest in the Isle of Wight, in
which there is not a single tree, is not the only English example
remaining of the view taken of this old meaning of the word.'  Hence,
he adds, 'Let not the Cockney suppose that the word forest
necessarily implies a district covered with oaks, chestnuts, or trees
of any other description.'

A powerful and gigantic staghound, wiry, sinewy, and iron-grey--the
noble dog that Landseer loved to depict--saw the deer already without
the aid of glasses and strained hard upon his leash, an iron chain,
which was twisted round the muscular wrist of the old keeper, who
soothed and patted him, while muttering in Gaelic, '_Mar e Bran, is e
braithair!_' (If it is not Bran, it is his brother), alluding to
Fingal's favourite staghound, which he was thought to resemble, as
his hair was iron-grey, his feet were yellow, with erect ears of a
ruddy tinge.

The forenoon was brilliantly clear, so the deer-stalkers had not the
weather to contend with, as that, if untoward, may render all
strategy vain.

Lord Aberfeldie and his son were as well aware as their skilled old
keeper that in stalking the chief things to regard are the eyes and
nose of the deer.  His vision, quick as that of an eagle, can detect
a human head above a ridge of rock or belt of bracken, and he can
scent an intruder on his 'native heath,' if the breeze blows _from_
the former, at a wonderful distance; and old Dugald Glas, who had
brought the father and son to the forest at dawn with us much care
and secresy as if an assassination was in hand, had long scanned the
vicinity with his glasses before he discovered the stags in question,
and gave the concealed stalkers the signal to approach them.

The two animals were rather far apart; both were quietly feeding,
and--as the season was considerably advanced--both in colour were
marvellously like the grey stone and brown heather around them, and
both were, as yet, all unalarmed as Lord Aberfeldie, the Master, and
Dugald Glas, while pausing and holding ever and anon a council of war
in low whispers, crept up the stony corrie, keeping carefully to
leeward of the quarry they had selected, leaving Cameron of
Stratherroch and Hawke Holcroft to approach the other as best they
might; but it was in the present instance absolutely necessary that
both parties should fire at the same instant, or one of the stags
would vanish at a gallop, perhaps to the most distant limit of the
forest.

In crawling after such game the head must be foremost when going up a
hill, and the feet foremost when going down, and the stalker must
creep on his stomach and knees; and all this, when done in the kilt,
over rough rocks, sharply-pointed heather, and mossy bog, is not to
be effected without considerable toil and even discomfort.

Nearly an hour of this kind of work had gone on, the father and son
creeping side by side, softly and in silence, dragging their rifles
after them, old Dugald following in the same fashion, with Bran
straining on his iron chain; and once or twice they had actually to
traverse the bed of a mountain burn that brawled hoarsely downward
over its brown-worn pebbles and boulders.

The stag was still feeding quietly, and all unconscious of the
approach of death; and the stalkers were, they thought, within a safe
distance now, and that it could not escape them; so Dugald Glas
dropped behind, after whispering to the Master in Gaelic,

'Blood upon the skein, Allan!'

Then the heart of the latter began to beat highly as the moment for
shooting drew near, for after all their care and toil it was quite
possible that a grouse might whirr up from the heather, and with a
warning cry scare the stag to full speed.

'You take aim, Allan,' whispered Lord Aberfeldie, 'and I shall
reserve my fire.  It is years since you had a shot at a dun cow, my
boy.'

Inch by inch the Master cautiously inserted his double-barrelled
rifle between the stiff tufts of purple heather that fringed the bank
of the hollow up which they had been creeping, and brought the sights
to bear upon the beautiful and graceful animal that cropped the
herbage, with his branching antlers lowered; and Allan, in the
excitement of the moment, felt his pulses beating wildly.

'If I miss--if I fail!' he muttered.

'Tut---there is no such word as fail!' replied his father,
unconsciously quoting 'Richelieu.'

Allan drew a long breath, while his dark eye seemed to flash along
the barrel, and fired.  Bang went a couple of rifles in the distant
corrie, but Aberfeldie and his son took no heed of them.  The
latter's single shot had sped true, piercing the stag above the left
eye, and now it lay prone on the heather, tearing up tufts and sandy
earth with its hoofs in the agonies of death.

Allan's skein-dhu was promptly in his hand; the stag was
_gralloched_, and Dugald Glas, waving his bonnet, shouted loudly for
Alister Bane and Hector Crubach (or lame Hector), two gillies, to
bring up the pony, on which the dead animal was slung, and then the
party set out for the place appointed for luncheon, as raid-day was
now long since past.

'What the deuce are Stratherroch and Holcroft about?' exclaimed Lord
Aberfeldie, while shading his eyes with his hand; and to their
success in sport we shall refer in the next chapter.




CHAPTER II.

HAWKE HOLCROFT.

The process of creeping in serpent fashion over sharp-pointed
heather, rough stones, and occasionally in the bed of a mountain
stream, as we have already described, proved intensely tiresome and
distasteful to a 'man about town' like Mr. Hawke Holcroft, who could
not entirely conceal his genuine disgust thereat, and at the slowness
of the whole affair, though reminded by Dugald's son Angus, a smart
young under-keeper, of the big hart of Benmore, which was stalked for
seven long summer days before it was killed.

'But, for the Lord's sake, sir, keep quiet,' whispered Angus.  'We
are now close on one of the finest of Macgilony's dun cows.'

'I see no dun cow!' grumbled Holcroft.

'He means yonder deer,' whispered Cameron, a fair-haired and
pleasant-looking fellow.  'Macgilony was a famous hunter in the olden
time, and his dun cows, as he called them, were the red deer of the
Grampians.'

But to Holcroft, whose idea of hunting the stag was to have a scared
and bewildered creature--a fallow deer, fed on oats and hay,
perhaps--cast loose from a game-cart in a smooth, grassy park, the
perseverance, courage, and labour required for stalking in the
Highlands seemed a simple waste of time and an inconceivable bore.

'Stop for a minute,' whispered Angus, as they crept _up the wind_;
'the stag can smell with more than its nostrils.'

As the stoppage took place directly in the bed of a brawling burn,
where they all lay on their stomachs, Holcroft not unnaturally asked,
with no small irritation, what he meant; and the wiry young
Highlander, who was whiskered and moustached to such an extent that,
with his shaggy eyebrows, he somewhat resembled a Skye terrier in
visage, explained his theory--no uncommon one, though, of course, not
admitted by naturalists--that the red deer can both smell and breathe
through the curious aperture beneath each eye, even if their heads
are immersed in water when in the act of drinking.

'Dioul!' muttered Angus, as they crept forward again, but on dry
heather this time, 'we can't be too cautious, whateffer!  A deer's
eye is as keen as an eagle's, and his nose acute as that of a
foumart.'

'The first shot shall be yours, Holcroft,' said Cameron.  'I shall
reserve my fire.  He seems a powerful animal, and, if you only wound
him, we may have the devil to pay!'

'Thanks--but how?' whispered Holcroft.

'If the dogs bring him to bay, he may turn upon us ere another
cartridge can be dropped in the barrel, and gore deep with his horns.'

English sportsmen generally prefer having the deer driven to stalking
them, for the bodily exertion requisite in the latter case tries so
severely every muscle and sinew; but, to the true Highland hunter,
one deer shot after a long and adventurous stalk, is worth a hundred
knocked over after a successful drive by gillies, when the herd is
urged in wild confusion through some narrow pass well garrisoned by
breech-loaders in secure ambush.

While Holcroft and Cameron crept softly forward nearer the browsing
deer, the young keeper threw his plaid over the eyes of the staghound
Shiuloch, and held it in by main strength, though his wrist was
nearly dislocated by the strain of the leash, and the ill-suppressed
whimpers of the animal were lost amid its muffling.

'Now,' whispered Angus, hoarsely, full of excitement--'now is your
time, sir!'

Holcroft took a long aim; in his intense anxiety, and perhaps
inspired by vanity, he overdid his aim; he fired at the precise
moment Allan's shot was heard in the distant corrie, but only wounded
the stag in the shoulder, and, just as he let fly the contents of the
other barrel (and missed), it fled away with the speed of the wind,
followed by the swift and powerful hound, which, quick as thought,
Angus let slip, and both vanished down a deep glen, overhung by
silver birches, close by.

'_Ohone a Dhia!_ but he has missed it, after all--it is no use
guiding a Sassenach whateffer!' muttered Angus, under his thick,
ruddy moustache; yet, as Cameron could read by the expression that
twinkled in his hazel eyes, secretly not ill-pleased at the result,
however.

'I almost did it--hit him, at all events!' said Holcroft, with
intense mortification, as he was too much of an Englishman not to
wish to excel in everything that appertained to sport.

'Almost!' repeated Angus, who added to Cameron, in a low voice, "_Cha
d'rinse theob riomh sealg!_" (_i.e._, Almost, never killed the game).

'Better luck next time,' said the young Laird of Stratherroch,
consolingly.  'Allan has knocked over his deer, I see.'

'Attempt and Did-not were the two worst hounds of Fingal,' muttered
Angus, in his Perthshire Gaelic, with a furtive glance, fall of
meaning, at Stratherroch.

'To the genuine Highlander,' says a recent English writer, 'it is a
fixed article of belief that there never yet was a Sassenach who knew
more about the wind and weather, or about the innumerable other
mysteries which furnish the stalker with the tact and skill required
to perfect him in his difficult craft, than a cow understands of
conic sections.  With true Celtic caution and prudence, the gillies
tolerate the opulent tenant from the south out of respect for his
cheque-book and his frequent drafts upon it; but in their hearts they
look upon him as an _intruder_, and are not sorry when they
contemplate his receding form, as he turns his face homewards, and
leaves moor, loch, and mountain, glen and forest to 'their natural
denizens.'

And in this spirit Angus was secretly regarding the unconscious Mr.
Holcroft, who had the genuine Southern idea that no man of woman born
could undervalue him.

So the little shooting-party united now, and, not unwillingly, all
sat down to have luncheon, as they were sharply appetised by long
exercise in the keen mountain air, and on no other tablecloth than
the purple heather; the ample contents of a hamper--game pies, cold
beef, bread, champagne (cooled in an adjacent runnel), whisky, and so
forth--were laid out by the active hands of the gillies, expectant of
their own repast when the time came.

They lunched near the mossy ruins of a clachan--some of those
melancholy ruins so common over all the Highlands, the traces of a
departed people who have passed away to other lands, evicted by
grasping selfishness to make way for grouse and deer.

There, the low, shattered gables, an old well, some gooseberry bushes
that marked 'where a garden had been,' were all that remained of a
once populous village, whose men had often gone forth to fight for
Scotland in the wars of old, and whose descendants in latter years
had manned more than one company of the Black Watch in Egypt and the
Peninsula.

On the sunny hill-slope close by, a ruined wall, low and
circular--above which appeared the grey arms of a solitary Celtic
cross, an aged yew-tree, and where long grass waved in the
wind--marked where lay the last of the clan, whom no human power
could evict or send towards the setting sun; and these imparted a
melancholy to the solemn scenery, for solemn it was with all its
beauty.

It was of that kind peculiar to some parts of Perthshire, where the
subordinate hills, rising a thousand feet and more above the valley,
are entirely covered with dusky pines, taking away all that
appearance of blackness and desolation presented by naked mountain
masses, and adding softness and beauty to the landscape, which would
otherwise be stern and grim.  Nor were the glassy loch and the
murmuring torrent wanting there, nor those passes where the mountains
approach each other, and make them, like that of Killiecrankie, excel
even the famous Vale of Tempe.

Though not very impressionable by Nature, Holcroft, influenced by the
good things he was imbibing, said something about the beauty of the
scenery, to which Lord Aberfeldie responded, adding, with a laugh,

'I do enjoy life in a shooting-box, and of all the entrancing sports
to me there is none like stalking the deer.'

With his sodden knickerbocker suit drying slowly upon him in the
mountain wind, Holcroft could only assent to this faintly, and
wished, perhaps, that, like Stratherroch, he wore a kilt, and could
wring the water out of the plaits thereof.

'Of old in Scotland,' resumed Lord Aberfeldie, as he lit his
briar-root pipe, 'no man was deemed perfect in the craft of hunting
till he had landed a salmon from the pool, shot an eagle on the wing,
and killed a stag.  But, when here in a shooting-box, I always thank
heaven that I am at least fifteen miles from a telegraph wire, that
letters can only come once a day, and just before dinner, and bills
and lawyers' letters seldom or never at all.  Have a glass of
something before you lunch, Dugald,' he said, addressing his
venerable keeper; 'I know you will prefer Glenlivet to all the
Clicquot and Moet in the world.'

'A cless, thank you kindly, my lord,' replied Dugald, touching his
bonnet, 'though my mouth can hold more of whateffer it be.'

And, bowing to the company, Dugald drained it in quick time.

'I daresay, Holcroft,' said Allan, 'you would prefer the deer driven
to being stalked?'

'Infinitely!' replied the other, as he quaffed a bumper of sparkling
Moselle.

'Well, I for one do not,' said the Master, emphatically.

'The Highlander of old would follow a stag for days, or even for
weeks, if necessary,' observed Lord Aberfeldie, with kindling eyes,
'sleeping in his plaid among the heather, he would lie where night
found him.  With his long gaff he would catch a salmon between the
water and the sky; but when stalking he had no conception of the
brutal German battues now so common in the Highlands, and so
degrading to sport,' he added; in his energy, forgetting that there
was something of rebuke in his remarks, which certainly made
Holcroft's cheek redden with annoyance, and his rather shifty eyes to
lower.

The Master, aware that this subject was rather a hobby with his
father, hastened to change the conversation by observing,

'How strange it seems, Stratherroch, that you and I should be so
suddenly here after all these past years with the regiment--here
among the purple heather and green bracken again.'

'And a few weeks hence will see us with it again, and back to the old
pipe-clay routine,' said Cameron.

'Regiments are now no longer what they were in my time,' said Lord
Aberfeldie, a little irrelevantly, perhaps, but pursuing his own
ideas.  'Examinations, cramming and useless pedantry, promotion by
selection and compulsory retirement for the officers, with short
service among the men, render corps no longer what they were in the
old days, each a happy, movable home.  The time when a young officer
often said, with just pride and noble ambition, "My father and my
grandfather have both commanded _this_ regiment, and, please God, I
hope at some period to do the same," can never come again!  And what
Highland officer now, in the Black Watch or any other of our national
regiments, is followed to the colours by a band of his own name and
kindred, or can speak of his comrades as "my father's people," or
"the men from our glen;" and yet such was the case when yonder ruined
clachan was instinct with village life, and the voices of children
were heard around its humble hearths.'

'The hero of Ghuznee had a theory that no Scotsman was fitted to
command a regiment,' said Stratherroch, laughing.

'I know that he detested Scotsmen, and brought six officers, all
Scotsmen, to a court-martial; and it was then he is said to have made
the statement which cost him so dear in India.'

'How?' asked Holcroft.

'Because, within an hour after, old Colonel Wemyss, of the 52nd,
paraded him in rear of the cantonment, and planted a bullet in his
body by way of curing him of prejudice for the future.  Rather a
convincing argument, old Wemyss thought it,' added Aberfeldie,
laughing, as he knocked the ashes from his cherished briar-root, put
it in its case, and dropped it into his silver-mounted sporran.

'Talking of regiments, I saw yours at Portsmouth, Graham,' said
Holcroft; 'and I thought the men looked graceful indeed, with their
kilts over their left shoulders and their black sporrans waving above
their bronzed faces.'

Whether this was meant as a joke or a sneer, it is impossible to say;
but his hearers took it as the former, and laughed accordingly, on
which Holcroft added,

'I mean their plaid-shawls over their shoulders.  I remember that
Miss Raymond laughed heartily when I made the same remark.'

'I don't wonder at that,' said Lord Aberfeldie.  'Olive is a girl who
laughs on very slight occasions.'

'You have not seen her since your return,' said Holcroft to Allan
Graham.

'No; but I shall very soon now.'

'She is a very handsome girl; what the deuce have the men been about
to leave her all this time Miss Raymond?'

'All this time?  Why, she has not yet seen her twentieth year,'
exclaimed Allan, with some annoyance, as he thought of the photo.

'Her costumes are _chic_,' continued Holcroft, '_chic_ to a degree!
How I admired her portrait in the Grosvenor Gallery; and wise was the
artist to label it "Fair to See."'

Allan glanced at his father, and his face clouded to hear all
this--praise though it was--in the mouth of Hawke Holcroft.

'You have an appreciation of beauty, apparently,' said young Cameron.

'Who has not?  Thus, as Disraeli says, "the action of lovely woman on
our destiny is increasing," and, as Miss Raymond----'

'I am Miss Raymond's uncle and guardian,' said Lord Aberfeldie,
rather stiffly, and to Mr. Holcroft, as it seemed, a little
irrelevantly, though cutting short whatever he meant to say; for the
peer winced at the way in which his guest referred to his niece in
the hearing of gillies and gamekeepers, and, more than all, in the
presence of Allan, whose dark eyes wore rather a lowering expression;
but, as all had hearty appetites after their recent exercise and long
exposure in the keen, bracing mountain air of an autumn day, they
were inclined to use their knives and forks rather than their
tongues, and the subject, however pleasing to Mr. Holcroft, was
dropped.

The latter was not a pleasing type of Englishman, though his air and
bearing were thoroughly those of a gentleman.  He had a good square
figure, but his legs were somewhat of the spindle order, as his
knickerbocker suit revealed.  He was flaxen-haired, fair-skinned, and
somewhat freckled, with a tawny moustache and pale grey eyes; and
strange it was that these, though weak-looking, cunning, and shifty,
would assume at times, but covertly, a defiant, even ferocious
expression, if evil passions excited him.

He was almost destitute of eyebrows, but had a massive chin; and as
Allan Graham regarded him, as he lay stretched upon the grass
leisurely smoking, he by no means showed his father's sentiment of
friendship for this son of an old friend; and there grew in his
breast a mysterious instinct--almost a presentiment--that Holcroft
would in some way or other bring trouble upon them conjunctly or
severally.

After the keepers and gillies had their repast, the luncheon
apparatus was packed up, and, shouldering their rifles, the party set
out for the shooting-box, which was situated in a pretty glen a few
miles distant.

Angus, who was--as his father boasted--strong as Cuchullin, again
lifted the deer to the pony's back, and preceded by the family piper,
Ronald Gair, with his pipes in full blast to the air of 'The Birks of
Aberfeldie,' they departed down the winding path towards the dark
blue loch that lay at the foot of the solemn, pine-clad hills.

Like the gillies and keepers, Ronald was never seen without a sprig
of the _Buaidh craob na Laibhreis_ (the laurel-tree of victory), the
badge of the Grahams, in his bonnet.

Ronald Gair's locks were silver now, but they had been dark enough
when he played the Black Watch up the green slopes of the Alma,
through all Central India, to the gates of Lucknow, and in later
times to the corpse-encumbered swamps of Coomassie.

Holcroft winced at what he deemed the dissonance of the pipes, and
cursed their sound in his heart; but he was too well-bred or too
prudent to say anything on the subject as he strode by Cameron's side
down the strath, with a huge regalia between his teeth.  Indeed, he
might have been pretty well used to their sound by this time, as
Ronald Gair roused the household with them in the morning, preceded
many a meal--dinner always--and seemed to spend most of his time in
incessant 'tuning up' between.

'I have a suspicion that he is bad form, this Holcroft,' said Allan
to his father, as they could converse, unheard by the other two, amid
the din of the pipes, which Ronald blew as if to wake the Seven
Sleepers of Ephesus, or Holgar Danske in his cavern at Elsinore.  'I
have heard that he half lives on play and his betting-book, and that
his little place in Essex, or rather what remains of it, is dipped
over head and ears.  Indeed, he admitted jocularly to Cameron that it
was mortgaged for thrice its value, three times over, a fact which
would teach the holders prudence for the future.  Why did you have
him here or at Dundargue?'

'Well--his father and I were old friends, as you know; his father, in
fact, by an act of great bravery, saved my life at the Alma, when
three Russians were at the point of bayoneting me, as I lay helpless
on the field; so you see, Allan, I cannot help being at least
hospitable to the poor fellow, and certainly his friend.'

Indeed, Lord Aberfeldie had always been the latter to Holcroft, and
not seldom his 'banker,' but of this Allan knew nothing, nor was ever
likely to know, so far as his father was concerned.

'He seems to consider Olive an heiress,' said Allan, after a pause.

'As--of course--she is.'

'And he dared to speak of her under the slangy name of "cash" to
Stratherroch, as I, by chance, overheard.'

Lord Aberfeldie knitted his dark brows, and said,

'I detest slang--it is deuced bad form; but Holcroft belongs, I know,
to a horsey set.'

The sun was setting now, and gradually his crimson glory was paling
in fire on the hill tops, till it faded out and died away, and the
shadows of the September night crept upward step by step from the
deep glens below, and one by one the stars came out above the
trees--a sea of dark and solemn pines that covered all the mountain
slopes--and ere long the red lights from the curtained windows of the
luxurious shooting-lodge were seen to cast long lines of wavering
radiance across the bosom of the loch, by the margin of which it
stood.

Ere this, the great greyhound Shiuloch (whose name means speed) had
returned, drenched with water (showing that he had pursued the stag
into some distant loch) and bloody with more than one wound inflicted
by antlers.

The sharp-set hunters had dined luxuriously, and cigars with brandy
and soda had become the order of the night, when the Master said to
his father,

'I think I have had enough of deer-stalking--three weeks nearly--and
to-morrow I shall start for Dundargue.'

'I think you are wise to do so,' replied Lord Aberfeldie, with a
pointed glance.

'Sorry to lose you, Graham,' said Holcroft, concealing under a bright
smile his secret annoyance, envy, and alarm, of all which more anon.

In this sudden resolution Allan Graham was influenced, perhaps, by
some remarks of his father, the viscount, and pique at those of Hawke
Holcroft, together with a natural longing to see his mother and
sister, and a growing consciousness that he had been somewhat remiss
and, to say the least of it, ungallant to his cousin.  Thus, next
day, he took his departure for Dundargue; but he could little foresee
all the bitter complications that were to arise, and to culminate in
the future, through his merely lingering to stalk deer in his
father's forest.

When he went off, none shook his hand more warmly than Hawke
Holcroft, though the latter muttered under his breath,

'Fool that I was, not to make my innings before this fellow came; but
if some people could be put out of the way, that others might take
their place, how much pleasanter this world would be--to other
people, at least.'

Little did the family of Aberfeldie know that in Hawke Holcroft they
had among them an unscrupulous adventurer and most dangerous guest!




CHAPTER III.

UNCLE RAYMOND'S WILL.

'Marriage, indeed!' exclaimed Olive Raymond, 'it will be time enough
to speak of that when this "laggard in love," your brother, turns up
here at Dundargue.  Besides, all women don't marry, so why should I?'

'Most pretty ones do, and marry you must!' replied, with a merry
little laugh, Eveline Graham, the sole daughter of the house of
Aberfeldie, to her English cousin, as she usually called her.

'Such stuff all this is!  Does not the author of "The Red Rag" say
that "if there is a circumstance calculated to breed mutual
detestation in the minds of two young people, it is the knowledge
that their respective parents have destined them for each other!"'

'How readily you quote,' said Eveline.

'Because I have the subject at heart.'

They were posed like a couple of Du Maurier's fashionable girls, and
were leisurely sipping afternoon tea at a pretty Chippendale table
from an exquisite Wedgwood service, and, for freedom to gossip, had
dispensed with all attendance.

Both the cousins were handsome girls, whose bearded, belted, and
corsletted ancestors--portraits of whom hung on the walls, and who
had often

  'Carved at the meal with gloves of steel,'

in that same Castle of Dundargue--would have regarded such a repast
and such a beverage as 'afternoon tea' with no small wonder, and,
perhaps, disgust.

Eveline Graham was very softly featured and slender in figure; but
Olive Raymond, who was the taller of the two, was more fully
developed, yet looked slim as a Greek goddess in a dress of deep blue
that became her pure complexion and rich brown hair, with only a tiny
bouquet of white flowers in the brooch at her bosom, and a multitude
of silver bangles--emblems of conquest, perhaps--like silver fetters,
on her slender and snowy wrists.  She was fair and colourless, with
dark grey violet eyes that looked black under their jetty fringes at
night.

Eveline was more dazzlingly fair, but more _petite_, with soft, hazel
eyes, and bright, brown hair that was shot with gold.  She had
exquisite hands and feet, and though _petite_, as we say, and
slender, she had a peculiar grace and dignity of manner that only
required a brocade-dress, ruff, and long stomacher to make her like
one of her stately 'forbears,' whose portraits by Jameson were in the
room in which she sat--a modern portion of the grim old Castle of
Dundargue, the aspect and construction of which edifice were very
different from those of the additions that had been made to it in
later times.

And as the girls sit there, in the tempered light of the afternoon
sun streaming through the French windows that open to a stately
balustraded terrace, and sip their tea leisurely, their conversation
will throw some light upon the past, and perhaps the future, of
certain of our _dramatis personæ_.

'When Allan returns--'began Eveline.

'Oh, don't talk to me again of Allan!' interrupted Olive Raymond,
with a petulant toss of her pretty head, 'or I will begin to tease
you about Stratherroch.'

'How?' asked Eveline, colouring perceptibly.

'He loves you--and you know he does.'

'Yes,' said Eveline, as a soft smile stole over her mignonne face; 'I
cannot doubt it, though no word from which I could infer it has ever
escaped his lips; but poor Cameron has little more than his pay.  His
paternal acres are mortgaged to the full--even the shootings and
fishings, believe, don't come to him.  I heard papa express to mamma
his surprise that Cameron could "pull through," as he phrased it;
that he would have no ineligibles in future dangling about me, and
that--as I have nothing--I must marry _money_!  That was the
word--oh, how selfish it sounds, and how hateful!' added the girl,
while her rosy little nether lip quivered.  'Poor Evan!' she
murmured, dreamily; and as she uttered his name her voice, which was
soft even as Cordelia's, became like that of Annie Laurie, 'low and
sweet.'

'Ineligibles!' said her cousin; 'and yet he invited here Mr.
Holcroft, who is well-nigh penniless, and against whose attentions
Aunt Aberfeldie specially warned me.'

'In the interests of Allan, of course.'

'Allan--absurd!' exclaimed Olive, shrugging her handsome shoulders.
'You all seem to forget that he can only remember me as a little
girl.'

'Still you are his _fiancée_.'

'In a manner of way.'

'Distinctly so, if the tenor of your papa's will is to be observed.'

'Then I think he might have had some curiosity about me, instead of
spending days at that stupid deer-forest.  For all he knows, I might
have been a veritable fright!' added Olive, with growing pique, as
she glanced at the reflection of her own beautiful self in an
adjacent console-mirror.  'If he thinks that, as Master of
Aberfeldie, he has only to come and see, and conquer, I shall teach
him that he is very much mistaken.'

'Olive--how can you talk thus?' expostulated soft little Eveline;
'his delay is probably all papa's fault.'

'I am sure that I shall hate him then!'

'Query?' said Eveline, with a saucy smile on her lovely lips.

'There is no query in this case,' persisted Olive, as she set down
her cup with a jerk; for in her spirit of freedom there was at times
a curious but unexpressed antagonism in her heart to the family of
Aberfeldie, as if she felt herself somewhat in their power, and even
to her own disadvantage, and this spirit, which Holcroft was not slow
to discover, had rather encouraged his hopes.

'He will be sure to love you, at all events, Olive dear, if he has
any sense or power of observation at all--you are so pretty--nay, so
charming.'

'Any fool may love a pretty face, and generally does so.'

'But you possess much more than a pretty face, Olive.'

'Yes--the fortune which I am to share with him ere my twenty-fifth
year.'

'Or, if you refuse----'

'One half of it goes to him, and the other, or nearly so, to
charitable institutions,' exclaimed Olive, her sweet face paling with
absolute anger.

'He will love you for yourself alone, I am assured,' persisted
Eveline, in defence of her brother.  'You are beautiful, Cousin
Olive; you ride, row, dance, play lawn-tennis, and flirt to
perfection.  Are not all these qualities calculated to excite
admiration in a young officer; and then, more than all, you have such
dear, funny ways with you.'  And the warm-hearted girl concluded by
laughing and kissing her cousin on both cheeks effusively.

The tenor of this remarkable will, which has been referred to more
than once, was, to say the least of it, peculiar.

Some years before this period, Olive Raymond arrived at Dundargue an
orphan, left in charge of Lord Aberfeldie--the child of his only
sister, Muriel Graham, who had married a Mr. Raymond, a poor man,
whom means furnished by the Aberfeldie family enabled to become one
of the wealthiest planters in Jamaica.  Both her parents had died
early, and after her location at Dundargue she became a species of
sister to Eveline and Allan Graham.

Happy, indeed, was Olive alike in her Scottish home in the lovely
Carse of Gowrie, and when the family took up their abode, according
to the season or the sitting of Parliament, at their West-end
residence in London.

By will, Mr. Oliver Raymond left his entire fortune, which was very
considerable, to his daughter; but, in gratitude to the family of his
wife, on the strange condition that she was to marry his nephew,
Allan Graham, whose death alone was to free her from that
contingency.  If she unreasonably refused, then, in that case, after
her twenty-fifth year, she was to forfeit all that would accrue to
her, save a very slender allowance--the share so forfeited to become
the inheritance of her cousin Allan; and if _he_ declined to wed his
cousin Olive, then, in _that_ case, the money so forfeited was to go
to such Scottish charitable institutions as Lord Aberfeldie and the
other trustees might select.

This will was, undoubtedly, a strange one; but then Mr. Raymond had
been a strange and eccentric man, animated by an intense regard and
esteem for the family of his deceased wife, the Grahams of
Aberfeldie, to whom he felt all his good fortune had been due.

As children, the tenor of this tyrannical will in no way affected the
relations of Olive and Allan with each other; and the latter--a manly
and sturdy lad, when at home from the College of Glenalmond, where he
pursued his studies and cultivated cricket, boxing, and
football--petted and made much of the violet-eyed and brown-haired
little cousin, who had dropped among them as if from the clouds; but
after he had joined the Black Watch as a subaltern, and years passed
on, and they began to be talked of and deemed in the family circle as
an engaged couple, betrothed, affianced, and all the rest of it, the
young beauty and heiress began to resent the terms of the will
bitterly, perhaps not unreasonably; she became, as we have said,
antagonistic, and was perplexed to think that her father could not
have foreseen some difficulties on the part of his two legatees.

Thus, as they both grew older, she seldom replied to the letters
which Allan wrote to her, by his parents' desire, perhaps, rather
than his own, till he ceased to write to her at all, on which she
became severely piqued; and once when she was a little way on in her
'teens,' and when Allan was at home for a very brief period before
departing to India, she treated him with an indifference--almost
animosity--that made him deem the girl wayward, cold-hearted, even
purse-proud, and everything unpleasant; and with this fatal
impression he rejoined the Black Watch, and amid many a flirtation
might soon have forgotten the heiress that was growing up for him at
Dundargue, but for the letters he received from thence, and in which
ample references to her and her beauty and accomplishments were never
omitted; while she, on the other hand, when she became of a
marriageable age, seldom ceased to stigmatise the will as outrageous,
indelicate, grotesque, and unjust.  And now that her cousin Allan was
coming home--nay, _had_ come home--for a protracted period on leave
of absence, she felt that a crisis was at hand in her fate--a crisis
in which she, like a hunted creature, knew not how to escape.

'Yes, Allan will soon learn to love you for your own sake,' returned
the gentle Eveline, after a pause.

'How can I ever be certain of that?  Oh, I owe little indeed to papa,
who by such a will as his seeks to degrade both your brother and
myself,' replied Olive.

'Degrade!' exclaimed Eveline, her hazel eyes distending.

'Yes--by forcing us into a marriage on one hand, or to accepting
starvation on the other.'

'Starvation!--such strong language, Olive,' said Eveline, in a tone
of rebuke.

Of the alleged tie that bound her to Allan Graham, and of the latter
himself, personally, she had never thought so seriously as she had
done of _late_; and, truth to tell, in the opportunities afforded by
mutual residence in a country house--that great rambling castle
especially--Mr. Hawke Holcroft, by his subtle attentions when no one
else was near, had begun to interest her more than Lord or Lady
Aberfeldie could have relished or conceived; and to her it seemed
that for some time back at Dundargue (continuing a sentiment he had
striven to rouse during a past season in London) his eyes bad been
telling in imploring and passionate glances what his lips had not yet
the audacity to utter; but then the girl was young, enthusiastic,
impressionable, and far from insensible to admiration and flattery.

Though she did not and could not regard Allan Graham as a lover, and
disliked thus to view him in the light of her intended husband,
circumstances now compelled her to _think_ of him; and though she
remembered him chiefly as the playmate of her childhood, she was
piqued that he seemed in no haste to meet and see her, but instead
had openly manifested, as she thought, indifference and lack of
interest or curiosity, by shooting at Aberfeldie Lodge for days.

Thus pique made her not indisposed to encourage the attention of
others, especially of Hawke Holcroft, as we shall show, when he
returned to Dundargue before his departure for London.

Olive Raymond in her pride of heart bitterly resented the tenor of
her father's will.  She knew that by the chances of war, climate, and
foreign service generally, she might never have seen her cousin
again; but now the inevitable seemed at hand, and she felt herself in
a measure set apart for him as fairly as if she had personally
betrothed herself; but was she to be bound, while he was absolutely
free?  And stories she had heard--some of them artfully and casually
dropped by Holcroft--of more than one flirtation at Chatham and
elsewhere, added to the pique in which she was indulging.

Lady Aberfeldie now came in through one of the open French windows
for her cup of afternoon tea, with a bright scarlet shawl loosely
floating over her handsome head and shapely shoulders, quitting the
terrace, where she had been amusing herself by feeding the peacocks.

She was looking unusually radiant as she announced that Angus, the
young keeper, had just come from the shooting lodge to inform her
that the Master would be home that afternoon, and that his rooms must
be put in order for him without delay.

So, on hearing this, the wilful Olive resolved to pay a protracted
visit elsewhere, and to be absent when he did arrive.

No woman understood the art of dressing better than Lady Aberfeldie,
and well was she aware how truly a dainty maize or a coral colour
with rich black lace trimmings became her brunette tints, her dark
hair and eyes, her pure, yet slightly olive complexion.  Her whole
air was graceful and queenly, as befitted one who was always to 'walk
in silk attire.'

Lady Aberfeldie never forgot that she had been the belle of three
seasons in Belgravia, and an heiress to the boot, though the memories
of others might be less retentive; and now, in her fortieth year, she
was a very handsome blooming woman still.

'We must have some dinners and no end of dances and lawn-tennis
parties, mamma, in honour of Allan's return,' said Eveline, as she
assisted her mother to tea.

'Thank God, my dear boy is home--home again--and safe at last--after
all he has faced and undergone,' said Lady Aberfeldie, with a bright
and fond expression in her fine face.  'Why, it seems but yesterday,
Olive, that you and he were little chits playing together on the lawn
or at Nannie's knee--when you had rag dolls, and used to sing
together of the old woman that lived in a shoe, or "High upon
Highlands and low upon Tay," or of

  "Alexander, King of Macedon,
  Who conquered the world but Scotland alone;
  When he came to Scotland his courage grew cold,
  To find a little nation courageous and bold,
  So stout and so bold--"

You remember the nursery song, Olive?'

'I have forgotten it, aunt.'

'Then I hope you will remember in its place the adage----'

'What adage?' interrupted Olive sharply.

'That a good son makes a good husband,' said Lady Aberfeldie, archly,
and laughing as she tapped her niece's soft cheek with her teaspoon.

'Adages are not to my taste, aunt.'

'Child, what makes you seem so cross to-day?'

'The weather, perhaps,' suggested Eveline.

But Olive, who had rather a mutinous expression in her soft face,
remained silent.

'This is bad form in our day of joy,' said Lady Aberfeldie, who had
been eyeing her closely.  'In society well-bred people always control
their emotions--their feelings.'

'Easy enough for them, aunt.'

'How?'

'Because they have seldom any feelings to control.'

And to prevent more being said with reference to Allan--a subject she
dreaded--Olive Raymond withdrew.




CHAPTER IV.

THE GRAHAMS OF DUNDARGUE.

Who would have imagined that within a few yards of the elegant and
stately modern drawing-room in which these three handsome women of
the best style were chatting and sipping their tea, there still
existed within the old walls of Dundargue a hideous oubliette or
bottle dungeon, like those that were in the Castle of St. Andrews and
ancient peel of Linlithgow--so named from the French word to 'forget.'

Shaped like a bottle, it was--and is--totally dark and of great
depth, with no outlet but its narrow mouth, through which prisoners
were precipitated and left to die.  'Dante,' says Victor Hugo, when
describing that in the Bastille, 'could find nothing better for the
construction of his hell.  These dungeon-funnels usually terminated
in a deep hole like a tub, in which Dante has placed his Satan, and
in which society placed the criminal condemned to death.  When once a
miserable human being was interred there--farewell light, air, life,
and hope!  It never went out but to the gibbet or the stake.
Sometimes it was left to rot there, and human justice called that
forgetting.  Between mankind and himself the condemned felt an
accumulation of stones and jailers, and the whole prison was but one
enormous and complicated lock that barred him out of the living
world.'

From such places the shrieks and wails of despair and death--death
from thirst and hunger--never reach the upper air.

When the oubliette of Dundargue was examined a few years ago there
was found in it a mass of unctuous-looking mould that made those
shudder who looked upon it.  It was full of skulls and human bones.
Of whom those beings had been even tradition was silent; but, as some
coins of Edward I. of England were found among the ghastly remains,
they were supposed to have been certain English prisoners or
fugitives, who, when flying from the siege of Perth, had fallen into
the hands of Sir Malise Graham of Dundargue, in the Carse of Gowrie,
a relentless enemy of the invaders of his country, who said, grimly,
'A few Englishmen less in the world would make the world all the
better,' and, dropping them successively into the oubliette, placed a
huge stone over the mouth of it, and 'forgot' all about them.

From a short distance beyond Dundee, called 'The Beautiful' in the
days of old, the lovely and fertile Carse of Gowrie, so famed in
Scottish song, stretches far westward, bounded by the Firth of Tay on
the south, and a line of undulating hills on the north, till it
narrows to a vale among the rocky eminences that overlook the fair
city of Perth.

The Carse is not quite a dead level, for here and there slope up
wooded or cultivated elevations, named Inches, serving to show that
in the ages they won their name the Carse had been a wide, open lake;
but above one of these inches towers the abrupt, though not very
lofty, rock crowned by the Castle of Dundargue, an edifice on which
the surrounding hills have looked down for centuries.

Bronze or iron rings, to which the Romans are said to have moored
their galleys, were lately to be seen in the rock of Dundargue, and
cables have been found at the foot of the Sidlaw Hills, relics of the
time when an inland sea rolled its waves against their now grassy
slopes.

The original castle, or strong square tower, starts flush from the
edge of the rock, out of which its oubliette and lower vaults are
hollowed, standing clear and minute against the sky, and its
machicolated battlements rise high above the more florid modern
additions of the days of James VI. and Queen Anne.

From its stone bartizan can be seen the sweep of the broad, blue
Firth of Tay, with its vessels, the varied surface of the beautiful
Carse of Gowrie clothed with leafy timber, narrow stripes of
sand-edged land, and long stretches of cultivated ground, studded
with curious old orchards and ancient and hoary forests of dwarf oak;
and on the north and west the glorious blue mountains, piled over
each other in ranges, and capped, afar off, by the historic Grampians.

The earliest portion of the edifice is said to have been built by Sir
Malise Graham, and possesses the battlemented bartizan, which was a
decided feature in the architecture of Scotland long before her
intimate connection with the Continent; and the tenures of many
houses in the vicinity are still held by owners who, if they had to
fulfil the original obligations, would be compelled to bring to the
castle coal for its fires, beer and beef for its tables, and oats for
the chargers of the men-at-arms, with cords to bind and hang
prisoners condemned to the dule-tree.

The Grahams, Viscounts of Aberfeldie and Barons of Dundargue in the
peerage of Scotland, had the barony bestowed on them in 1600, in
consequence of the bravery of the then laird at the battle of
Benrinnes, six years before, and the viscounty in 1648, for doughty
deeds done in the wars of the Covenant; but they had been lairds of
Dundargue in days that were remote indeed--the days of that Graham
who, when expiring of a mortal wound on the field of Dunbar, gave his
sword--the same weapon now preserved in the house of Montrose--to his
son, 'the Graham' of future battles, 'the Richt Hand of Wallace,' in
whose arms he expired of a wound, after the battle of Falkirk,
leaving the patronymic of 'gallant' to all his descendants.

In one apartment hung with Gobelin tapestry stood a bed wherein
Charles II. had reposed before his coronation at Scone; and another
had been occupied by his nephew, James VIII., of the Scottish
Jacobites, before he went to visit Castle Lyon, the guest of John,
Lord Aberfeldie, who declined to sit in the Union Parliament, and
who, to the end of his days, even when George III. was king, was wont
to assert 'that green peas and the other edibles were always a month
later, after that vile and degrading incorporation,' and that many a
sweet flower never blossomed again after the White Rose was destroyed
at Culloden.

In right of gift to an ancestor, the present peer was Hereditary
Keeper of the Royal Palace of Falkland, and as such wore a key and
chain of silver at his neck on collar days at Windsor and elsewhere.

It was a September afternoon--almost evening--when the pastures had
become parched, the foliage shrivelled and of various tints, and
high-piled wains came rocking over the furrowed fields and through
green lanes as the harvest was led home, that a horseman 'might have
been seen' (to use the phraseology of Mr. G. P. R. James)--nay, was
seen--to ride leisurely down the Carse and take a flying leap over a
hedge into the great lawn of Dundargue, and then, after trotting his
horse between belts of trees, he drew his bridle for a few minutes,
while he lingered and regarded fondly and admiringly the old
structure, which he had not seen for well-nigh seven years; and
Allan, the Master of Aberfeldie--for he the rider was--thought there
was not in all the Carse of Gowrie another residence to compare with
Dundargue for the many stories and characteristics that circle about
a house which has been for ages the home of one family, with all its
historic memories, its traditions and patriotism.

The shadows of the great old trees under which more than one Scottish
king had blown his hunting-horn fell far along the turf, that was
green as an emerald and soft as velvet.  A semi-transparent haze,
mingling with the sunshine, pervaded the Carse land; the smoke of an
adjacent village ascended from the hoary orchards around it, and far
eastward fell the shadow of the tall and weather-worn keep of
Dundargue, with all its tourelles, or Scottish turrets, tinted redly
by the rays of the setting sun; and Allan's heart swelled as he
looked around, for the love of his native land was strong within him,
and he recalled the words of an English writer, who describes it as
the place chosen by Nature as the mirror of her beauty:

'She has planted it in the northern seas, with its mountains fronting
the western sun, and watered its plains and valleys with a thousand
streams, over which the lights of heaven are poured with an
illumination and a glory, with an entanglement and a mingling of all
the colours that can make earth beautiful.  There is no land in all
the world which, for the softer splendours of mountain and fell, wood
and stream, surpasses Scotland!'

And Allan now remembered that the green ridge on which he had reined
up his horse for a moment or two had been to him a place of fear,
when a child, as the abode of the _Daoine Shi_--the goblins or
fairies--who could be heard at work in the heart of the knoll, busily
opening and shutting great chests, the contents of which were alleged
to be the pillage of pantries, larders, and meal-girnels; and once an
old housekeeper at Dundargue, who contrived to circumvent them by
securing the door of her premises, was struck with blindness, from
which she did not recover till the barrier was removed.

Allan saw a lady suddenly appear upon a path close by that which led
to the avenue; and she proved to be no other than Olive Raymond, who,
intent on being absent when he arrived, came thus upon him face to
face, yet neither knew the other.

On her arm she bore a little basket, with some presents for her poor
pensioners.  The cordiality and kindness of Olive to the poor and
labouring people made the periodical return of the household from
London and elsewhere more than a matter for local rejoicing.  There
were none about Dundargue but loved her, as they also did Eveline
Graham, though the latter did less among them; and the Scottish
peasantry, it must be borne in mind, unlike others elsewhere, are
usually too self-reliant and full of proper pride to accept aid from
Dorcas, blanket, food, or coal societies.

Well mounted, Allan had substituted a light-grey tweed suit, which
well became his dark complexion, for his shooting-kilt and jacket,
and as a sudden light or conviction came upon him, aided by a memory
of the photo he had seen in Holcroft's possession, he sprang from his
horse when the young lady drew near.

'I beg your pardon,' said he, as he threw the bridle over his arm and
lifted his hat; 'I cannot be mistaken, changed though you are--you
are my cousin, Olive Raymond?'

She blushed deeply, and said,

'And you--are Allan Graham!'

'Yes, Olive.  Oh! how good, how kind of you to come and meet me,' he
replied, his heart beating lightly as he looked into her beautiful
face and deftly possessed himself of her hands.

'Far from it,' she replied, seeking to release herself, and now
growing pale with positive annoyance at his supposition.  'I have
some duties to do at the village.  I hope you enjoyed your shooting
excursion?' she observed, after a pause.

'I did--and yet----'

'So much so, indeed, that you were in no haste to come home,' said
she, laughing to conceal her secret vexation at the rencontre.

Allan found his intended wife all that he could have wished, and more
than he could have imagined.  The little girl he had left, had now
expanded into a tall, proud, and lovely one--lovelier than he had
ever dreamed of her being; and under her pretty black velvet hat her
grey-violet eyes regarded him with a curious mixture of shyness and
confusion in their expression, and--though he did not then detect
it--resentment.

When he had last seen his 'little wife,' as he was wont to call her
_then_, she was a madcap girl, with all her golden hair flying far
and wide from a pearly neck and brow, rippling and unconfined.  Now
her braided hair was of the richest brown, and she was the belle of a
London season, and he could not help acknowledging in his heart the
many charms she possessed, and suddenly becoming very appreciative
thereof.

'I hope Mr. Holcroft is enjoying his sport among the hills?' said
she, after another pause.

'Never mind Holcroft,' replied Allan, a little piqued by her manner;
'have you no welcome for me, Olive?'

'Of course you are glad to be home again,' said she, evasively.

'I have always loved dear old Dundargue, even when I came home as a
boy from school, and now I shall love it more than ever.'

'Why?'

'Can you ask me--when you are its permanent inmate?'

'I may not be so always,' said she, pointedly.  'Nothing lasts for
ever; but as we are cousins--' she was about to add something, yet
paused.

'And more than mere cousins can ever be to each other.  You might at
least give me your hand, Olive,' said he, drawing nearer to her as
she looked up at him, earnestly, shyly, and then, he began to think,
rather defiantly, with those wonderful violet-grey eyes of hers.  She
gave him her right hand, and, though cased in a tight glove, a soft
and warm little hand it felt; but he drew her towards him, and, ere
she could avert the act, was softly and swiftly kissed by him.

'_Don't_,' she exclaimed, as she snatched her fingers from his clasp.
'How dare you?' she added, repelling him with both hands outspread,
and a laughing indignation that was _not_ all laughter; but he looked
at the sweet red lips as though he longed to offend again.

'Olive, how can you treat me thus, after all these years?' he asked,
with an emotion of annoyance.  'Have you forgotten what jolly
playmates we used to be; how we went nutting and seeking birds' nests
together, made rag dolls, and chorused "Alexander, King of Macedon,"
and so forth, with our old nurse, Nannie Mackinnon, the wife of
Dugald Glas?'

'I have not forgotten; but I had thought, or hoped, that you had done
so.'

'Why?'

'I cannot say,' replied the wilful beauty, pouting and yet confessing
in her secret heart how handsome he looked, and how winning he was in
eye and manner.

'I remember, too,' said he, laughingly, 'the scores of times we used
to wander in the garden, or on the heather braes, seeking bees to
_blob_ and get the honey out of them; and when on May mornings you
used to catch a snail by the horns, and toss it over your left
shoulder as an omen of luck in marriage.'

'Allan, such odious and absurd things should be forgotten.'

'We were children, then; and what fun we had when fishing with
tinnies in the burn for minnows and pow-wowits under the old
brig-stone.  Do you remember how I used to climb to get birds' nests
for you, and how we wove fairy caps of rushes and bluebells in many a
green howe of the Sidlaw Hills?'

'How can you treasure such childish memories, Allan?' she asked, but
with momentary softness in her manner.

'Because such were very dear to me when far away in other lands and
other scenes, when the Indian sky was like a sheet of heated iron
overhead, and the breeze that came from the sandy desert was like the
breath of the death-blast; when cattle perished by the empty tanks,
the birds sat on the dusty trees with eyes closed and beaks agape,
and when strong soldiers died on the line of march, stricken down by
sunstroke or sheer exhaustion.'

'Poor Allan!'

'And you are going to the village?' said he, inquiringly, seeing that
she manifested no desire to return with him.

'Yes.'

'But won't you accompany me home, now that I have returned?'

'You must excuse me--I do so enjoy a walk in the evening before
dinner.'

'I have not seen my mother for seven years,' he said, reproachfully;
'yet, if you will permit me to accompany you to the village, I shall
do so, and then escort you home.'

'I cannot trespass on your time so much,' she replied, with a slight
_soupçon_ of sarcasm in her tone; 'besides, what would Aunt
Aberfeldie think of your being in no haste to see her, after
lingering so long at the deer-forest?'

Allan thought rightly that he now detected the true source of her
pique and peculiar greeting; but he knew nothing yet of her bitter
opposition to the terms of her father's will.

'Aunt and Eveline are anxiously waiting you, so do not let me detain
you longer.  If an escort back is requisite, I shall doubtless find
one with ease,' and, nodding her head smilingly, she tripped down the
tree-shaded avenue and left him; thus he had no choice, though
looking after her with a sigh, but to remount and ride towards the
house, or rather the castle, of Dundargue.

So--so she had so little interest in him, in his return and his
society--that she would neither turn back with him nor permit him to
escort her, but had left him to pay some trumpery visits which she
could do at any other time, day, or hour.

'How was this?' he asked of himself.  'Holcroft has certainly
something to do with it.  Why the deuce did my father bring the
fellow here?'

Allan's hitherto languid interest in her had become quickened by the
sight of her undoubted beauty and grace, and he was, perhaps, a
little unreasonably piqued by her open indifference as to his return
from remote foreign service, and to his views and whole affairs.
Thus the breach between these two--if such we may call it--seemed
likely to widen.

In a few minutes more the affectionate effusiveness of the welcome
home accorded him by his mother and his tender sister consoled him,
but it contrasted in his mind powerfully and painfully with that of
his cousin; yet he could scarcely expect that she would have flung
her soft arms round his neck and kissed him again and again with
hungry affection on both cheeks as they did.

'The pater, dear old fellow, will be home in the course of a day or
two,' said he.  'Mr. Holcroft is coming with him, and Stratherroch,
of Ours, too,' he added.

He noticed that Eveline's pale cheek coloured for a moment at the
name of the latter.

'Ah, you know him, it seems?' said he.

'Yes, very well,' replied Eveline, frankly.

'He has been at home with the dépôt lately.  A right good sort is
Evan Cameron, but desperately hard up, poor lad.  I often think he
will have to exchange for India or something of that kind, though it
would break his heart to leave the Black Watch.'

Eveline's long lashes drooped as her brother said this, all
unconscious that his casual remarks were secretly wounding her.

The expression he could plainly detect in the sweet and expressive
face of his sister at the mention of Evan Cameron gave Allan some
occasion for thought.

He loved and esteemed his friend and brother-officer, but felt it
would be a serious misfortune indeed if any affection took root
between him and Eveline; for Evan was poor, as we have hinted, his
estate valueless to him, and 'at nurse;' and there was, moreover, a
necessity for Eveline making a wealthy marriage--indeed, her father,
Lord Aberfeldie, had already a suitor in view for her.

'I am so sorry that our dear Olive is out,' said Allan's mother,
breaking a little pause; 'but we knew not at what hour to expect you.'

'I met her in the avenue----'

'And you knew each other--how strange!' exclaimed Lady Aberfeldie,
with a brightening face.

'Yes, after a minute or two.  She seems as charming a girl as one--to
use a soldier's phrase--might see in the longest day's march.'

'And such she is.  She did not turn back with you?'

'No, mother,' he replied, with hesitation.

'But she was, of course, glad to see you?'

'I can't say that she was particularly, mater dear; and she got into
a regular pet because I dared to kiss her, even in a cousinly way.'

'Dared, my darling boy!' exclaimed his mother, indignantly.

'Fact, mater,' said the Master, smiling and twirling up the ends of
his long dark moustaches.

Lady Aberfeldie and her daughter exchanged a swift and mutual glance;
but the latter knew more of the views of the young lady in question
than the former did.

'I am glad you are pleased with Olive,' said she; 'and when your
acquaintance is fully resumed you will find the dear girl all you
could wish.'

'She has wonderful blue-grey eyes; they seem violet-blue when she
smiles, and black when she is angry.'

'Angry?' said Lady Aberfeldie, inquiringly.

'Well, she rather looked so when I ventured to kiss her in the
avenue,' said Allan, laughing, and referring to a kiss that, though
snatched, he was never to forget, perhaps, in the long years that
were to come.

'She has grown the very image of her mother, your poor Aunt Muriel,
who was one of my bridesmaids.'


By visits to the minister's manse and elsewhere Olive had wilfully
and petulantly contrived to protract her absence from home to the
last moment; the dressing-bell had rung, and before dinner she was
hastily giving a few touches to her costume--not that she cared to
attract her cousin (quite the reverse)--but she dismissed her foreign
maid, Clairette Patchouli, on a sign that Eveline wished to talk with
her alone.

'Now, Olive,' began the latter, 'that you have seen Allan----'

'I saw him years ago,' interrupted Olive, pettishly.

'He was a boy then; but now that he is a man, and not the boy you
remember, what do you think of him?'

Olive made no reply, but continued to slip her bangles on the
whitest, roundest, and most taper pair of arms that ever bewildered
the senses of man.

'Isn't he very handsome?' persisted Eveline.

'To partial eyes, perhaps, but there are plenty of men in the world
quite as handsome--even more so, I doubt not.  I like him already,
but don't let him think so; besides, I also like our English visitor,
Mr. Holcroft.'

'I do _not_!' said Eveline, decisively.

'Why?'

'He is horsey in bearing, and his face, though handsome, I grant you,
often wears a sinister, sharp, and supercilious expression.'

'How tanned Allan is by the Indian sun!'

'I think his face and head both grand and handsome!' exclaimed his
sister, with affectionate enthusiasm; 'he quite reminds me of the old
Greeks.'

'I was not aware you knew any of them,' laughed Olive.

'Their sculptures, I mean,' replied Eveline, as they swept down the
great staircase to the dining-room.




CHAPTER V.

OLIVE AND ALLAN.

A few days had now passed since Allan Graham's return to Dundargue,
but he seemed--though greatly attracted by his cousin Olive, and in a
manner compelled to think of her as something more than a mere
cousin--to make no progress in her favour at all.  Sometimes he
smoked beside her in utter silence, while she swung in a hammock
between two trees on the lawn, deep--or affecting to be so--in the
last three-volume novel that had come in the box from Edinburgh; and,
when they stole furtive glances at each other, his were curious and
hers, under the shadow of her gorgeous Japanese umbrella, were
hostile, defiant at least, and thus not without a certain drollery;
but few remarks were interchanged of a more exciting nature than that
'the weather was lovely,' or 'the leaves were falling.'

In these days, and for long after, Olive was terribly uncertain in
her moods, and to Allan Graham it seemed at times as if she almost
disliked him.

When they were alone together, which was seldom, she scarcely spoke
to him, and thus his enforced silence disposed her to be more silent
still.  To Olive the whole situation was one of miserable unrest; she
felt that there was something grotesque in it, and she longed
intensely to be anywhere else than at Dundargue.

While Allan, admiring her rare beauty and pretty, petulant ways, was
already learning to love her, he found his tongue loaded, as it were,
tied up, and his tenderness cramped by the strange tenor of her
father's will, which made him feel that, love her as he might, that
love would never seem pure, or without the taint of selfishness.

He had procured for her at Malta a complete suite of gold and
pearl-mounted Maltese jewellery, the best that could be found in the
Strada San Paoli, costing him more than even he could well afford;
but now so cold and repellant was her demeanour that he had not the
courage as yet to present the elaborate trinkets--so rich in fretwork
and fine as a gossamer web--so they were left to repose in their
purple velvet cases.

Yet his thoughts about her were becoming persistent now.  Times there
were when he conceived that he would treat her judiciously, but
tenderly, and in such a fashion that her feelings must slide into a
species of sisterly, or at least cousinly, interest in him; but
then--at these times--a flash of her dark grey-blue eyes cast these
intentions to the winds, though Allan began to feel nothing but
passionate love for her.

To him, as to her, the situation imparted an awkwardness now, that of
course he had never been conscious of when a boy.  He did not want
the money of his cousin or of anyone else, as he muttered to himself
while tugging and twisting his thick, dark moustache; and thus, with
all the tenderness that was growing in his heart for Olive, he often
unconsciously adopted towards her a studied courtesy and almost
indifferent bearing that somewhat galled her ready pride, and made
her think 'this indifference to me, and the beauty all men aver I
possess, can only spring from a love he bears some one else; and,
with that love in his heart, he seems actually ready to conform to
the outrageous wishes of papa!'

And more convinced of this suspicion did she become when she found
that he evinced no more desire to seek her society than that of his
mother or sister; but this was the result of her own bearing.

Allan was ere long in sore perplexity.  The slightest attempt at
tenderness she repelled or seemed to shrink from, as a sensitive
plant shrinks from the touch; and, on the other hand, the lack of it
seemed to increase her coldness and rouse her sense of pride.

'What the deuce is the meaning of this?' muttered Allan, as he
chanced upon a volume one day.  It was a very handsome and expensive
edition of some of Byron's poems, which had been given by Hawke
Holcroft to Olive as a birthday gift, and on turning over the leaves
of which he found innumerable paragraphs and lines pencilled on pages
that seemed to fall naturally open, where these marks, all of which
referred to love and passion, were most plentiful.

All of these seemed to have been selected with an ulterior view for
her perusal and study.  Allan knit his brows and tossed the volume to
the other side of the table.

'So, so,' thought he, 'Cousin Olive has had a guide for her reading,
and the guide is that fellow Holcroft.  He has made good use of his
time, hang him!'

Olive, who had been watching him under the deep fringes of her eyes,
smiled when she saw the action, and, instantly divining the reason of
it, resolved not to leave her Byron lying about in future; and now a
new mood seized her.

'Tell me, Allan,' she said, suddenly looking up from a piece of music
she was studying, 'did you ever think of me at all when you were all
these years far away in India?'

'Have you forgotten what I told you on the evening we met on the
lawn?' said he, reproachfully, yet surprised by her taking the
initiative in a conversation, especially of this kind.  'Often,
indeed, did I think of you!'

'How--in what fashion?'

'As my merry little playmate when I was a mere youth--the droll girl
to whom I was somehow tied up under Uncle Raymond's will.'

'You phrase it rightly,' said she, biting her coral nether lip.
'Tied up; yes, but I won't be so.  Yet you did think of me as a droll
little playmate?'

'Yes; how else could I think of you?  Not as the lovely girl I find
you now, Olive.'

'You may know by this time that I hate all flattery,' said she,
blushing hotly at what she had brought upon herself by a blunt
reference to a hitherto ignored subject--their mutual relation to
each other.

'I have here a gift I brought you from India,' observed Allan,
timidly, as he unlocked his desk and thought of the Maltese
ornaments, but did not dare refer to them as yet.

'A gift?' said she, coldly, with face half averted.

'A little silver idol of Siva, beautifully carved and chased--will
you accept of it?'

'Thanks--with pleasure,' said she, trembling lest it had been a ring.
'How curious, and yet how grotesquely hideous it is!' she added,
turning it round, and then balancing it in the white palm of a slim
and delicate hand.

'And rather a curious story attends it--if you care to hear.'

'Please to tell me,' said she, her curiosity roused.  'Why, the funny
thing has ever so many heads, and a dozen of arms at least!'

'We were in cantonments at Hurdwur, in Delhi,' said Allan, glad to
secure her attention even for a few minutes, 'when a subadar-major of
the 10th Native Infantry, a disciple of Siva, wishing to sacrifice to
his little idol, placed it by the bank of the river there, which is
one of the greatest places for Hindoo purification, and the resort of
thousands of pilgrims from every part of Hindostan.  While he turned
aside to get the ghee with which to anoint it, some person adroitly
carried it off.  After searching for it in vain, with consternation
in his soul, the unfortunate subadar-major went to the priest of the
nearest temple, and, with tears in his eyes, related his loss.

'"Dog!" exclaimed the priest, "you have lost your god, and must
prepare to die, for death alone can soothe the wrath of Siva."

'"If die I must," replied the wretched subadar-major, with clasped
hands and trembling knees, though a brave man, as the medals on his
breast proved, "it shall be by drowning in the holy river; so come
with me to the edge thereof, and give me your blessing."

'The priest consented, and followed him to the Ganges, into which he
went deliberately.

'"Be courageous, my son--die with joy, and perfect happiness awaits
you," exclaimed the priest.

'"My dear master," said the subadar, "before I perish, lend me _your_
god that I may adore it--the water is already up to my neck."

'The priest consented, and handed his idol to the subadar-major, who,
as if by accident, let it drop in the deep water.

'"Ah! master," he exclaimed, as if in horror and dismay, "what a new
misfortune!  Your god is also lost, and so we must die together--for
you must drown, too, and go with me to the throne of Siva!"

'And, approaching the priest, he strove to grasp the hand of the
latter, who stood pale and trembling on the lowest step of the ghaut
or landing-place.

'"What trash do you speak?" the priest suddenly exclaimed, in great
wrath; "can there be any harm in losing a little image of baked clay,
not worth an anna!  I have dozens of such in my temple close by; let
us each choose one, and keep silence on the subject!"

'The subadar did so then, but chose this fine silver one, which he
bestowed on me for kindness shown to him when dying of a wound
received in a skirmish, and I brought it home as a bauble for you,
Cousin Olive.'

She placed the idol on the table, and remained silent, while Allan
eyed her wistfully.

'Why is my presence so distasteful to you?' he asked, after a
minute's pause.

'Distasteful!  Oh!  Allan, don't say so,' said she, impressed by the
pathos of his tone, but for a moment only; 'it is you who think, or
seem to think so.'

'Olive!' he exclaimed, a little impatiently and reproachfully as he
drew near her.

'There--there--that will do,' said she, starting up, 'don't bring
down the ceiling on me--auntie more than all!'

And she swept from the room, leaving the idol behind her.

Allan sighed with annoyance, and addressed her no more during the
whole of that day.  She was conscious of this, for she remarked to
Lady Aberfeldie in the evening,

'How odd--how strange Cousin Allan is to me!'

'Strange?'

'Yes, aunt.'

'I know not what you mean, Olive,' she replied, a little gravely and
severely; 'but to me it seems that you are always strange, and not my
son, the Master.'

Lady Aberfeldie had a soft, but set face of the classic type, with a
mouth that, though beautiful and aristocratic, could become very
fixed in expression at times, and it seemed so now to Olive, thus
that young lady withdrew.

'Our Allan is young and handsome, noble and most unselfishly in love
with her, as I am beginning to hope, Eveline, so what more would
Olive Raymond wish for?' said Lady Aberfeldie to her daughter.

'She would have that, which she has not, mamma, perfect freedom to
accept or refuse whom she chose.  Unselfish in love I know Allan must
be; but that is precisely the point which Olive is left to doubt.'

'Wherefore?'

'Through that unlucky will, which makes a kind of bondswoman of her.'

'I would to heaven the silly document had never been framed!  I have
often feared that it might lead to all our attention, care, and
affection being misconstrued by her; but Allan might have been
sickly, weakly, even deformed, and, with the terms of this will
hanging over her, what would she have thought then?'

'Then, as I have heard her say, the will might be reduced by a court
of law.'

At this reply a clouded expression came into the fair, colourless
face of Lady Aberfeldie, but just then a servant in the Graham
livery, yellow and black, approached with a note on a salver.

'From papa!' she said, while cutting it open with a mother-of-pearl
knife.  'Just a line or two to say he will be home in a couple of
days, and is certainly bringing with him Mr. Hawke Holcroft, "the son
of his old friend," and that other young detrimental, Stratherroch.
He is well-nigh penniless, but, with your papa, to be in the Black
Watch is quite equal to a patent of nobility.'

Eveline felt her colour fade, while a sad expression stole over her
soft face, and her mother, after glancing at her narrowly, added,

'He also brings our wealthy friend, Sir Paget Puddicombe, the M.P.
for Slough-cum-Sloggit, in Yorkshire.  You remember him in London
last season, and how much he admired you, dear?'

Eveline _did_ remember him, and how the rich but elderly baronet's
attentions, encouraged by her parents, were the ridicule of her girl
friends and the bane of her existence; yet she only sighed and
remained silent, and, passing through a French window, quitted the
drawing-room to join her brother, who was smoking a cigar on the
terrace, and teasing the peacocks as they sat on the stately
balustrade.

He was in rather a similar mood.  He felt the demeanour of Olive
after the little episode of the idol keenly, and, remembering the
pencilled Byron, was, of course, inclined to connect Hawke Holcroft
with that demeanour; so he had certainly become, for a time, cold and
constrained in manner to his cousin.

'When was that photo of Olive done?' he asked, rather abruptly.

'The one in the ball dress?'

'Yes.'

'When we were last in Edinburgh; but I do not remember where the
studio was.'

'She gave one to that Mr. Holcroft.'

'I was quite unaware that she did so,' said Eveline, with some
annoyance of manner.

'Look here, Eve, if, when in London,' grumbled Allan, 'she shies her
photos about in this fashion they will soon be in every fellow's
possession, and we may, ere long, expect to find them, like those of
professional beauties, on glove and match-boxes.'

'What a funny and horrid idea!' said his sister, passing her arm
through his and nestling her head on his shoulder, while he,
stooping, kissed her _mignonne_ face with a smiling caress.

'There is nothing funny about it,' he replied, though, like her, he
could little foresee the trouble that unlucky photograph was to cost
in the future.  'And, to say the least of it, Olive treats me with
almost hostility at times.'

'She does not conceal from me a resentment at her lack of free will.'

'As for Uncle Raymond's arrangements, I would to goodness that he had
left all he had to his old housekeeper and her infernal screeching
cockatoo with the yellow tuft.'

'Certainly Olive does not seem to be the kind of girl to be disposed
of against her wish, Allan; you may read that in the firm tread of
her little feet, in the carriage of her head, and the perfect
possession of her manner.'

'But surely she may be won--though she will not understand me.'

'I hope she will ere long; but is there not a writer who says, Allan,
that while the world lasts the difficulty of women understanding and
making allowance for the feelings of men in what pertains to love,
"will be probably one of the great sources of darkness and confusion
in the social arrangement of things."'

'What a dear little casuist it is,' said he, as she raised her
_petite_ figure on tip-toe to kiss his well-tanned cheek; 'but,' he
added, 'I am in a state of great uncertainty.'

'Uncertainty can always be ended; but then perhaps how bitterly--how
very bitterly,' replied Eveline, who was not without some harrowing
thoughts of her own; and something in her tone caused Allan to regard
her soft hazel eyes, and sweet, shy face, with tenderness and inquiry.

'Of what are you thinking, or of--_whom_?' he whispered, as his arm
went caressing round her, and he stroked her bright, sheeny hair.

'I may trust you, Allan?' she said, in a broken voice.

'To death, _petite_.  You are thinking of--of Evan Cameron?'

Eveline sobbed now.

'Has he spoken of love to you?' asked Allan, in a low voice, and with
a troubled expression in his face.

'Never; he knows it would be hopeless,' she replied, huskily.

'Poor Evan! and the governor is bringing him again--a grand mistake!
How the deuce is all this to end with us?  But don't sob so, my
little darling,' he added, as he drew her closer to him.

Yet, despite her brother's sympathy and tenderness, Eveline Graham
let her tears flow freely, and he promised to keep her secret that
she and Evan Cameron cherished an unspoken and hopeless love for each
other; and in a brief space they were to meet again!

Meanwhile, though somewhat relieved by having her brother for a
confidant, she was both restless and unhappy.  She strolled upon the
terrace to feed the peacocks, or wandered listlessly in the garden,
going from occupation to occupation, taking up a book--one of Mudie's
last--only to toss it aside; seated herself before the piano, rose
then and left it.  Anon she resorted to her sketching-block, sorted
her colours, selected a brush, only to quit any attempt to work with
a hopeless sigh.




CHAPTER VI.

THE CHAGRIN OF LOVE.

Lord Aberfeldie duly arrived at Dundargue with his three gentlemen
visitors, their approach being heralded by the pipes of Ronald Gair,
who was perched on a seat of the game-laden wagonette as it bowled up
the avenue.

On the first day of his return the peer was anxious to learn upon
what footing the cousins were--if Allan had made a proposal, or 'even
opened the trenches,' and if so, with what success.  On these points
he was enlightened by Lady Aberfeldie, and, though not very much
surprised to find matters as they were, he trusted to propinquity and
cousinly feeling of intercourse, as trump cards in the game, and was
sure that all would come right in the end, and before Allan's leave
of absence was out.

There was no selfishness in this desire of Lord Aberfeldie.  He had
no power to alter the matter as it stood, for if she did not marry
Allan if he was willing to marry her, 'then and in that case,' as the
will had it, her patrimony would be lost even to herself.  Allan's
death alone would save it for her.

Great indeed, thought the girl with bitterness, must have been her
father's regard for the house of Aberfeldie!

'What friends--such lovers we might be but for the confounded plans
of that eccentric old fellow!' was the ever-recurring thought of
Allan.

'You are at least fond of her?' said the peer, as he and his son
smoked their cigars together on the terrace that overlooked the
far-stretching vista of the Carse of Gowrie, then bathed in the ruddy
splendour of the setting sun.

'Fond of Olive!  Yes, as much as she will permit me to be.  She is my
cousin, of course,' replied Allan.

'There is something evasive--doubtful--in your answer; but you must
at some time or other propose to her.  You know precisely the terms
of her father's remarkable will.'

'Yes, and that it hangs like a millstone round the necks of us both,
rendering what may be the dearest wish of our hearts liable, perhaps,
to the grossest misconstruction.  She has more than once told Eveline
that to gain freedom of action she would face poverty--anything.'

'Tuts!  Romantic rant!  Much she knows of what poverty is.  But why
should she even think of facing it?'

'To be free and unfettered, as I have said.'

'Relinquishing to you all that portion of her fortune which does not
go to charitable institutions?'

'Yes.'

'Poor girl!  A silly and impetuous threat.  But she will think better
of it, Allan, by-and-by, and we have fully five years to count upon
yet.'

But it did not seem as if the fair Olive was likely to change her
mind soon, to judge by her bearing that evening, when, after dinner,
the guests and family at Dundargue assembled in the drawing-room.

The repast was over, and thereafter, ere the ladies withdrew, Ronald
Gair, with all his drones in order, his Crimean, Indian, and Ashanti
medals glittering on his breast, had marched thrice round the table,
according to his daily wont, in 'full fig,' looking as only a
Highland piper or a peacock can look; and, to the amazement of Sir
Paget Puddicombe and the disgust of Hawke Holcroft, winding up 'The
Birks of Aberfeldie' by several warlike skirls at the back of his
master's chair--the dinner, we say, was over, and the gentlemen had
joined the ladies in the stately drawing-room, which was lighted by
more than one glittering chandelier.

Lord Aberfeldie, his son, and Stratherroch, as they wore the kilt,
had, of course, substituted for their rough shooting-jackets others
of black cloth, with the irreproachable white vests and ties as
evening costume, and had also assumed their silver-mounted dirks;
while Holcroft and one or two more were _de rigueur_ in the funereal
attire, which a writer calls 'the butler-suit, the most hideous
clothing yet hit upon by our species.'

In that brilliant drawing-room, grouped with well-bred people, were
some curious elements of secret doubt and future discord that did not
quite meet the eye.

Holcroft hung over the chair of Olive so closely that, at times, the
tip of his long and waxed tawny moustache nearly touched her head,
while she played with her fan, opening and shutting it listlessly as
they conversed in low tones, he adopting a sentimental one, though it
was ever his boast that he 'was not one of those fools who hoard by
them dried flowers, locks of hair, and all that sort of thing.'

Quietly watched by Lady Aberfeldie, whose lips wore their set
expression, Evan Cameron was entirely occupied with her daughter,
while Allan seemed quite as intent on a new guest, Miss Logan of
Loganlee, a girl possessed of considerable personal attractions; and
his father talked politics with Loganlee himself, the parish
minister, and Sir Paget Puddicombe, a short, pompous, and squat, but
rather pleasant little man, with a prematurely bald head, which he
had a way of jerking forward from his neck like a turtle, a rubicund
face, two merry eyes, and whose age was rather doubtful, but too old
any way for a girl of Eveline Graham's years, though he affected
considerable juvenility of manner.

Lord Aberfeldie, who generally about that time, when at Dundargue,
was wont to enjoy a quiet little game of chess or bezique with Olive
or Eveline, was rather bored by the _empressement_ with which the
clergyman, Sir Paget, and Loganlee discussed politics and the
prospects of the ministry.

The latter, a sombre man, whose air of respectability was almost
oppressive, was one of a style of men common enough in Scotland.  A
small landed proprietor, he had contrived to become M.P. in the
Liberal interest for a cluster of Scottish burghs (each of which, if
in England, would have had two members), and he was chiefly
noted--being 'Parliament House bred'--for neglecting Scottish
interests and toadying to the Lord-Advocate, and consequently
obtained the usual legal reward, a sheriffship, or something of that
kind, with a thousand a year or so.

He seldom opened his mouth, save to talk on politics; he was tall and
thin, with very square shoulders, grizzled, sandy, mutton-chop
whiskers, apple-green eyes, and nothing more about him remarkable,
save a curious air of perpetual self-assertion, combined, as we have
said, with an oppressive one of respectability.

His host began to change the tenor of the conversation by hoping that
Sir Paget found his quarters comfortable last night, adding that he
occupied 'the Johnson Room.'

'Why is it so called?' asked Sir Paget, jerking forward his bald head.

'Dr. Johnson slept a night in Dundargue when on his famous tour.'

'Of which Boswell makes no mention?' said Mr. Logan, inquiringly.

'Because my ancestor did not pay him sufficient deference; and,
indeed, I fear we should scarcely ever have heard of the literary
bear of Bolt Court and Fleet Street but for that Scotch toady of his.
Though he alleged that the most valuable piece of timber in Scotland
was his walking-stick, he might have seen some fine trees at the
Birks of Aberfeldy.  We must ride over there, Sir Paget, and I will
show you the cradle of the Black Watch, my old regiment of immortal
memory.'

'How?'

'It was first mustered there on the 25th of October, 1739.'

'Ah!' said Sir Paget, who was not so much interested in the matter as
the speaker.

Sir Paget was a childless widower, and had been left a noble fortune
in many ways, including nearly the whole of Slough-cum-Sloggit, of
which his father rose by his own merits to be mayor.  He had entered
the town a tattered lad, with only a sixpence in his pocket, and, in
due time, the sixpence became the basis of colossal wealth.  He had
been made a baronet by the ministry of the day--no one knew precisely
for what; but the wealth he left behind him gave his son an interest
in the eyes of Lady Aberfeldie he was unlikely to attain in the soft
hazel orbs of her daughter.

Sir Paget generally stood with his chest puffed out, reminding one of
a pouter-pigeon, his little, fat hands interlaced behind his back,
and often as not under the tails of his coat, his round,
good-humoured face and twinkling eyes turned up to the faces of those
with whom he conversed, as most men, and women, too, had the
advantage of him in stature.

With a gold _pince-nez_ balanced on his very pug nose, he was what
young ladies described as 'an absurd little man' whose tender
speeches they laughed at--none more than Eveline--till matters took a
serious turn, though he failed to feel the truth of the aphorism,
'Let no lover cherish sanguine hopes when the object of his choice
has grown to look upon him in the light of the ridiculous.'

Evan Cameron, we have said, sighed for Eveline; hopeless as his
undeclared love had been, the presence of the wealthy English
baronet, in conjunction with certain rumours he had heard, made it
more hopeless than ever; and, unattractive though Sir Paget's years
and figure, he felt intuitively that in him he had a dangerous rival.

When he found that this most eligible _parti_ was again on the
_tapis_--one whose name had been associated with that of Eveline in
at least one 'society' paper during the last London season, poor
Stratherroch's heart sank down to zero.  He felt and knew that, with
Lady Aberfeldie especially, he was literally 'nowhere' by his want of
wealth, though, like a true Highlander, he could trace his lineage
back into the misty times of Celtic antiquity; but, aristocratic
though she was, the peeress set little store on that.

Eveline Graham seemed as much beyond his reach as the moon.  He felt
that, for his own peace of mind, he ought to quit Dundargue as soon
as possible, yet he clung desperately to the perilous delight of the
girl's society.

To all appearance, the pair were simply looking over, almost in
silence, a large book of clear-skied and strongly-shadowed photos of
Indian scenery brought home by Allan, yet both their hearts had but a
single thought, and, when the downward glance of his soft grey eyes
met hers, she felt that, in spite of herself, there was something in
it like a magnetic spell.

Passionate and pleading eyes they were, generous and loving in
expression, telling the tale his lips had not yet uttered, and might
never do so; and the girl lowered her white lids as if a weight
oppressed them, and the diamond locket on her white bosom sparkled as
a sigh escaped her.

A little way off, in something of the same pose, Hawke Holcroft, with
a glass in his pale, sinister eye, was hanging, as we have said, over
Olive Raymond, doing his utmost in _sotto voce_ to fascinate that
young lady, while pretending to translate, as suited the occasion and
himself, for the edification of his fair listener, the lettering of
one of the Chinese or Japanese fans that were strewed about the
tables.

Now, Mr. Hawke Holcroft knew nothing about the terms of Mr. Raymond's
will, or of the existence of any such document, and might never know.
He was only certain that Olive was undoubtedly an heiress; that he
himself was very impecunious, and ere long might be well-nigh
desperate; and so he did not see why he should not, to use his own
horsey phraseology, 'enter stakes as well as another.'

Rumour, certainly, had linked the names of the cousins together; 'but
if she is engaged to Graham,' thought the observant Holcroft, 'it is
strange that she wears no engagement ring.'

He knew not that, separated as the pair had been almost from
childhood, no such little formality as the presentation of a ring
could have been gone through; and now, as the Master did not see his
way to it as yet, Holcroft was 'scoring,'or thought so.

He was leaving nothing unsaid to enchain her attention.  He seemed
very clever: at least he could converse fluently on many subjects;
seemed to have been everywhere and to have seen everything worth
seeing, or pretended to have done so, which was most likely.

'However they stand, her heart is not in it,' was his ever-recurring
thought; 'and if so, why the deuce shouldn't I try my hand?  She has
a pot of money--indeed, no end of money, I hear; but, then, if her
noble aunt and uncle have made up their noble minds to pounce upon
her as a daughter-in-law, how is she to resist, unless she elopes, if
"Barkis" (meaning Allan) "is willin'"?  They can make her life a
burden to her until she gives in, or--or I run away with her, and why
the devil should I not?'

Holcroft was an artful man, and well acquainted with every phase of
dissipated life; he had suave manners when he chose and an
unexceptionable appearance.  With many debts and secret passions, he
was cold and selfish; a man who never made a move in any way without
forecast and calculation; and who might commit a crime if driven to
it, but never precisely a folly.

He was closely watching Olive while he conversed with her; he admired
her beautiful person, but still more her ample purse.  She dared to
trifle with him at times, he thought; and then, even when looking
down upon her satin-like hair, her dazzling white shoulders and
innocent violet eyes, with a vengeful feeling he mentally vowed that
he would _compel_ her to love him, or accept him, he cared not which,
if human will and cunning failed him not!

He had a love--a passion for her--in a strange fashion of his own,
yet times there were when he almost hated her for fencing with him:
and little could the soft, bright beauty, who raised her fine eyes
from time to time to his and conversed so laughingly with him, have
conceived the conflicting emotions that were concealed in his breast
under a smiling exterior, or the shame and agony he was yet to cost
her.

Even when he attempted to look loving, there were a cold expression
and lack of colour in his eyes, and there was something very
significant of an iron will about his lips and powerful chin.

Olive had no warm feeling for Holcroft, and save for the obnoxious
will would infinitely have preferred her cousin Allan in the end; but
she affected just then to believe in Platonic friendship (blended
with a little judicious flirtation) so firmly that, to pique Allan,
she showed a great apparent preference for his would-be rival.

Olive and Holcroft knew that this seeming flirtation was perilous
work, and might compromise them both with Lord and Lady Aberfeldie,
and with Allan, too, if it attracted attention; but Holcroft had a
game to play.  Olive's proud little heart was full of resentment and
pique, and then anything with a spice of danger in it is always
curiously fascinating.

More than all, Olive was beginning to feel conscious that, under the
circumstances, it was strangely awkward to be in the same house with
Allan Graham--the intended husband to whom her father had bequeathed
her.  But whither could she go?

In more than one instance, in the drawing-room at Dundargue, that
night was illustrated the aphorism that language is given us to
conceal our thoughts, and much was exhibited of what the French not
inaptly term the chagrin or peevishness of love.




CHAPTER VII.

LE CHAGRIN D'AMOUR.

Allan Graham, with all his quiet and growing love for Olive, seeing
how she received him, neither petted her as he was wont to do in his
boyhood, nor after a time had attempted any tenderness with her; but
trusted to the progress of events and the necessity for fulfilling
her father's wish rather than to his own influence or power of
persuasion, aware that she could only become the bride of another,
penniless, or nearly so, a circumstance which militated sadly against
himself.

But this assumed coldness and calmness withal, Olive could feel, with
a woman's acuteness in such matters, how much the expression of his
dark eyes and the tone of his voice changed and softened,
unconsciously, when he looked at and addressed her.  She was of his
own blood, like a sister, whom he might treat with formality or
affection, coldly or playfully, according to the occasion or the
mood, and whom he might love as much as he liked, or she would
permit.  Ah! this tender and mysterious tie of cousinship must give
him, as he thought, 'a great pull' over Hawke Holcroft, and every
other man.

On this evening, how handsome she looked, in all her wilfullness!
How Allan longed that he might take her in his embrace, to kiss her
starry eyes, her peach-like cheek, and sheeny hair with an ardour he
had never felt in his boyhood, when he had done so many times; but
now, somehow, he dared scarcely think of such a thing, and there was
that fellow Holcroft, with all his easy insouciance, and with the
smile of one who never laughed really in his life, hanging just
rather too much over her, with a considerable amount of empressement
in his eyes and manner, pouring his flowery nothings into her
apparently willing ear, and Lady Aberfeldie, who could stand this no
longer, became secretly provoked, and opened and shut her fan of
heavy mother-of-pearl with such vehemence that the sticks rattled.

And, with the emotions we have described in his heart, Allan, as if
the further to play out the game of cross-purposes, in a spirit of
pique, doubtless, remained in close attendance on Miss Ruby Logan.

Now the latter was not the heiress of Loganlee, as she had several
brothers; but, even had she been so, it would not have enhanced her
value in the ambitious estimation of Lady Aberfeldie.

But Ruby was a very handsome girl, with a skin pure, transparent, and
delicate as the lining of a shell, while her fine hair was ample in
quantity, and of the darkest amber; her eyes large, deep-blue, and
fringed by dark lashes.  She was large, full in form, and altogether
a bright and attractive-looking girl, and Olive felt conscious that
she might prove rather a formidable rival if she ever had to view her
as such.

Replacing the three daughters of the minister of Dundargue, who had
been afflicting the company with much boarding-school Mozart and
Chopin, who would have deemed anything national vulgar, to say the
least of it, compared with some lachrymose drawing-room ballad, and
who in a ditty of great length and mystery, which we quote at second
hand, had informed their hearers--

  'Mermaids we be,
  Under the blue sea'--

replacing them, we say, Ruby Logan sang to Allan in a rich
mezzo-soprano voice, and with a suppressed emotion, born perhaps of a
coquettish desire to dazzle and please him, as a handsome young
fellow of good position, all of which proved a fresh annoyance to my
Lady Aberfeldie, who deemed music at times 'a convenient noise for
drowning conversation, and under whose shelter the old people talk
scandal and the young people make love,' and who knew that Miss
Logan, like Olive, had that wonderful charm, which is, perhaps, one
of the greatest any girl can possess, a lovely and ever-changing
expression; and even Allan, as he gazed down into the depths of her
dark-blue eyes (while she sang _at_ him), and anon glanced furtively
at Olive, thought to himself,

'How the dickens _will_ our little game of cross-purposes end?'

Lady Aberfeldie was just then indulging in the same surmise, as, full
of watchfulness, she occupied an ottoman in the centre of the inner
drawing-room, cresting up her white throat and well-shaped head;
looking in her stately beauty like the heroine of some grand old
Scottish romance of the days of Montrose or Prince Charles, for there
was something of a past age in her style and bearing, though attired
in the latest fashion by a modiste of Princes Street.

In her matronhood, Lady Aberfeldie had still that subdued charm which
was not now the beauty of youth, yet stood very much in place of it;
but, with all her softness of manner, she was a proud and determined
woman, capable of doing much to accomplish a purpose of her own, and
the marriage of Eveline to Sir Paget Puddicombe was certainly her
purpose at present.

Thinking that it was high time to make some change in the general
grouping, the moment Miss Logan's musical performance was done she
summoned Allan to her side by a wave of her fan.

'So glad I am that your father, who so often mistakes, invited dear
Sir Paget here,' she said, in low voice.

'He is rather a good sort,' replied Allan, in his off-hand way;
'capital cellar and preserves, I have heard.'

'So rich, and not _very_ old; he always admired Eveline, and she
certainly cares for no one else--thus I have great hopes for her,
Allan,' she added, confidently; but Allan sighed; he knew better, and
recalled the tears of his gentle sister on the terrace, and her half
murmured admissions of deep interest in that winsome young
brother-officer, whom he loved so well; and, as he remained silent,
his mother spoke again.

'Mr. Holcroft seems to be fairly absorbing Olive; he has been talking
to her quite long enough, and this will not do; ask her to play
something at my request, and do you lead her to the piano.'

'We are anticipated,' said Allan, as he saw his sister seat herself
at the instrument with young Cameron by her side, busy among the
leaves of her music; and a shade of annoyance deepened in the face of
Lady Aberfeldie as she glanced at her husband, whose eyes were turned
also towards the pair, and she knew from personal experience how much
may be inferred or deduced from the words of a song, and also how
many a tender speech, an accompaniment, however ill or well executed,
may conceal.

Lord Aberfeldie, of course, would never consent to Eveline having a
suitor with means so limited as those of her young admirer; but,
though the idea of such a contingency had not occurred to him.  Lady
Aberfeldie was much sharper and more suspicious; she saw 'how the
tide set,' and was much opposed to Cameron being even a visitor at
Dundargue in any way, as an utter 'detrimental,' and declined to see
how his being one of 'Ours'--the Black Watch--altered _that_ matter.

And now, after a considerable amount of preluding, much unnecessary
whispering, as 'my lady' thought, much glancing and many reciprocal
smiles, Evan Cameron began to sing, accompanied by her daughter; and
more annoyed became the matron on finding the theme chosen one of
love and tenderness that could be, and was, sung with considerable
_point_--a now forgotten little Scotch song, which the author adapted
to the air of 'Rousseau's Dream,' and with the desire to excel before
the girl he loved better than life, young Cameron, gave his whole
soul to the lyric.

  'See the moon o'er cloudless Jura
    Shining in the loch below;
  See the distant mountain towering
    Like a pyramid of snow.
  Scenes of grandeur--scenes of childhood--
    Scenes so dear to love and me!
  Let us roam by bower and wild wood,
    All is lovelier when with _thee_.

  'On Jura's hills the winds are sighing,
    But all is silent in the grove;
  And the leaves with dewdrops glistening
    Sparkle like the eye of love.
  Night so calm, so clear, so cloudless,
    Blessed night to love and me;
  Let us roam by bower and fountain,
    All is lovelier when with _thee_.'

And it was not unnoticed by Lady Aberfeldie that at the closing word
of each verse the eyes of the pair unconsciously met.  Ere Eveline
could be prevented, she had acceded to Cameron's softly uttered
desire that she would sing anything for _him_; and she frankly did
so, throwing into her voice the thrill and tenderness that are sure
to come into a girl's utterances when singing to the man she loves.
The heart of Cameron responded to this mysterious influence, and, as
the girl regarded him furtively from time to time, she thought, with
his crisp wavy hair, his clear grey eyes, general expression and
bearing, he looked every inch what he was, the descendant of that Sir
Evan Cameron of Lochiel who met Cromwell's men in combat under the
shadow of Ben Nevis; yet to other eyes he seemed just a good sample
of an infantryman who had across his forehead the genuine sunmark of
his craft, made under the line of his forage-cap by a scorching
tropical sun.

And now when Lady Aberfeldie, to stop any more musical performances
between these two, prevailed upon Olive to replace her cousin, she
was quick enough to detect that the former, displeased or piqued by
Allan's apparent attention to Ruby Logan, swept past him with the
most subtle little touch of disdain in the carriage of her handsome
head.

Now Cameron had once more to give place to pudgy little Sir Paget,
who--puffing out his chest and jerking forward his bald shining
head--began to do his best to make himself pleasing to Eveline, while
the latter, under her mother's watchful eye, was compelled to listen
and appear to act with compliance and complacency; and poor Eveline,
like Olive, often felt with some compunction that her mother's
general bearing--which a certain quiet yet lofty dignity seemed never
to forsake--was more calculated to inspire respect than love.

And Cameron, while he found himself talking rather absently on
regimental matters with Lord Aberfeldie, as he looked at Eveline from
time to time, was thinking sadly in his honest heart,

'Oh, what madness it is in me to love her as I do, and how wicked if
I lure her into loving me!  Can I expect her ambitious mother or her
calculating father ever to view with favour one so penniless as I am?
Would it be honourable in me to profit by her girlish prepossession
in my favour, and so preclude her from reaping those advantages of
wealth, position, and rank which she is entitled to expect, and to
which her parents looked forward? and alas! as the wife of Sir
Paget--if such be her fate--poor Eveline will be lost for ever to me.'

His breast felt torn by such thoughts as these; and, sooth to say, it
is as often amid the splendour and luxury of life, as amid its
squalor and poverty, that some of its bitterest tragedies are acted
out.

But now the party began to break up--the ladies to seek their
respective apartments, and the gentlemen to adjourn for a time to the
smoking-room.

As the two cousins, each so different in her style of loveliness,
crossed the great apartment, the soft _frou-frou_ of their long
silken dresses seemed to mingle with their soft laughter and silvery
voices.  Sir Paget jerked forward his head and remarked to his
hostess that 'they made a charming picture.'

Each had a sore place in her heart, but there was no appearance of it
then.

Though resenting the position in which she was placed, and much
inclined to resist it, Olive Raymond--such is female caprice--also
resented Allan's having hovered so much about the amber-haired
beauty, and, when she bade him adieu for the night, she could not
help singing softly, with some point and waggery, as she glanced back
at him, the lines of Tennyson's song:

  'I know a maiden fair to see,
                Take care!
  She can both false and friendly be,
                Beware, beware!
  Trust her not, she is fooling thee.'

But whether she applied the words to herself or Ruby Logan it puzzled
him to divine.

Olive and Eveline were of an age, and able to sympathise with each
other in every thought or fancy.  They had grown up together like
sisters, Olive, as an orphan, doubtless being the most petted of the
two by the household ever since she came a little child to Dundargue,
and both were frank, both were open-hearted, and proud of each
other's personal attractions; and now, dismissing their maids, they
brushed out each other's shining hair that they might have a quiet
gossip together.

'So ends a tiresome night,' said Eveline, shrugging her white
shoulders, which shone like ivory in the light of the toilette
candles: 'a night when the conversation of everyone seemed of a
nature so antagonistic, or as if it was all broken up into wrong
duets.'

Like her father, Eveline was anxious to discover how the cousins were
affected towards each other now; yet the course of this evening, in
which Allan had plainly flirted with Ruby Logan, while Olive seemed
to have been engrossed by Mr. Holcroft, did not seem to promise much,
and she hinted this pretty plainly.

'I do think Holcroft loves me, or leads me to infer that he does,'
said Olive, with a soft smile on her downcast face, as she took off
her rings, bangles, and bracelets, and tossed them on the marble
toilette-table.'

'And you--what is your feeling for him?' asked Eveline, with some
anxiety in her face and tone; 'not love, I hope.'

'I don't know what I feel--perhaps it is only a girl's emotion of
gratitude and vanity.'

'I hope it will never be anything more.  You scarcely spoke to poor
Allan to-night?' said Eveline, interrogatively.

'Rather say he scarcely spoke to me!  But we are fated to see quite
enough of each other, I suppose,' replied Olive, as with slender
fingers she coiled and knotted up the silky masses of her rich brown
hair.  'How absurd it is,' she added, petulantly, 'to think, as I
have said a hundred times, that I have a lover cut and dry for me--a
_fiancé_--ever since he was in jackets and knickerbockers!'

After a pause, during which she was critically and approvingly
regarding herself sideways in the swinging cheval-glass, she said,

'When I heard that he was returning to Dundargue, I was quite
prepared to dislike him intensely.'

'Olive!'

'Fact, dear; and since then he must have been sorely puzzled by my
various moods towards him.'

'You speak but with truth in this; and yet he seems to have been
somewhat the same with you.'

'Poor fellow--but ever so good and kind.'

'And--and you think, Olive dear, that you are beginning to love him
as mamma wishes?'

'Nay--nay, I cannot admit that.'

'Even to me?' said Eveline, caressing her.

'Even to you.  Did you not see his manner to-night with Ruby Logan?'

'To pique you, if possible, Olive; but when Allan proposes to you, as
I am sure he will, and must do----'

'_Must_ do!' interrupted Olive.  'Yes--there it is.'

'Well?'

'Then, and in that case, as the will has it, I shall tell him that,
however I may esteem and regard him as my cousin, he can never be
more, or nearer, or dearer than as such.'

Eveline sighed and smiled; but she told this reply next day to Allan,
and hence he became less in a hurry to bring matters to an issue,
though love was growing in his heart, nevertheless.

'Oh, why is it that women cannot speak their minds as men do?  I wish
I dared run away!' exclaimed the petulant beauty, beating the carpet
with a little impatient foot.  'To-day I saw two great brown eagles
winging their way skyward from the rock of Dundargue; and oh!
Eveline, you can't think how long and wistfully I watched them till
they dwindled into tiny specks.'

'Why?'

'They seemed such free agents, and, as such, to be envied.  They had
no wills or last testaments made by others to control their
actions--no parents to rule them in the matters of love and marriage.'

'How droll you are, Olive!  To whom but you would such speculations
occur?  I hope you did not express them to--to----'

'Allan?'

'Yes.'

'Not to Allan.'

'To whom then?'

'Mr. Holcroft.'

'Then, you were very wrong to do so,' said Eveline, almost severely;
'he will be certain to draw his own deductions therefrom.'

'In something else I was, I fear, wrong too.'

'How?'

'I permitted him to try one of my gold bangles--one sent me by Allan
from Delhi--on his arm, and it would not come off again.'

'And the bangle?'

'Is still there,' said Olive, laughing, but not without a little
emotion of alarm.

'Oh, Olive!' exclaimed Eveline, with something of dismay, 'how could
you?  This is worse than the photo.'




CHAPTER VIII.

THE RIDING-PARTY.

For some time the days passed on as they generally do in a
country-house like Dundargue, and there was all the usual flow of
life and--with three exceptions, Sir Paget, Holcroft, and
Cameron--change of guests and visitors, with the amusements wealth
can give.

First came the partridge-shooting, and then the pheasants were to be
knocked over, while the ladies drove almost daily to the preserves
with the luncheon in the drag or large pony-carriage; there were
hunting days, dinners, luncheons, musical evenings, carpet dances,
and so forth, and the inevitable lawn-tennis, with the ladies in
bewitching costumes; but still Allan, damped perhaps by his sister's
communications, 'made no way' with his tantalising cousin, and Hawke
Holcroft, on Lord Aberfeldie's invitation, was still lingering at
Dundargue.

To Allan, Olive had become a part of his life, and each day seemed
only to begin when he met her at breakfast in her charming morning
toilette, fresh from her bath and the hands of Mademoiselle
Clairette, her hair dressed to perfection, and her face radiant with
health and beauty.

'How often do I wish she had not a _sous_!' sighed Allan.  'Then she
might learn that I love her for herself alone.'

The curious position in which they were placed relatively made the
cousins most strange to each other, involving much constraint.

'They are fencing with their feelings,' was Lord Aberfeldie's
conviction.

To Evan Cameron, however, it was evident that Holcroft was 'making
all the running he could' during Allan's absences after the game, or
apparent occupation with laughing Ruby Logan, while it became evident
to Sir Paget and more than one other guest that he got up many a
quiet game at _ecarté_--that most rooking of all games--and many a
match at billiards after the ladies had retired; and it was soon
remarked by the same close observers that he was a singularly
successful player, often pocketing large sums, seldom losing, and
then very slenderly, as if to keep up appearances.

At Dundargue he felt himself in clover!  He knew, or was aware
instinctively, that neither Lady Aberfeldie nor the Master cared much
about him; but he also knew that his host was inspired by the
kindliest feelings towards him as the only son of an early friend and
gallant old Crimean comrade who had gone to his long home.

If any rule governed the erratic life of the horsey and gambling
Holcroft, it was that of resolutely shutting his eyes against
to-morrow, and letting it take care of itself; and, now that there
was a prospect of winning a wife with money--and such a chance seldom
came his way--could he but play his cards well and surely, his
fortune would be made!

He was a mass of absolute selfishness--the result either of his
innate nature or of his nomadic habits.  A life-long bankrupt, he had
been ever readier to borrow than to lend, to smoke any other fellow's
cigars than his own, and to take every advantage of the honourable
and unsuspecting.

Such was the perilous inmate which a mistaken sense of kindness,
gratitude, and hospitality had induced Lord Aberfeldie to make one of
the family circle at Dundargue during the shooting season; and to
whom the advent of the bangle--which, though it slipped easily upon
his wrist, most mysteriously would not come off it--and other
adventitious circumstances, the real cause of which he did not know,
gave a considerable amount of what he termed to himself 'modest
assurance' and confidence of ultimate success.

'I should like to come into a nice little pot of money--a fortune, if
you will--but not with a girl tacked to it,' he said, on one
occasion, to throw Allan 'off the scent,' as he thought.  'I am
neither domestic nor ambitious.  A few thousands would do.'

'And make you content?'

'Content!  I should feel as happy as more than once I have been at
Monaco, when I have seen the croupier's rake pushing a jolly pile of
gold across the _trente-et-quarante_ table towards me, by Jove.'

It did not occur to him that by little speeches like this and
anecdotes about his own acumen in the betting ring, he let a little
light in upon the general tenor of his past and present life, and,
all unconscious that Sir Paget and others listened with slightly
elevated eyebrows, he would produce a sealskin cigar-case of
portentous dimensions, draw therefrom a great Rio Hondo cigar, and
after carefully manipulating it, begin to smoke it with intense
satisfaction.

Hawke Holcroft, like Mr. Micawber, was always waiting for something
to 'turn up' in the way of good for himself, and now thought he had
found that something in Olive Raymond--an heiress free, he deemed, to
choose for herself--free to be wooed and won; and on a day when she
proposed a riding-party to visit Macbeth's Castle of Dunsinane he
very nearly had the hardihood to learn his fate--in the words of
Montrose's song, to put it 'to the touch, to win or lose it all.'

Drives, riding-parties, and rambles to visit artistic bits of scenery
and the rural [** Transcriber's note: line missing from source book?]
lions the neighbourhood afforded every opportunity to those who
wished to cultivate each other's society at Dundargue, and the
expedition proposed by Olive to visit the ruins of the usurper's
castle, proved the occasion of Mr. Hawke Holcroft's attempt to
advance his own interests.

Whatever Lady Aberfeldie's views were, her husband had never been
called upon to fulfil the duties of a vigilant guardian or parent,
and to study the difference between 'detrimentals' and married
parties, so he left the guidance of the whole affair in the hands of
Allan, and remained closeted with his solicitor.

By judicious manoeuvring, Holcroft contrived to pair-off with Olive,
while Allan thus became the escort of Ruby Logan, and Eveline, of
course, fell to Sir Paget, who soon found the truth of the vulgar
adage about two being company, &c., on their being joined by
Stratherroch.

It was a clear and brilliant day early in October, when the blue sky
was flecked by fleecy clouds, and the far-stretching scenery of the
fertile Carse, overlooked by the long chain of heights, named the
Sidlaw Hills, lay steeped in sunshine.

The parks of Dundargue, with their broad acres of velvet-like turf,
their stately oaks and towering beeches, among the gnarled branches
of which legions of gleds were cawing to each other, and brown
squirrels were gliding to and fro; their hedges of ancient thorn, and
others where the hawthorn berries showed red and the wild roses were
blooming--the parks, we say, were left behind, with all their groups
of deer, and the party, certainly a merry and a well-mounted one,
accompanied by the stag-hounds Shiuloch and Bran, careering joyously
on either hand, followed by a couple of splendidly-horsed grooms,
cantered along the highway, and ere long broke, or fell, into that
slow and ambling pace which is suited for conversing with ease.  And
Holcroft, who was well versed in all horsey details, and had a very
appreciative eye, could see that his fair companion's _tout
ensemble_, her riding costume, her hat, veil, and gauntlets were all
perfect, from the coils of brown glossy hair to the little foot that
rested firmly in its tiny stirrup of burnished steel; and that foot
was indeed a model--arched, small, and always full of character in
its elasticity of tread; and, more than all, intoxicated by the
ambient air, the sunshine, her own high spirits, and the pleasure of
being mounted on her own favourite pad, Olive Raymond was looking her
brightest and her best.

He had, while engaging all her attention in conversation, contrived,
unknown to her, by the pacing of his horse, to leave the trio
referred to at some distance behind; while, luckily for him, Allan
Graham, lured on by Ruby Logan--who was something between a flirt and
a hoyden--had gone ahead with her suddenly at a hand-gallop, and now
the pair were out of sight.

There could be no engagement, despite all rumour thereof--not even a
passing fancy--between the cousins, was now Holcroft's conviction,
and of his own ultimate success with Olive he began to have little
doubt, could he but warily mould her to his purpose; and already in
fancy he saw her thousands--how many there were he knew not--firmly
in his grasp.

Though swallowed up by mortgages, his place in Essex--or the few
acres that nominally still remained to him there--caused the
retention of his name among the 'landed gentry of England,' and he
based much upon that circumstance as aiding his designs on Lord
Aberfeldie's ward, to whom he had sometimes dropped glowing hints of
possession that were not nor ever had been his.

Something undefined in Olive's manner rather encouraged him on this
day.  She, to show that she resented the apparent indifference of
Allan as being a 'laggard in love,' even while resenting the tenor of
that family compact which was meant to bind them together, was
disposed to flirt with Holcroft, out of pique rather than precise
preference, and to annoy Allan.

With the latter present now, Holcroft became at times a species of
difficulty to Olive.  During a past season in London there had been
sundry, not exactly love-passages, but little coquettings and
lingerings in conservatories that nearly amounted to such; and he, in
ignorance of the footing in which she was regarded by the family, was
quite inclined, penniless as he was, or nearly so, to revive, if not
improve, past relations; and this had been his object from the first
day he came to Dundargue.

And now 'that muscular idiot the Master,' as he was in the habit of
mentally calling Allan, having cantered out of sight, he addressed
himself more fully to his companion and the matter in hand.

'I enjoy town to the full--none can do so more--when I am there, but
I love--oh, I do love--the country!' replied Olive, in reply to a
remark of Holcroft's about their last London season.

'It is always very romantic, of course, and all that sort of thing.'

'And with pleasant people about one, the country becomes so
delightful for a time; and then we girls have such perfect freedom
here.'

'Even an escort is not necessary at times.'

'Unless in the park--beyond that I always like to have one,' said
Olive.

'Are you pleased to have _me_ for one?' he asked, in a low voice, and
pretty pointedly.

'Of course,' she answered, frankly.

'How charming to be at hand in case of danger!'

'What possible danger?' asked Olive, with surprise.

'Oh, the untimely appearance of an infuriated stag or the proverbial
mad bull of the three-volume novel.'

'Why not a brigand or a Bengal tiger?' said Olive, laughing; then,
suddenly becoming grave, she added--'But, by the way, talking of
Bengal, please to give me back my bangle.'

'Why?'

'Simply because I cannot permit you to retain it,' she replied,
little foreseeing to what the natural request might lead.

'Do not deprive me of it!' he urged, softly and entreatingly.

'Why?' asked she, in return; 'for what reason.  It is
impossible--what may people say?'

'What they please, if seen, which it never shall be.'

'What might they not think?'

'Oh, what does it matter?' he urged again, with much would-be sadness
and tenderness.

'Little to you, perhaps, but much to me,' retorted Olive; 'but I do
not choose that aught should be either thought or said about it.  We
shall certainly be accused of flirting.'

'No, no, Miss Raymond--oh, no, Olive----'

'Olive!' she repeated, in a startled manner.

'Pardon me--none could ever accuse me of flirting with you--that were
an impossibility--for deeper thoughts----'

'My bangle, please, Mr. Holcroft, and at once!' she said,
imperatively, in dread of what more he might say.

She held forth her hand, but the trinket either would not come off
his wrist, or he pretended that such was the case.  Olive tried to
remove it, but in vain, and glanced round her, red with vexation.
Her hand was gloved, otherwise she would have felt how unpleasantly
cold and clammy were the fingers of her would-be lover.

'Allow me to retain it, even for a time--though would that I might
wear it in my grave--for a time, in memory of the darling hopes I
have dared to cherish,' he whispered, in a manner there could be no
mistaking now.

'Spare me this melodramatic sort of thing, Mr. Holcroft,' said Olive,
growing rather pale; 'I cannot--must not listen to you.'

'Why--what do you mean?'

'That there are obstacles between us, even were there not the want of
liking,' she replied, decidedly, but with an agitated voice.

'Obstacles?' he repeated, inquiringly, sadly, and certainly with an
air of _disappointment_; 'am I now to understand that you are engaged
to the Master of Aberfeldie, as these absurd Scots people call him?'

Olive bit her ruddy nether lip at this home question; but made no
reply.

'What enigma is this?  You either are or you are not.  If not, why
may not I----'

'I dare not listen to this style of conversation,' interrupted Olive,
with positive annoyance; 'and you have no right to force it upon me.'

'After all that has passed?' said he, reproachfully, and rather
feeling as if his hopes were melting into air.

'I do not understand you,' replied Olive, whose conscience certainly
did reproach her.

'If I force this conversation--' he began in a bitter and rather
upbraiding tone, then pausing; 'pardon me if I offend,' he resumed,
with what seemed growing sadness, while attempting to touch her hand,
yet withdrawing his own in apparent timidity.  'But am I wrong in
deeming your engagement--or alleged engagement, as rumour says, made
when you were a child--one in which your woman's heart and wishes
have not been consulted?  Tell me--for I may have to leave Dundargue
soon now.'

She was in some respects but a weak girl; he a crafty and wily man of
the world; and, though he knew it not in the least, he was touching
her on a very tender point--yet she replied, firmly enough,

'You have no right to question me; but say, what has Allan done to
you that your face should darken at the mention of his name?  Is he
not your friend?'

'He was.'

'And now----'

'He is no longer so.'

'Why?'

'He is my rival.'

She coloured to her temples at this blunt reply, and all it inferred.

'I loved you long before you ever cared for me,' he resumed, coolly.

'Sir--how dare you say I ever cared for you?' exclaimed Olive, her
cheeks aflame now; 'let this subject cease, and be resumed no more!'

'It breaks my heart to hear you speak thus.'

'Hearts don't break now-a-days, even in such romantic places as
Dundargue,' said she, with a sharp little laugh; 'and here this
matter ends.'

He bowed in silence; but, fatally perhaps for Allan's interests and
her own, she thought, and her vanity was flattered by the idea:

'Holcroft loves me, despite the tenor of papa's will--loves me, for
myself, of course; while Allan _knows_ its value to himself!  Surely
there is a difference in this!'

But it was precisely because Holcroft knew neither of the will nor
its spirit that he took the courage to address her as he did.  Had he
done so, that enterprising gentleman would speedily have 'dropped out
of the hunt,' and, so far as he is concerned, we should then have no
story to tell.

Meanwhile he did not lose heart, and thought he had only to wait the
fulness of time for the certainty of winning her, and with her,
wealth--of joy or happiness he took no heed at all.

By this time, greatly to Olive's relief, Eveline and her two swains
had overtaken them, and so the matter dropped, though the minds of
both, from two points of view, were full of it.  She would now have
to endure the double annoyance of being daily in the society of a
lover who had addressed her as such, and of an _intended_ lover who
had scarcely yet approached the subject!

And, for some reason only known to herself, she did not tell Eveline,
though her bosom-friend, of what had passed between herself and
Holcroft.  The latter, however, still retained the golden bangle on
which her name was engraved; but for a time now there was something
in her manner little to the liking of Hawke Holcroft--full as he was
of dreams of her, or of her fortune rather--of the risks he ran, and
the shifts to which he might be put ere he handled it.




CHAPTER IX.

THE PICNIC AT DUNSINANE.

Ambling on together and urging their horses, but at an easy pace,
they soon drew near the object of their destination--Macbeth's famous
castle of Dunsinane--whither the portly old butler, Mr. Tappleton,
had preceded them in a wagonette, freighted with a luxurious
luncheon; and, leaving their cattle in charge of the grooms, they
began the ascent of that peak of the Sidlaw Hills which has been
immortalised by Shakespeare.

With her riding-skirt thrown over her left arm, Eveline acted as
their guide, and it may easily be supposed that she solicited the
assistance of Cameron's arm, rather than that of Sir Paget
Puddicombe, who had quite enough to do in assisting himself up a path
which proved to him, as he said, 'rather a breather.'

It was a winding road cut in the rock, all the other sides being
steep and difficult of access, and ere long, on reaching the flat and
fertile summit, which commands a magnificent view of Strathmore and
Blairgowrie, they found themselves within the strong rampart and deep
fosse of what has once been a great military station of oval form,
two hundred and ten feet long, by one hundred and thirty broad; and
there they found Allan and Ruby Logan, who had preceded them, in full
possession of the highest point, whence he was directing her
attention to the chief features in the scenery, including, of course,
Birnam Wood, fifteen miles distant, 'The Lang Man's Grave,' a great
stone, under which Macbeth is said to lie--Ruby the while clinging to
his arm in the exuberance of her delight, and carrying her riding-hat
in her hand, as she was quite aware that her hair alone, in its
wonderful luxuriance, made her very attractive, it being an unruly
mass of rich, rippling golden amber in hue, shot with a redder and
brighter tint at times when the sunlight struck it.

Under the splendour of a glorious noon, while a soft breeze rippled
the verdant grass, the luncheon was proceeded with; fowls were
dissected, pies investigated, champagne and hock, cool from the
ice-pails, uncorked; all the requisites for a merry party were there,
and yet in the party itself the chief element of high spirits was
wanting, unless in the instance of Ruby Logan, who began to flatter
herself that she had made--or nearly so--a conquest of the Master of
Aberfeldie.

Oppressed with the tenor of the conversation that had so recently
passed between herself and Mr. Holcroft, Olive Raymond was unusually
silent, and, for her, _distraite_; and he, remembering the somewhat
decided 'snub' she had so unexpectedly given him, was somewhat silent
too, but sought consolation in champagne, while listening rather
abstractedly to Sir Paget Puddicombe descanting on the traditions of
the neighbourhood, as, in guide-book fashion, he knew all about the
predictions of the weird sisters, the defeat and death of the
usurper, and was full of the probability that the great dramatist had
visited Dunsinane in person.

But Holcroft only quaffed his liquor, tugged his tawny moustache from
time to time, and listened with an air of boredom, mingled with a
quizzical expression of mistrust in his pale grey shifty eyes.

He had seen Macbeth on the stage, of course, and endured him more
than once; but of the Thane of Cawdor he knew no more than what he
had seen of him behind the footlights, and had cared to learn no
more; and now it was with some genuine Cockney bewilderment, as he
looked at the massive trenches around him, he began to think that
'some such fellow had existed then.'

Eveline and young Cameron, under Sir Paget's eye, were both reserved
and _triste_, and no wine seemed capable of rousing animation in the
lover.  He had but one thought--the end of his leave was approaching,
and when he left Dundargue he might never again see Eveline Graham.
His heart was heavy.

When the trio were riding together, it was not that the eyes of
Eveline disappointed him, or that she did not converse with him fully
and earnestly; but he had detected in the manner of Sir Paget a
provoking air of proprietary and confidence with regard to her that
keenly piqued him, and could only have been born, he rightly
conjectured, of some recent confidential arrangement with Lord
Aberfeldie; but the young girl herself was sweetly unconscious of it
all.

His responses had been brief, and he had ventured on few remarks,
aware that little would escape unnoticed; thus he had been somewhat
silent, while Sir Paget's easy-going old roadster ambled between the
horses of himself and Eveline, going pace for pace, Sir Paget's head
at each jerking forward in turtle fashion.

The trio still remained together when seated on the grass at
luncheon, for neither of the gentlemen were disposed to quit the side
of Eveline, whose colour might have been noticed to heighten at a
question Sir Paget asked Cameron, of whom he certainly had a certain
jealousy.

'Where does your property of Stratherroch lie, Mr. Cameron?'

'In Inverness-shire.'

'Ah!--mountainous, of course--good shooting for those who care for
such things--not that I do.  Is the land very remunerative now?'

'To others--not to me,' said Cameron, a little bitterly.  'A fair
inheritance would be mine, Sir Paget, were Stratherroch unencumbered.
My father was a wild fellow in his day--as what Highland laird is
not?  How some acres were mortgaged in succession, how others went
_in toto_, heaven only knows--I don't.  The estate is at nurse now;
one day it will be mine again--but not for years; and I was too long
foolishly sentimental about it.'

'How?' asked Sir Paget.

'I thought I would rather that the manor-house fell to ruins than
pass, even temporarily, into the possession of strangers--of others
than a Cameron; and now, by Jove! it has been for years occupied by
one Jones Smithson, of Manchester.'

'Whose rental is clearing it?'

'Yes; and meantime I have little more in this world than my claymore
and commission in the Black Watch,' said Cameron, with a somewhat
hollow laugh and a swift, sad glance at Eveline; while Sir Paget
smiled complacently as he thought of the balance at _his_ bankers,
and the fat, unfettered acres that lay round Slough-cum-Sloggit.

'I hope you do not find Dundargue dull, Sir Paget?' said Eveline, to
change a conversation that rather oppressed her, as she was sharp
enough to divine the thoughts of both men.

'Assuredly not, Miss Graham; how could it be so when I am enabled to
renew my intimacy with one who can cast, as it were, bright sunshine
in the most shady place?' he replied, with an unusual jerk of his
head, a glance of eye, and accentuation of voice that annoyed her
greatly, while Cameron's lip quivered under his moustache with
mingled irritation and amusement.

And now at luncheon, inspired by a few bumpers of Clicquot, Sir
Paget's glances at Eveline took occasionally the fashion of grotesque
and languishing leers.

The wealthy baronet was older than she by a great many years, but
they by no means warranted him being safe from a love, or passion
rather, that might prove cruel as the grave--the passion of a
middle-aged man for a very handsome young girl, whose parents were
fully disposed to further his views and their own.  It has been said
that 'people for the life of them cannot be said to believe in the
love pangs of a man over forty, or of a woman over twenty-nine,' but
people may at times be wrong.

The present epoch was rather a trying one to Cameron and Eveline.  As
she had admitted to Allan, she knew that he loved her with a love
unselfish and unspoken; and he felt intuitively that he was far from
indifferent to her--knew it by the indescribable, untaught, and
nameless signs by which a man learns instinctively that a woman loves
him--in a first passion, a most intoxicating conviction; yet
circumstances blended the happiness of Cameron with much that was
alloy.

To avoid attentions or would-be tender speeches that might annoy poor
Cameron, Eveline found herself compelled to talk intently to Sir
Paget about local traditions and superstitions, and, thanks to her
old nurse Nannie, she had--for a fashionable young lady of the
present day--a curious _répertoire_ of stories about wraiths and
warnings, _Daione Shi_ and other fairies, who were wont in
pre-railway times to haunt the corries, cairns, and rocks.

'Have you no ghosts in or about Dundargue?' asked Sir Paget.  'A
grand old mansion is scarcely complete without some such spectral
visitor.'

'Surely that oubliette, whatever it is, of which I have heard more
than once, must contain something of the kind?' said Holcroft, in a
covert, but detestable kind of sneering tone, which he could adopt
when his own interests were not concerned.

'In the gallery that leads to it I have heard of something strange,'
said Allan.

'Oh, do tell us--what is seen there?' exclaimed Ruby Logan.

'Nothing--but old servants have a story to the effect that if anyone
remains long there,' replied Allan, laughing, 'they are certain to
have a strong sense of shadowy forms--intangible presences--hovering
near them, and dare not turn their heads to see what they are.'

'We have no decided ghosts, thank Heaven!' said Eveline, laughing,
and all unconscious of Holcroft's manner.  'There are none even in
the palaces of Holyrood or Falkland, where terrible things have been
done, so why should there be in poor old Dundargue?  But a spot close
by where we are now lunching is the alleged scene of a curious
event--a very dark tradition in our family history.'

'Why recur to a story so absurd?' said Allan.

But she was pressed to explain herself, and with a shy, sweet smile
in her eyes as she glanced from time to time at Evan Cameron, and a
wonderfully musical modulation of voice, she told her tale, but not
quite as old nurse Nannie had told it to her.

'The deep, rocky dell that lies between this and Dundargue, a few
miles distant, was ever in past times what we find it now, covered
with dense forest-trees, mingled with alders and silver birches so
thickly as to exclude the rays of the sun, and it was said to be the
haunt of a Urisk or mountain-goblin--a species of fiend which, Sir
Walter Scott says, tradition avers to have had a figure half-man and
half-goat.'

'In short, the Grecian satyr of classical antiquity,' said Allan,
laughing.

'Be that as it may, the existence of this particular Urisk was never
fairly proved until the days of one of our ancestors, Malise Graham
of Dundargue, who fought at the battle of Ben Rinnes against the
Reformers, and had in hiding in the "Priest's Hole," as it is still
called, in the keep, a wandering Scottish Benedictine, known only as
James of Jerusalem.

'Now, Malise Graham had an only daughter, Muriel, a girl possessed of
that rare and soft beauty----'

'Which is still the inheritance of her family,' said Sir Paget, with
a most portentous jerk of his head.

'Please not to interrupt me, or I shall stop,' exclaimed Eveline,
with unconcealed annoyance.  'Muriel, in her walks near Dundargue,
had made--unknown to her family--the acquaintance of a handsome young
stranger of winning manners and prepossessing appearance.

'In the secluded life led in those days by a maiden of rank, such an
event was of deep and peculiar interest; love speedily became the
sequel, and in truth the object of it seemed to have been a very
loveable fellow.  Thus it was, with many bitter tears, that one
evening she told him that her frequent absence from home had been
remarked, and that she must meet him no more in that wooded hollow,
especially as it was the haunt of goblins and other evil spirits.

'On hearing this, the handsome stranger laughed till all the dell
seemed to re-echo, caressed her tenderly, and, after urging her on
peril of her truth and soul to come to the trysting-place at least
once again, left her in haste, as some one was seen to approach them.

'This proved to be James of Jerusalem, who is still remembered as the
Black Priest of Dundargue.  He wore nothing that was canonical; to
have done so would have been as much as his life was worth in those
days; thus he was clad in a sable Geneva cloak and doublet, with
falling bands, and a calotte cap of black velvet with long lappets.

'He looked deadly pale, and was trembling in every limb, while he
crossed himself again and again, and said, in a low and agitated
voice,

'"Child Muriel, who is he that left you in such hot haste just now?"

'But Muriel,

  "Crimson with shame, with terror mute,"

terror of her father, who was a stern and rigid man, remained silent.

'"Speak, unhappy girl!" urged the priest.

'"I know not his name," she replied, faintly.

'"Why?"

'"He conceals it from me."

'"And why?"

'"I know not; but oh, father, guide and counsel me, for I love him
dearly, as he loves me."

'"You must meet him----"

'"Once again," she urged, piteously.

'"Never more, I meant to say--never more.  But why say you once
again?"

'"I have promised, on my soul's peril."

'"On your soul's peril indeed!" groaned the priest, in great
tribulation; but, in defiance of all he could urge, Muriel, though
she lived in an age of dark superstition, of omens and dread,
inspired by her love, stole forth at the usual hour and entered the
dell to meet her lover, for the last time, as it proved.

'Perhaps it was a prevision of this that made the wood seem so dark
and gloomy, and even the knots and gnarled branches of the trees to
look like those in the forest to Undine, fiendish faces and freakish
limbs.

'Muriel knew in her heart that such meetings were wrong, unbecoming
to her position, and sinful because she concealed them; but a spell
seemed upon her, and she could not resist it.  She took no heed of
the future; she had but one thought, to be again with him.

'"And oh! why should this meeting be our last one?" she wailed in her
heart, as he drew her to him, looking so handsome the while in his
black doublet slashed with red, his ruff and scarlet plume.

'"My own!" said he, caressingly; "my own, I am aware that yonder
dotard, fool and knave, the mass-monger, has been seeking to
influence your mind against me, and to part us."

'"And here he stands prepared to do so!" exclaimed the black priest,
as he suddenly appeared beside them, his eyes sparkling, but
strangely with fear, rage, and triumph mingling in their expression.
Muriel's lover clasped her to his breast, and wrapped his scarlet
mantle round her.  Then, while his eyes glared with a fire which
fortunately she did not see, he exclaimed,

'"Stand back, canting liar--stand back, and begone!"

'"Child Muriel, come to me, in the name of God!" cried the priest, in
sore agony; but she still clung to her lover, who, at the name
uttered, cowered and shrank, as in the opera we see Mephistopheles
cower and shrink before the cross-hilted swords of the soldiers.

'"Muriel, Muriel, you are mine!" exclaimed her lover, attempting to
lift her from the ground.

'"Take heed, child, ere it is too late," urged the priest.

'"Dare you advise?" asked the stranger, mockingly; "does not one day
judge another?"

'"Yes, and the last day judges all--even such as you!" cried the
benedictine; then, making a sign of the cross in the air, he
exclaimed, 'In nomine Patris et Filii; et Spiritus Sancti!'

'Scarcely had he done so when, under the power of his exorcism, the
mantle, ruff, and plume of the pretended knight turned to bracken
leaves, his goblin chain to wild holly, and he stood forth in all his
deformity, a horror to the eye, half man and half goat, with the face
of a baffled and exasperated fiend--the Urisk, or wood goblin; and,
with a malignant yell, he vanished down the fast-darkening dingle!'

'And Muriel?' asked Holcroft, who had listened to all with such a
smile as his face might be expected to wear.

'Was saved, of course,' said Eveline.

'And lived happy ever after?'

'Well--content at least, let us hope.  She died a nun in the house of
the English Benedictines at Paris--now the convent of the Val de
Grace.'

'And has this legend a moral?' asked Holcroft, mockingly.

'Of course it has,' answered Allan, rather bluntly, yet with a quiet
smile; 'it gave a good hint to the girls at Dundargue to beware of
the attentions of unaccredited strangers.'

Holcroft's colour changed for a moment, and not unnoticed by Allan;
for perhaps, reading between the lines, all this seemed somewhat a
parable to the former, who tugged at his yellow moustaches in a way
he did when irritated, heedless that pomade hongroise was disastrous
to straw-coloured gloves.

The angry gleam that crossed the eyes of Holcroft was also noticed by
Evan Cameron, who, for some reason as yet only known to himself,
could not abide him; though certainly the latter did not cross _him_
by any attentions to the penniless Eveline Graham.

Her little tradition came as a pleasant interlude to nearly all, for
save Sir Paget--always confident and genial--no one seemed quite at
ease, as a sense of cross-purposes brooded over them.

'Tappleton,' cried Allan to the butler, 'another glass of champagne
all round; and then to be off,' he added, swinging Olive adroitly
into her saddle, and thus, as he thought, anticipating Holcroft,
though the latter, remembering keenly his recent 'snub,' had no
intention of offering his services just then.

Allan, fearing that he had gone rather too far with Ruby Logan in
attempting to pique his cousin, now resolved to leave that young lady
to the care of anyone else in their homeward ride, much to her
surprise and disappointment, and took his place by the side of Olive,
in obedience to a half-inviting glance she gave him.

He and his sister were, of course, familiar since childhood with the
ruins of Dunsinane and all their surroundings; but to two or three of
the party, as they turned to depart, and saw the vast ramparts
reddened by the setting sun, there came to memory the scene they had
so often witnessed on the stage--Malcolm's army with the boughs of
Birnam in their helmets, the 'alarms and excursions,' the fierce and
protracted melo-dramatic combat, the downfall of Macbeth beneath the
sword of Macduff, and the cries of 'Hail, King of Scotland--King of
Scotland, hail!'




CHAPTER X.

THE GOLDEN BANGLE.

A writer says 'there is the beauty of youth, and surely there is the
beauty of love, too,' and the latter certainly shone in the soft eyes
of Eveline Graham as she caracoled her horse in the homeward ride by
the side of young Cameron, and her eyes, which were ever the mystery
of that face, had now their sweetest smiles for him.  She saw how his
face was lighted up, and was aware how his voice softened when he
addressed her as it softened to no other woman; and yet, withal,
though no word of love had passed between these two, right well did
they know the secret of each other's hearts; but poverty fettered his
tongue, and her parents' ambition and known wishes nearly repressed
all hope in the heart of Eveline.

With all her regard for her father she had a fear of him, and still
more so of her mother.  All their prejudices were in favour of
wealth; but Evan Cameron appeared to her altogether so dear and
irresistible that she, poor girl, could not imagine anyone being
proof against him, and with this conviction, and the knowledge that
Allan loved him, she permitted herself occasionally to live in a kind
of fool's paradise, wherein Sir Paget Puddicombe had no part.

When her mother was not present, she played to Evan Cameron, and sang
his favourite songs; she showed him her drawings for hints and
suggestions, discussed her favourite books, and let him hang over her
chair; and at such times, though nothing of love was said, there was
a subtle tenderness in Cameron's eye and voice that made her
impulsive heart quicken, as no man's eye or voice had ever done
before, and young though she was, Eveline had heard more than one
declaration of love.

And now for a time he had the joy of having her all to himself, as
they contrived to distance the rest of their party.

But what availed it?  Evan knew that, if once he passed beyond what
appeared to be the merest friendship, his visit to Dundargue might
come to a speedy end, and its hospitality could never be extended to
him again.

To Evan, Eveline Graham proved, if we may say so, a kind of
revelation after the rough life he had led of late years in
India--something from another world, as it were--and thus much of
adoration mingled with his love for her.  If dying could have served
Eveline, there and then would Evan Cameron have died for her!

Whether such enthusiastic passion might last it was impossible to
say, but time may show.

We have referred to the quiet confidence of Sir Paget Puddicombe--a
confidence borne of his consciousness of wealth and assured position.
However, he was sharp enough to see to some extent how Cameron was
attracted by Eveline, and to feel how the latter preferred the young
subaltern's society to his own; but in a very short time he knew that
the 'detrimental,' as Lady Aberfeldie called him, would be again with
his regiment, the Black Watch, perhaps under orders for foreign
service; then he would have the course all to himself, and doubted
not, as Holcroft would have said, 'to win in a canter.'

Cameron thought the proverb right about there being no fool like an
old one; but then, every old fool had not Sir Paget's bank-book, and
the preference and influence of parents to back up his folly.  But
with a handsome figure, and his V.C., how much more was Cameron like
the object of a young girl's eye than Sir Paget could ever be!

'It was in the Kurram Pass, in Afghanistan, that you gained the
Victoria Cross, Mr. Cameron?' said Eveline, breaking a pause in the
conversation, and shortening her reins, while he checked the pace of
his horse, and replied, with a pleased smile,

'Yes; but how do you know that, Miss Graham--from your brother, the
Master?'

'No.'

'I have never spoken of it.'

'I read it in the Army List,' replied Eveline, candidly, and to hear
her say so made the bronze cross of more value to him than the Garter
would have been.

She had read it, and committed the episode to heart too--how 'the
Queen had been graciously pleased to signify her intention of
conferring the decoration of the Victoria Cross' on Lieutenant Evan
Cameron, of the --th Foot, and now of the Black Watch, for a daring
act of bravery on a date given, when the retreating forces were
attacked by Afghans in great strength, the latter having pushed
forward upon the position at daybreak, and Lieutenant Cameron,
accompanied by only five soldiers, captured a nine-pounder gun,
shooting down or bayonetting all the gunners, and thus preventing the
destructive use of the piece, which he brought off with the loss of
one man, but in the conflict received three severe tulwar wounds.

Cameron was an enthusiast in his profession, and with outwardly the
air of a well-bred man of the world, and thoroughly so that of a
young Line officer, he had in his nature a deep sentiment of
nationality, of clanship, and Highland romance, with an intense pride
in his regiment.  He had entertained Eveline often with sketches,
anecdotes, and traditions of the Black Watch, but of himself and his
V.C., of course, he never spoke.

'What a proud moment it must have been for you, when you knew that
you had won the cross!' said the girl, with a flush on her soft cheek.

Stirred in his soul by the interest she took in him, the great secret
of his heart was trembling on his lips, but he repressed it, and a
shadow came into his face and a wistfulness into his eyes.

'Prouder would I have been, Miss Graham,' said he, 'if--if--I----

'What?'

'I had then been known even by name to _you_?' he replied, in a low
voice, and with a manner there was no mistaking.

Nothing more was said then; yet they both felt, while eye met eye,
that their first words of love had been spoken.

More might, perhaps, have passed, as the subject could easily have
been enlarged on; but just then they were abruptly joined by Allan,
who came up at a trot and reined in his horse sharply by their side,
with a dark expression on his face, which Eveline thought augured ill
for his success with Olive, whom he had suddenly left in the care of
Mr. Hawke Holcroft.

After quitting the ruins, as Allan rode on by his cousin's side, his
memory had gone back to the days when she was a girl of some twelve
years or so--a bright-eyed hoyden, who could fish, even take a shot
from his gun, climb trees, eat apples right off the branch, play
marbles with him, grasp a trout darting in the burn under the long
yellow broom or purple brambles, and was his companion in many a
ramble and out-door frolic; and now inspired by that memory, the
scenery and beauty of the evening, he felt himself disposed to treat
with considerable tenderness the lovely girl he hoped to make yet his
own.

On the other hand, Olive cared little to please him, and for a time
she almost repelled, and yet by doing so she greatly lured and
attracted him.

The friendship of Allan and Olive was a source of some perplexity, if
not amusement, to Eveline Graham, but of irritation to her mother, to
whom they never seemed to act as lovers at all, unless in 'the Scots
fashion' of pouting and quarrelling.

To the eyes of all interested in the matter, it did not seem that she
cared for him in the least.  She never altered a plan or hastened her
pace to meet him, or go where he might chance to be--in the library,
on the terrace smoking, or in any of the quaint corridors that
traversed the old house.  She never adopted a dress, a ribbon, or
ornament to please his eye, though she sometimes did, coquettishly,
he thought, to flatter Hawke Holcroft; and even now, as they were
slowly traversing the dark, woody dell of the legend--the
_Coire-nan-Uriskin_--she was humming, half in warning, half in
waggery, Tennyson's song:

  'She can both false and friendly be,
            Beware! beware!
  Trust her not, she is fooling thee!'

And yet, as she glanced at her soldierly cousin from time to time
under her long, dark lashes, she thought that, though he looked
stately in the kilt, he seldom looked better than now when in riding
costume, with the smartest of light grey cover coats.

The girl's mind vibrated curiously between her over-sensitive pride,
her wishes, her doubts, and half convictions.

If pique at her position in the family with Allan had made her
accept, with a certain degree of equanimity, the attentions of
Holcroft, she now began to feel a pleasure that she had not more
fully encouraged them.

At such moments as the present Allan felt that this fair girl, who
had ever been his friend--cherished as a sister--this sweet cousin
with the violet eyes and rich brown hair--was dear to him with a
tenderness to which he could scarcely give a name, unless it were
purest love; and she might have read it in his eyes, intense and
strong, but for that spirit of wilfulness which led her to
temporise--was it to tyrannise?--or play with it and him.

But may a girl really love a man till she is certain of being loved
in return?  For Allan, baffled by her manner, had said nothing very
pointed as yet, as if he based all their future on her father's will;
and times there were when in pique he dropped his way of treating her
half playfully, half deferentially, and became absolutely cold.

In fact, the thoughts of Olive, apart from her jealous pride, were
somewhat difficult to analyse; but, as yet, she deemed that she could
only regard him with a kind of sisterly attention; while he, when not
irritated by the presence of Holcroft, would say to Eveline,

'When we are alone, and can slip back into our old memories, I shall
soon teach her to love me.'

'But meantime,' replied his sister, 'you are the most tiresome couple
in the world.'

'I wish Mr. Holcroft or some one else would join us,' said Olive,
looking round in her saddle.

'Why, it is always Mr. Holcroft!' exclaimed Allan.

'You are so provokingly silent.  For more than a mile you have not
once spoken to me.  It is stupid to be so _triste_!  Surely there is
some one else whose society you prefer, or with whom you would be
more lively?'

'Olive!' said he, on hearing this blunt and pointed remark--both
curiously so for her.  'You are surely not jealous of anyone?' he
added.

'Jealous!' echoed the girl, with a strange but affected kind of lazy
scorn; 'why should I be so, and of _whom_?'

'Well may you ask, of whom could you be so?' replied Allan,
pointedly--so much so that she coloured; 'though I, of course, matter
little to you.'

'Allan, you are very wrong to say so,' said the girl, softly.

'Then I am not quite indifferent to you?' urged Allan, impulsively
now; 'you do care for me a little?'

'Certainly--a good deal, if it is any satisfaction to you; but
there--don't touch my bridle hand, or you will make my horse shy.
How can you be so tiresome!'

Allan sighed, and yet he regarded her, in her loveliness and
insouciance, with an expression just then of mingled amusement,
annoyance, and regard in his dark hazel eyes.

With all the love that had been growing in his heart for Olive, he
had been in no hurry to urge his suit, for, though impetuous by
nature, he could be reserved and cautious enough at times; but now
his heart flew to his head, and he said, bluntly,

'Dearest Olive, will you promise to love me--to marry me?'

'Why require any promise about the matter?' she replied, as all her
wilfulness returned; 'has not my father promised for me--bequeathed
me to you like a bale of goods, or condemned me to poverty!' she
added, with a bitter laugh on her lips that curled with anger.  'I
wonder that he did not order that I was to be locked up and fed on
bread and water till I gave my consent to marry you, or that I was to
be dropped into that oubliette which exists somewhere in Dundargue.'

'Cousin Olive,' said he, reproachfully, 'why this pride and doubt of
my purpose?  You are as cruel as you are beautiful.'

'This is worse than anything you have ever said to me,' she cried,
with angry laughter still.

'Worse?'

'Yes, an attempt at gross straightforward compliment, as if I was a
girl at a railway buffet.'

'Don't you like to be complimented?'

'By some people--yes,' was the petulant reply.

'All the girls I have ever known have liked pretty, flattering
speeches.'

'But I am different, I hope, from most of the girls you have known.'

'By Jove you are!' replied the Master, twisting his moustache till he
made himself wince; 'but will I never be more to you than I am now?'

'Never more than my cousin--what would you desire to be?  But here
comes Mr. Holcroft, to whom I certainly made no sign,' she added,
with some annoyance, as she thought of what had so lately passed
between them; and then, so variable was her emotion, that she laughed
as she thought--'Two proposals in one day, and both made in the
saddle too--how droll!'

Allan misinterpreted her silent laugh as a welcome to Holcroft, and
shrank from his own angry fears--they were not convictions yet--lest
he should adopt that meanest passion of the whole category--jealousy
without a just cause--jealousy of one inferior to him in social
position, and certainly in personal attractions.

When reduced to act cavalier to Miss Ruby Logan, who certainly did
not want him, Hawke Holcroft had looked darkly after the cousins as
they rode off together, and thought that nothing short of death would
prevent him from accomplishing the object he had now in view ere he
left Dundargue.

From something in the manner of the cousins, he--a close
observer--augured that Allan had not made his 'innings' with the
heiress, yet he cantered up to Allan's side, and said, smilingly to
Olive,

'May I smoke, Miss Raymond?  The road is quite lonely, and if not
disagreeable to you----'

'Certainly,' said she, curtly.

'And I shall join you,' added Allan.  'Can you oblige me with a
light, Holcroft?'

Cigars were selected, and Holcroft handed his silver matchbox to
Allan, who, with a leap of his heart, though without changing colour
or a muscle of his dark and sunburned face, saw on his rival's wrist
his own gift sent from Delhi, the gold bangle, which Olive had,
perhaps, for the time forgotten, and on which was her own name in
raised Roman letters.

He had seen Holcroft in rather close proximity to her during the most
of the day, and if piqued thereat, more than ever was he piqued and
startled now, and abruptly wheeling round his horse, he muttered some
excuse and joined his sister and his friend Cameron, while the words
of the song came ominously back to memory--

  'Trust her not, she is fooling thee.'


The bangle!  He blushed to think of it, and shrank as yet from
speaking of it, even to Eveline, for he was altogether unaware of
under what circumstances Holcroft came to possess it, or the effort
Olive had made to procure its return without success, but imagination
and jealousy now did much to fill his heart with secret fury.

Would the future hold love or hatred for these two cousins?  It
seemed just then difficult to say.

Like Eveline, he thought the gift of the photo a trifle when compared
with this, yet the photo was eventually to prove the most serious and
troublesome gift of the two.

Wounded self-esteem, disquiet, and intense mortification reigned
supreme in the mind of the somewhat proud young Master of Aberfeldie;
but he felt himself necessitated to dissemble.  Hawke Holcroft was
his father's guest, the son of his father's oldest and most valued
friend; and while at Dundargue it would be necessary to treat him
with courtesy, though Allan never doubted that he was a 'leg,' and
resolved that his courtesy would be blended with watchfulness,
if--bitter thought--Olive was now worth watching over!

Unprepared for such a crisis or catastrophe as the discovery of the
bangle, and ignorant that Allan had made it, when a carpet-dance took
place that evening at Dundargue, though Olive was arrayed in one of
her most becoming toilettes for him, and him alone, he never even
addressed her or looked near her; and, black though his brow, he
entirely occupied himself with Ruby Logan; and, provoked by this,
Olive again endured the attention of Holcroft, and thought to
play--or affect to play--with them _both_.

In this, however, the little scheme was doomed to be disappointed by
the events of the following day.

'I shall quit Dundargue for London, or give up my leave and go back
to the regiment, and never look upon her fair, false face again till
I have schooled myself into merely regarding her with a
brotherly--well, say cousinly--eye!' thought Allan, with great
bitterness of spirit.

But how about that absurd will and the settlement of the money?




CHAPTER XI.

EVELINE'S SUITOR.

'Verily,' says a writer, 'we miss our opportunities, and live our
lives as if they were all to come twice over; not as if each passing
sunset brought us nearer that day when the pulse must cease to beat,
and the heart with all its emotions must be stilled for ever.'

Olive was now experiencing the truth of this to a certain extent.

She had been--in spite of herself--touched by Allan's earnestness,
and on retiring to her room her first act was to have his neglected
gift--the little silver idol--the bequest of the grateful
subadar--duly installed on a pretty Swiss bracket, and next morning
she determined to discover why his manner, after their return from
Dunsinane, had been so marked and disagreeable to her, even if she
should take the initiative, and have to recur to the conversation
which ended so abruptly on the preceding evening.

She entered the breakfast-room full of the subject, and dressed--so
far as lace and blue ribbons went--in a most attractive and
coquettish morning costume; but Allan was not there--he was at the
stables, no doubt, or at the kennel.  How tiresome men were, she
thought.

'Good morning, Olive darling!  how charming you look--I must
positively give you a kiss!' exclaimed the not usually effusive Lady
Aberfeldie, touching the girl's cheek with her lips.

The last to appear at the breakfast-table was her husband, who
entered with a note in his hand, and an expression of surprise on his
face.

'Here is a strange thing, Eveline,' said he to Lady Aberfeldie.
'Tappleton has just brought me this note from Allan----'

'From Allan!' exclaimed one or two voices.

'Stating that he would leave by dawn this morning to take the train
for the south, and might be absent some time, and this without
further explanation.'

'How odd--how unlike him!' exclaimed Lady Aberfeldie.  'Do you know
of any business engagement or invitation he had?'

'No--I know of nothing.'

'Or you, Olive--or you, Mr. Cameron?'

All professed ignorance, and the matter was canvassed by the family
circle in vain.

'It will be explained, of course.  Allan never acts without reason,'
said his father, addressing himself to the morning meal.

'Allan gone--how odd--how unaccountable!' was the thought of Olive,
whose heart rather reproached her; and now, for a little time, she
missed the handsome cousin whom she had so teased, worried, and
mortified; and she began to dread that he had resigned his leave of
absence, and gone abruptly to rejoin his regiment.

'Olive,' said Lady Aberfeldie, 'do go on with your breakfast.'

'Oh, auntie, I have finished.'

'Finished!--child, you have taken nothing: Tappleton will get you a
little grouse-pie.'

'Oh, no--thanks,' replied Olive, and, rising from the table, she
quitted the room.  The eyes of her aunt and Holcroft followed her, as
each had thoughts of their own.

The love the latter professed for her was destitute of jealousy, but
was not without fear; and his face just then would have been a
picture had anyone cared to study it.

There might have been read satisfaction that by Allan's unexpected
departure he had the field all to himself; annoyance, for the
Dundargue despatch-box often brought him, and on this morning had
done so, epistles in blue envelopes, which he cared not to receive;
greed, as he thought of the prize that might yet be his; and hot
impatience to find it in his grasp; and thus, while affecting to
listen to Lord Aberfeldie, who was describing to him and Sir Paget a
cover they were to shoot over that day, his mind was revolving how he
might succeed in entrapping Olive Raymond into some kind of Scotch
marriage (whatever that was) in fun, or jest, and then declare it was
a true and solemn ceremony.  He thought he had heard of such things
being tried and done, but was not quite certain.

However, he took fresh courage now that he would have her all to
himself, and thought, with Bulwer, that 'thrones and bread man wins
by the aid of others.  Fame and woman's heart he can only gain
through himself.'

Not that he cared much for fame or woman's heart either; but he could
mightily appreciate her fortune.

Whatever was the secret thought of Olive about the sudden and
unexpected departure of Allan, she felt some renewal of her pique,
but of a different kind, when told by Eveline of the magnificent
suite of Maltese ornaments he had brought home.

'For whom?' she asked.

'You, of course.'

'Then he has never offered them for my acceptance.'

'Think of your manner to him, Olive.'

'They are for Ruby Logan more likely.  He has met Ruby before, we all
know.'

'I should not be surprised if they become a gift to Ruby now,'
replied Eveline, who was quietly provoked by Olive's treatment of her
brother; 'though, when he got these jewels at Malta, I question if he
knew of that yellow-haired damsel's existence.'

And now, greatly to the vexation of Eveline, and the amusement
perhaps of Olive, the latter's bangle remained on the wrist of the
enterprising Mr. Holcroft, though none of them knew the mischief that
the discovery of it had wrought in the mind of Allan Graham; but in
the latter's absence poor little Eveline was doomed to
have--unsupported by his presence and advice--some heavy trouble of
her own.

Lord and Lady Aberfeldie were in consultation in the latter's
boudoir, a little, old-fashioned room of octagonal shape, the
panelled walls of which were hung with rich silk--a sanctum long
sacred to the Chatelaines of Dundargue, and the whole appurtenances
of which had that combined air of ease, repose, and grandeur peculiar
to the furniture of an ancient and long-descended race.

Kelpie--a currish-looking terrier, but her ladyship's pet--had got
his morning repast of cream and macaroons from her own white hands,
and, this important duty over, she and her husband began to converse
on family matters.

Lady Aberfeldie amid these, indulged in some angry surmises as to how
long they were 'to have the society of Mr. Holcroft.'

'I cannot say that I care much personally for Hawke Holcroft,'
replied her husband; 'but his father, as you know, saved my life at
Alma, and won therefore the V.C.  I have told you, Eveline, I think,
that when Colin Campbell's Highland brigade advanced in _echelon_ of
regiments along the Kourgané Hill, the Black Watch, of course, led
the way, and, just about the time the Russian Kazan column broke, no
particular sound had followed our firing but the yells of their
wounded ringing through the smoke.  With the next volley we heard a
rattling sound, as our bullets fell like hail upon the tin-kettles
they carried outside their knapsacks, as all the great grey-coated
blocks of infantry were _right about face_ now, in full retreat.  It
was just then, as our calvary and guns swept after them in pursuit,
that I fell wounded, and would have been bayoneted on the spot by
four Russians, who lay among some caper bushes shamming death, had
not old Major Holcroft cut them down like ninepins, and protected me
till some of our fellows returned.  I cannot forget all that, you
know.'

Lady Aberfeldie, who had heard all this fifty times at least before,
sighed with impatience, and said,

'His son certainly appears to have some attraction for Olive; and
what would you think if Allan, repelled by her, was actually to fall
in love with Ruby Logan and her amber locks?  What a complication
that might be.'

'Don't suggest such a thing for a moment.  I hope he will prove
himself every way worthy of one who has so long occupied, like
Eveline, the place of a daughter in our hearts.'

'Talking of Eveline, it is high time she was informed of Sir Paget's
views and wishes; and while on the subject may I ask,' she added,
with some asperity of tone, 'how long Mr. Cameron is to be here?'

'A week yet, and then he must report himself at head-quarters.'

'A whole week?' muttered lady Aberfeldie, who was far from
inhospitable when she approved of the objects to whom she thought
hospitality should be extended.

'I do like Stratherroch.  He is like his father, old Angus of the
Cameron Highlanders, yet not so lively; for Angus was the king of
good fellows, and used to keep the mess-table in a roar.'

'Yet I would his son were with the regiment again, or anywhere else
but here.'

'I think he admires Eveline.'

'I am certain of it, and the sooner their intimacy terminates the
better.  Eveline and Strath--good heavens!' exclaimed Lady
Aberfeldie, with her white jewelled hands uplifted, 'never again must
their names be mingled, even in our family circle, especially under
pending circumstances.'

'They do seem intimate,' said the peer, moodily; 'but have not at
least progressed so far as the use of Christian names.'

'That would be intolerable:' and, ringing the bell, Lady Aberfeldie
desired a servant to summon her daughter, who appeared in a very
coquettish and becoming lawn-tennis costume, for a game on the lawn,
where the courts were already set and some friends awaited.

She entered with a bright smile, which soon died away, for she read
an expression in the faces of her parents, especially that of her
mother, which seemed to her sensitive heart prophetic of evil.

If it be true, as Madame be Stael asserts, that 'love occupies the
whole life of a woman,' it need not be a matter of surprise that the
sex can discover each other's love secrets with ease; thus, though
Lady Aberfeldie fully suspected what filled the heart of her
daughter--so closely had she watched her--she was somewhat pitiless
now.

With all her queenly manner and soft grace, her unexceptional
toilettes and suavity of manner, Lady Aberfeldie had a will of iron,
yea, of adamant in some things, and her daughter's marriage with Sir
Paget was one of them.

She was told plainly and bluntly that he had proposed for her hand;
had asked permission to address her on the subject; had offered
magnificent--yea, princely settlements; and it was expected the
marriage would take place, when the family returned to London, next
season.

The long dreaded cloud had burst upon her at last!

She grew white as a lily on hearing this sentence, clung to a console
table for support, and then burst into a torrent of tears, while her
father drew her tenderly towards him.

'Be calm, child,' said he, 'we shall give you plenty of time to think
about it; marriage is a serious thing at all times.'

Eveline thought it was doubly serious with such a bridegroom, but
could only sob, while her mother eyed her gloomily, as she thought
this excessive grief and repugnance augured worse for her scheme than
indignation or defiance would have done; but poor Eveline was all
softness and gentleness.

'What folly is this?' she asked.

'I am your only daughter, mamma,' urged Eveline.

'Hence it is your first duty to your family, to yourself, and the
world to make an early, eligible, and wealthy marriage.  Every season
brings many such to pass in our own circle.'

'Are we so poor, mamma?'

'We are not rich, and know not what may happen.'

Did Lady Aberfeldie speak prophetically?  If so, it was an utterance
made unawares.

'Eveline darling,' said her father, 'you were content enough with the
attentions of Sir Paget, and to accept even his presents in London, a
season or two ago.'

'I was but a girl then fresh from school, and--and joined other girls
in laughing at my having an old lover.  I--I knew no better,' she
continued, sobbing.

'And had not met Cameron of Stratherroch!' said her mother through
her set teeth, and quite forgetting the _rôle_ she had so recently
suggested.

'No,' thought Eveline, 'and had not learned to love him.'  She
shivered as if she had been struck when her mother spoke, and then
said, with all the firmness she could assume.

'You must mistake us in some way, mamma.  Mr. Cameron has never
addressed a word to me that he might not have addressed to yourself.'

'I am glad of it--then I shall taunt you with his name no more,' said
her mother, kissing her forehead.  'People generally, but young
ladies especially, should never indulge in strong emotions.'

'Perhaps, mamma; but why?'

'They age the face so much by lining it.'

Eveline covered with her handkerchief her whole sweet face, which was
quivering with emotion now.  She felt that the romance of her young
girl's life was quite passing from her, and that, even if she escaped
a marriage with Sir Paget, she must think of Evan Cameron and his
silent love no more!

'Think of Sir Paget's princely settlements,' said Lord Aberfeldie.
'But how difficult it is,' he added, as if to himself, 'to imbue a
woman--a pretty girl more than all--with any idea of the seriousness
of pounds, shillings, and pence!  To her they are as the sands upon
the seashore, unless she has known want.'

'Do reflect on all this, Eveline,' urged her mother.

'I cannot; and why should I do so?'

'Because most of the great evils of life might be avoided if we would
only take time to reflect.'

'In a matter like this, mamma,' said Eveline, taking courage from her
desperation, and hoping by temporising to gain, at least, time,
'reflection might lead to madness.  Can wealth or princely
settlements make up for that disparity of years which will excite
ridicule in all the girls who know me, and cover me with contempt as
a mean, sordid, and covetous creature in marrying a man I do not and
can never love, and who cannot really care for me, whatever he may
think or say?  So, so, I am to be taken to market, as it were, and
sold to the best advantage.  That is the plain English of it!'

'Eveline, how can you adopt a tone so little like you?' said her
mother, reproachfully.  'Sir Paget will be sure to address you on
this subject, as he has your papa's permission, and, when he does so,
be sure that you comport yourself as becomes my daughter,' she added,
rather haughtily, and rather ignoring her husband in the matter.
'But go; I hear Olive and Miss Logan calling for you.'

Eveline hurried away, bathed her eyes, and then, hat in hand,
descended from the terrace to the sunny lawn, where Olive, Ruby, and
other girls were flitting about, radiant with smiles and in
gaily-coloured costumes, with saucy and bewitching hats, talking and
laughing merrily; but the girl felt as one in a dream, a nightmare.
A dark cloud seemed to envelop her, amid which she heard the voices
of her friends, and it may be imagined with what emotions in her
breast she saw in the tennis-court opposite her, Cameron, looking so
handsome in a kind of athlete's flannel dress, and the rotund figure
of Sir Paget in a tight morning coat, out of the neck of which his
round, shining head was jerked ever and anon in the turtle fashion we
have described.

Never while she lived, Eveline thought, should she forget the horror
she had of that game of lawn-tennis; the part she had to act in it
under a glorious sunshine, and the desire she had for the seclusion
of her own room, for by contrast with the chaos in her own heart the
whole bright scene became a species of grim phantasmagoria.

Her heart seemed full of tears; her naturally buoyant and happy
spirit was crushed.  She dared hardly trust herself to address even
Cameron, who saw, with a lover's instinct, that something, he knew
not what (unless with reference to Sir Paget), had gone decidedly
wrong.

We have already adverted to the strong passion an elderly swain like
Sir Paget may conceive for a young girl; and, encouraged by her
parents' permission, he was now giving full swing to it, as he
watched her slender, lithe, and willowy figure in the various
postures incident to the game, which tested his powers of action
severely, and during a pause in it he approached her with a smile
rippling on his rubicund old face, and displaying a set of teeth that
were first-rate as to cost and quality.

'My dear Miss Graham,' he said, with a most insinuating jerk of his
head, 'why do you avoid me?'

'I am not aware that I avoid you; I hope I don't do so,' replied
Eveline, colouring with annoyance, and at the conviction that she
certainly had done so.  Then, as a kind of hunted feeling came over
her, she added; 'but I do not think, Sir Paget, that I am bound to
account to you for all I do.'

'Of course not,' said he, with a bow, and Eveline coloured more
deeply at the ungraciousness of her own speech; 'of course not, my
dear young lady--_as yet_,' he added, under his breath.

At last she pleaded illness, fatigue, and headache, threw down her
hat, and fairly fled to her own room.




CHAPTER XII.

A REVELATION TO HOLCROFT.

The sudden, unexpected, and unexplained departure of Allan Graham
from Dundargue (a reason for which will be given in due time), if it
puzzled his family, still more puzzled and piqued Olive, especially
after what passed between them on their homeward ride.  But then,
says Lefanu,--'Women are so enigmatical; some in everything--all in
matters of the heart.'

The monetary matters of Mr. Hawke Holcroft were approaching a species
of crisis now, and he was daily getting orange-coloured missives and
messages 'wired' in mysterious terms from jockeys, bookmakers, and
other horsey folks that added to his tribulation, for things seemed
to be going wrong with him, and he felt that now or never must he
attempt to secure the heiress, who, he thought, was only waiting to
be carried off.

Even loo and écarté in the evening with such pigeon-like players as
Sir Paget were beginning to fail as resources.

'Odd fellow in his way,' remarked the baronet to Cameron.  'A trifle
too lucky at cards for my taste.'

'Or mine,' said Cameron, grimly.

'Turns up the king too often after the early hours of the morning.'

Yet when night came again and the small hours of the morning, the
somewhat simple M.P. for Slough-cum-Sloggit was again a heavy loser
to Holcroft.

'He has some secret about him,' said the former.

'Most men have some secret which they generally keep to themselves,'
replied Cameron.

'Secrets certainly, which they seldom tell to their wives or
sweethearts,' said the baronet, laughing.

We have said that Olive had a secret thought that might prove
somewhat fatal to Allan's success with her, a mistaken idea that
Holcroft loved her--loved her for herself--and despite the tenor of
her father's will; while Allan might love her because he knew the
value of its tenor to himself.

And, now that the latter was so unaccountably absent, Holcroft was
full of confidence, and, the ice having once been broken, thought it
would be easy to go back to where he had left off on the ride home
from Dunsinane.

In his own selfish way he loved her; but then she was beautiful.
Loved her!  'Oh, poverty of language, that we must so often use the
word love!' exclaims a writer.

It was some days before his inevitable departure from Dundargue (and
not an hour too soon for that), when he and Olive were somewhat
earlier, and before anyone else, in the breakfast-room, and the notes
of Ronald Gair's pipes, playing his morning reveille, 'The Black
Watch,' a slow and wailing air, were dying away on the terrace
outside.

Holcroft's face looked worn and haggard--more freckled, and the eyes
more than usually shifty in their expression.  He had received some
letters and telegrams the evening before that upset him so much that
he failed even to win at loo or écarté, and the live-long night he
had been heard by Cameron pacing to and fro, as if unable to rest.

Olive was struck by his pallid appearance.

They exchanged 'Good-mornings,' and then a few minutes' silence
ensued.

'We may have rain soon.' was the not very original remark of Holcroft.

'The sky looks very like it.  Rain always comes when the mist is
where we see it now, on yonder low spur of the Sidlaw Hills,' replied
Olive.

She was kneeling on a bearskin, beside the great staghounds, Shiuloch
and Bran, with her little white hands outspread before the fire for
warmth; and a charming picture she made, in her morning costume,
fresh and lovely as a fairy, with the dogs in the foreground, and the
great carved stone arch of the baronial chimney-piece for a frame.

Hawke Holcroft turned from the window and came to her side, though
curiously enough the hazel eyes of the hounds glistened, and they
showed their teeth at him, suggestive of kicks secretly administered.

'We are down earlier than usual this morning,' said she.

'All the better.'

'Why?'

'I want so particularly to talk to you,' said he, with all the
softness he could assume.

'And I with you,' said Olive, with a frankness that was a curious
mistake.  'You leave us soon, I believe?'

'Yes.'

'For London?'

'For London,' he replied, mechanically, as it were.

'I thought you came to stay out the grouse-shooting?'

'Till the tenth of December!  I have not been asked,' he replied,
gnawing his yellow moustache; and then, after a pause, added, 'would
_you_ wish that I stayed?'

'Certainly, if you are enjoying yourself,' was the girl's frank
but--after what he had urged some time ago--rather rash response.

His eyes sparkled--he drew nearer.

'Miss Raymond--Olive!' he exclaimed, but paused, as, at that moment,
Lady Aberfeldie swept into the room; 'on the terrace--the terrace
after breakfast,' he whispered, hurriedly, and then turned to receive
his hostess's morning greeting, which was so frigid that he feared
she had overheard him call her niece by her Christian name.

Holcroft was rather abstracted at breakfast; thus Ruby Logan, who had
been watching him, said,

'I would not, if I were you, put more sugar on the devilled turkey;
it won't improve it.'

'Forgot it was not salt; thanks, Miss Logan,' stammered Holcroft.

Now, whether the charming Olive was inspired by coquetry, curiosity,
caprice, or a strange desire to play with fire, we know not; but when
breakfast was over she laid down a novel she had been reading, or
affecting to read, at intervals during the meal, and, assuming her
garden hat, with all the laces and ribbons of her bright morning
dress fluttering about her, while everyone else at table was deep in
his or her letters and papers, went forth upon--the terrace!

Now Mr. Hawke Holcroft never read novels or anything else unless for
a purpose.  He glanced at the page which Olive had left open (the
work was 'Miss Forrester') and the passage struck him as most
_apropos_ to himself:

'I never pretended to goodness.  I have certain views for myself.  I
never pretended to fooling.  I am clever.  What stands between me and
my ambition I will remove; of whatever can administer to it I will
avail myself.  Beyond this, it seems to me, I am as good as other
people.'

'Hawke, my boy, yourself to a hair!' thought he, as he quietly sought
the terrace, not by the French window, as Olive had done, but by
going through a corridor and the entrance hall.

As coolly as if she had no prevision of what he was sure to urge,
Olive, who wore a waggish yet shy expression under her garden hat,
and who kept her hands deep in the pockets of her morning dress, said,

'What have you to say to me here that you could not have said in the
vicinity of the tea-urn?'

'All that I have to say may be said in three words.'

'Three! say it then.'

'I love you; a confession that has hovered on my timid lips many a
time.'

'I cannot listen to this, and I wish to have back my bangle.  If
Allan were to see it--good heavens!'

'I have said that it shall be buried with me.  Do give me some hope.'

'Of what; permission to retain the bangle?'

'No; that you may one day love me.'

'I cannot.'

'Say rather that you will not.'

Barring, in an angle of the terrace, her attempts to leave him, he
continued, in an earnestness that was born of monetary pressure and
desperate hope, to plead his passion.

'I am greatly honoured,' replied the girl, growing cold as he waxed
warm, and glancing nervously at the windows of the mansion; 'but I am
very sorry----'

'That you don't love me.'

'Yes.'

'But you may in time.  Oh, how I could teach you to do so!  Let me
wait and strive, Olive.  You deem me wild, perhaps--horsey, and all
that sort of thing; but do you think a man never changes, never grows
better, under a woman's softening influence?  Are you entirely to let
this family compact, whatever it may be, Olive--pardon me, Miss
Raymond,' he added, as he saw how her face clouded by the reference
to her position--'are you intending to let it stand between you and
all other chances of marriage?'

'You have no right to question me thus, or to assume this interest in
my affairs, Mr. Holcroft.'

'Pardon me, but I have a love for you that will last while life does.'

He did not add that it was the love of--her money.

'If there is only the Master, your cousin, between us, that is no
barrier, as I know you don't love him.'

'Then you know more of me than I do of myself,' said Olive, provoked
by his blunt brusquerie of manner, and failing to be flattered by his
pertinacity just then.

'Perhaps you deem me an heiress?' said Olive, as a new light suddenly
broke upon her.

'My dear Miss Raymond,' stammered Holcroft, colouring with surprise
at the abruptness of her question.  'I never thought upon the
subject; I only knew that--that--I am not just now a man of fortune;
my place in Essex----' he paused, thinking the less he said about it
the better.  'But who thinks of pelf when the heart is full of
passion!' he added, magnanimously.  'But tell me now,' said he, in
his most suave tone, 'do you care for anyone else more than for me?'

'I don't care for you at all--at least in the way you mean,' she
replied, defiantly.

He ground his teeth, even while he smiled, and thought,

'I must have patience before I tempt my fate again!'

Hawke Holcroft had made it so much a habit during his sojourn at
Dundargue to be in close attendance upon Olive--especially when they
were alone together--that his lovemaking took her less by surprise.
In a spirit of pique she had permitted him to dangle, and to play--if
we may use the term--at admiration for herself; but, now that he had
become serious a second time, she became alarmed.

The remark which had escaped her had excited some surprise in the
mind of Holcroft, as it interested him deeply; thus he said, in a low
soft voice,

'You referred to your not being an heiress, Miss Raymond, as if
_that_ could possibly make any difference with one who loves you
as--as----'

'There, there, that will do!' interrupted the impetuous Olive; 'I am
_not_ an heiress, in one sense, but very much of a beggar, if you
knew all,' she added, in a voice that faltered.

He regarded her with some bewilderment, as well he might, and said,

'My dear Miss Raymond, what am I to understand by this paradox?'

'Understand that I must marry my cousin Allan, or forfeit papa's
fortune--it goes to him if I refuse, or to charities.'

Her distinctness and vehemence carried conviction with her words.
Holcroft was confounded; but, being a practised dissembler, he only
smiled, and said,

'A most remarkable arrangement, and a tyrannical one for you.  But
suppose the Master had died in his boyhood--or were to die now?'

'The will would be worthless in effect, of course, I suppose,'
replied Olive, whose cheeks now burned scarlet, for--always a
creature of hot impulse--she now thought, '_why_ should I have
permitted my self to speak to _him_, one, almost a stranger, or to
any man, of papa's will?  What must he think of me!  Oh, what will
Aunt Aberfeldie say?'

For half a minute Holcroft was silent.  He was thinking, 'this must
be all bosh!--a cock and a bull, or a madman's will; she doesn't know
what she is talking about--no woman or girl ever knows business.
Well--I've a pull on her anyway; a viscount's niece isn't in a
fellow's power every day, as she will find herself in mine.'

What he referred to we shall show ere long.

While Olive was still crimson with reflections on her own imprudence,
Holcroft took possession of her passive hands, and said, in a partly
assumed voice of agitation,

'You told me, Miss Raymond--let me say Olive--a minute or two ago
that you did not care for me.  I shall not take that as your final
answer; and ere I leave Dundargue, when I again venture to speak to
you on the subject nearest my heart, your reply----'

'Will too probably be the same,' replied Olive, wrenching away her
hands, as steps were heard near, and she hastily re-entered the house.

The footsteps heard were those of Allan, who came leisurely up the
flight, a broad and stately one, which led to the terrace.  He had,
while proceeding down the avenue, observed the pair together, and, as
it seemed to him, in rather too close proximity.  He also remarked
Olive's abrupt departure, at _his_ approach as he supposed, and his
soul become ireful within him; but he felt himself, as he gave a hand
to Holcroft, compelled to dissemble.

So did the latter who met him smilingly.

'Welcome home to Dundargue,' he exclaimed; 'you have come back as
unexpectedly as you went; but whither?'

'Only as far as Edinburgh.'

'Ah.'  The reply seemed rather to relieve Holcroft.  Nothing was
known about him there, he thought.

'A lady was on the terrace with you just now?'

'Yes--Miss Raymond.'

'So I thought--sorry she did not stay.'

'Why--particularly?'

'I have some news that may interest her.'

'About whom?'

'Herself.'

'Hope they are pleasant?'

'That will depend upon how she may view them,' said Allan, with a
nod, as he entered the house.

'Now, what the deuce has he been up to--this fellow, with his hair
cut to the military pattern--Newgate crop, I should call it--he looks
queer this morning,' muttered Holcroft, as he selected a cigar from
his case, bit the end off with his sharp white teeth, and proceeded
to smoke it with brief, angry, and unenjoyable puffs that indicated a
mind full of bitterness and ill at ease.  Olive's communication had
been a sudden revelation to him.




CHAPTER XIII.

ALLAN PROVES MYSTERIOUS.

If Allan's sudden departure and unexplained absence excited some
curiosity in the minds of his family, his return excited it afresh
when he declined to make any explanation until he had held an
interview with his cousin, Olive Raymond, who, for a time, secluded
herself in her own room on the usual feminine plea of having a
headache.

Eveline, who had so longed for his return, now with tears told him of
her father's frequently expressed wish--nay, command, and Sir Paget's
forthcoming proposal; but, full of his own miseries, he could only
caress her and say,

'God bless you, little one.  I wish you well over all this.'

Sir Paget had left Dundargue pending the final arrangements, as he
thought; thus the cloud and the dread were hanging over her still.

'Has Olive received back her gold bangle--my gift--from Mr.
Holcroft?' asked Allan, with knitted brows.

'I--I think not.  How did you learn he had it?'

'Plainly enough--I saw it on his wrist!'

'Where he put it, in play--not she.'

'I should hope not, by Jove!'

'I know she has asked him for it repeatedly.'

'Can't make the beggar out.'

'I can--he thinks Olive an heiress.

Allan's dark brow became more deeply knitted.

'She thinks that if she married you, Allan dear,' said his sister,
after a pause, 'she would be sacrificing her own pride and liberty,
and that you might marry her though not caring for her----'

'But for that wretched money?' said Allan, with a kind of snort.
'Poor Olive--she views the situation in this light!  I certainly
shall not ask her to make any sacrifices for me, and, so far as I am
concerned, she shall be free as a bird in the air.'

His sister regarded him now with some perplexity, not understanding
what he meant, but said,

'You have just come in time for a little carpet-dance we have
arranged as a farewell treat to Ruby Logan, Mr. Holcroft, and--and
Evan Cameron, who are about to leave Dundargue.'

Allan noted the inflection of her voice as she uttered the name of
his young brother officer, and then hurried away, as their mother
entered the room, and with rather a cloudy expression in her face,
though he hastened to kiss her.

'You have been to Edinburgh, I have heard,' she said.

'Yes.'

'About what, Allan?'

'That you will learn in time, mother.  I must speak with Olive first.'

Lady Aberfeldie was full of irrepressible curiosity, but Allan
declined to gratify it just then.

'Have your recent movements any reference to Olive?'

'You will learn in time, mother.'

Lady Aberfeldie's face shaded with annoyance, for, only the day
before, she and the petulant young lady in question had indulged in a
tift between them.

Perceiving a wistful look and fitful manner about Olive, and that she
was more than usually restless and irritable, Lady Aberfeldie had
unwisely spoken to her on the subject of Allan's regard for her.

Olive had sat for a moment or two, with her delicate hands tightly
interlaced in her lap, and then, turning defiantly to her aunt, she
said,

'I will never marry Allan!'

'You must marry Allan, my dear girl,' replied Lady Aberfeldie, calmly
and firmly.

'Why?'

'You know your father's wish.'

'Oh, the will, of course!  So I am to be treated like a child?  Well,
if so, I may prove a wilful and dangerous one!'

Her aunt's report of this conversation made Lord Aberfeldie more than
ever anxious for the return of his son.

'You are very mysterious, Allan.  You and Olive seem a pair of
enigmas,' said Lady Aberfeldie.  'But your father waits you in the
library, and perhaps you will condescend to confide in him, if not in
me.  I must own it will be a fatal thing for your future happiness if
Olive thinks you seek her for gain; but for what does Mr. Holcroft so
evidently seek her?'

Allan smiled disdainfully.

'I have tried to think, mother dear, that she is not affected by this
person Holcroft, but begin to own to myself that "the faith that
worketh miracles" is not in me.'

When questioned by his father, Allan made the same reticent reply,
that he must see Olive before making any explanations.

'The time has come now, Allan,' said Lord Aberfeldie, 'when you are
bound in honour to make your cousin an offer, for in this peculiar
entanglement--for such, I grant you, it is--you and she do not stand
in the position of most engaged persons.'

'But suppose I have no wish to marry----'

'Absurd--outrageous!'

'Or may not marry at all?'

'By the refusal of Olive?'

'Yes.'

'Then her fortune, or most of it, becomes yours, in terms of the
will--'

'Which has been a curse to us both.  In her mind, and in the eyes of
all who may come to hear of it, we must lie under the degrading
imputation of a mercenary motive.'

'Not if you act with tact and delicacy, and surely your boy-and-girl
attachment must remain unchanged,' said Lord Aberfeldie, in a voice
that was soft, rather than indignant, as his memory went back to the
day when Olive first came a little orphan child to Dundargue--a tiny
and graceful creature, with tender, wondering, and beseeching eyes--a
child that climbed upon his knee, clung to him with sympathetic love,
and played with his watch-chain or the tassels of his sash, if he was
in uniform.  'And so,' he added, after a pause, 'you must propose to
the dear girl as a mere matter of form.'

'I have already done so,' said Allan, recalling, what he was not
likely to forget, all that had occurred during the homeward ride from
Dunsinane.

'Well, sir?' asked his father.

'I was laughed at--mocked, I may say.'

'Impossible!  The girl must have been jesting with you.'

'I do not think so,' said Allan, both sadly and bitterly as he
thought of the bangle and many other circumstances, the inevitable
'trifles light as air.'

'Well, you are bound to renew your proposal.'

'I do not think so, nor shall I again, unless some change comes over
her.'

'If I exert my authority as guardian and trustee----'

'She may run away.  Olive is a proud and restless girl with a defiant
spirit, though she has a very affectionate heart.'

'But you cannot expect that she is to propose to _you_.'

'I do love her, father--love her dearly; but fear that she views me
too much as a brother to love me otherwise.'

'This is rank nonsense.  Think of your separations, and of your
last--one well nigh seven years--with the Black Watch.'

'But might it not be the case that she may have a _penchant_ for some
one else?'

'For whom?' asked Lord Aberfeldie, angrily.

'Well, say for your friend Mr. Holcroft.'

'Penniless Hawke Holcroft! absurd--the man has seen but little of
her.'

'Quite enough in London and here to learn to admire, if not to love
her.  I would, however, rather see her laid in her grave than married
to Holcroft,' said Allan, in a stern but broken voice, adding under
his breath, as he left his father's presence and cut short an
unpleasant interview, 'but, so far as I am concerned, she shall be
free to choose for herself--free as the wind.'

'What the deuce can all this mean?' exclaimed Lord Aberfeldie, in
great perplexity; 'was ever an unfortunate man more troubled with two
intractable girls, than I am with Eveline and Olive!'

It has been said that, 'if exceedingly few men and women understand
each other when they are in their sober senses, how must it fare when
they are under the blinding influence of love?'

But Allan's course of action was decided now.




CHAPTER XIV.

OLIVE CHANGES HER MIND.

'You are pleased to see me again, Olive?'

'Of course, Allan--why do you ask me?' she exclaimed, putting both
her hands into his in welcome.

He retained them with a tender pressure for half a minute, looking
the while wistfully into her violet eyes, and then he let them drop
from his clasp.

'You wish particularly to speak with me, I understand?' said Olive,
nervously thinking it must refer to the _tête-à-tête_ he had overseen
on the terrace.

'Yes--particularly, dear Olive.'

When he saw her tender beauty, her grace, and her witchery, and felt
all the subtle charm of her presence, his heart was wrung by the
thought that, by the very act he had the power to do, and the
suggestions he was about to make to her, he might place her at the
entire disposal of Hawke Holcroft, of whose real character he now
knew more than formerly.

How variable had been the emotions she had, ever since his return
from India, exhibited towards him!  By turns she had been changeable
and indifferent apparently; playful, petulant, and imperious; yet
always bewitching and sweet.

Seeing the cloudy and sad expression of his eye, Olive said,

'You have not come to scold me for anything, Allan.  We are at least
friends.'

'Would we were more,' said Allan, remembering what his father had
urged but a few minutes before.

'Surely to be cousins is a near enough relationship.'

'Olive,' said he, reproachfully, 'unless you have formed a distinct
attachment for some one else, I must say I do not understand you.'

'I don't want you to understand me,' she replied, with half-averted
face.

'Why are you so hard with me?' he exclaimed, with a wistful, longing,
and miserable expression in his eyes.

She made no reply, so he spoke again.

'I have had a long consultation with our family agent in Edinburgh.'

'About what?'

'Your affairs and mine, Olive.'

'_My_ affairs?'

'Yes, and I have obtained the opinion of ruby Logan's father, and of
counsel of much higher--yes, of the highest--repute on the vexed
subject of your father's will--vexed at least between you and I,
Olive.'

She gazed at him with something of vacant surprise blended with
inquiry in her face.

'What I am about to suggest may be dangerous, as I do not know the
terms on which you permit yourself to be with this--Mr. Holcroft--but
I have had excellent legal advice, and----'

'Legal advice--oh, indeed!' she interrupted, with a toss of her
pretty head; 'that is well, for the laws as made by you men rank us
women with children and lunatics.  And what says this advice?'

'That you can be freed from the trammels of your father's will--free,
and the inheritrix of your own great wealth.'

She regarded him for a minute with blank astonishment; then as bright
joy like sunshine spread over her sweet face and sparkled in the
depth of her eyes, she exclaimed, in a low voice,

'Free, do you say, free in my own actions, and free to bestow papa's
money how and on whom I please?'

'On _whom_ you please,' replied Allan, thinking with intense
mortification on Holcroft, and Holcroft only; for personally he was
far above thinking of the fortune that might otherwise be his own, as
the stars are above the earth.  'Let me but see all this matter fully
arranged and then I shall be content,' said he, after a pause, during
which they had been regarding each other; he, her with sadness, and
she him with bewilderment.  'There are rumours in the air of a
turn-up with the Turks, and of a war in Egypt, and right glad I am of
that!'

'Why, Allan?'

'Because I'll get attached to the first army corps that sails, even
if the Black Watch is not going; but that it is sure to be, as, thank
God! the dear old corps is always in everything.'

'And why this joy?'

'To get as far away from you as possible,' he replied, bluntly, in a
hollow tone.

'Must you do so, Allan?'

'Yes, unless I mean to drive myself mad.'

'Do you really love me so much--and--and,' she paused, for she seemed
touched, her sweet lips were quivering now.

'What more?'

'For myself alone,' she asked, softly.

'Love you--oh, Olive.'

'There now, don't!' she exclaimed, turning away her face, and Allan
shrank back.

'Playing with me, after all--after all!' he muttered.  'Will you
please to look at the opinion of counsel,' he added, drawing from his
pocket a folio document, stitched with a red thread, and with a broad
margin.

'What a long story!' she exclaimed, as she glanced at and read,


'Chambers, Edinburgh.

'Copy of Counsel's opinion referred to in letter of 20th October,
1882, on the will of the late Oliver Raymond, Esq, of Jamaica, with
note of fees thereon.'


'What a fearful long story!' exclaimed Olive again.  'Tell me all
about it, Allan? but pray don't read it.'

'The will of your father is herein denounced as eccentric--one that
no court of law would enforce, nor could uphold, as in more than one
instance it is not conceived in strictly legal terms, and, to all
intents and purposes, can be put aside if you choose.  Thus, Olive,
you are free--free from all the bonds--if such ever existed--that
seemed to bind you to me; and I thank God that it is so, and I shall
go to Egypt, perhaps, with a lighter heart.  All that now remains to
be done is to take the means, if such are necessary, to have the
document set aside as so much waste paper, and you duly made mistress
of your inheritance, as you are now of age, in England, at least,
where it is invested.  Thus, you see, Olive, this opinion of counsel
is most valuable to you.'

Her soft eyes were brimming over with tears now, as she mechanically
took the document in her tremulous fingers.

'And thus you relinquish me?' she said.

'I relinquish, gladly, your fortune, and all control over your
actions, if--you choose.'

'But I don't choose!  Oh, Allan, how generous all this is of you.
But I shall not be less so, nor will I act upon this opinion of
counsel.'

'How?'

'See, thus!'

And, tearing it into pieces, she cast them into the fire-grate.

'Illegal as it may be, papa's will must be now a law to me more than
ever.'

'And you, Olive?'

'Love you, dear Allan, and love you dearly,' cried the wilful and
impulsive girl, as all her heart went forth to him, and he pressed
her to his breast at last.

Doubt, pride, defiance, and petulance had all passed away, and Olive
was all softness, love, and joy now; and to the pair time seemed for
a term to stand still, and save their caressing words softly
murmured, and the twitter of birds among the ivy without, silence
appeared to reign in this room; and nothing seemed to disturb them,
till Olive suddenly started from Allan's arms.

'What is it, love?' he asked.

'A face at the window!'

'Whose face?'

'I know not,' she replied, with some agitation.  'It has just
vanished.'

She thought, nay, she was sure, it had the features of Hawke
Holcroft, but she did not _say_ so.  If it were he, how much had he
overheard, how much overseen!

But she soon forgot the episode, and that night at dinner she looked
more radiant than ever, in her suite of Maltese jewellery--gold set
with orient pearls.

'It is usual for engaged ladies to have a ring,' Allan had whispered,
as he slipped a magnificently jewelled hoop upon her mystic finger.

'Fool that I have been!' thought the girl.  'How near was I
estranging one of the best and dearest of men in the world, not for
the sake of one immeasurably his inferior, even worthless perhaps,
but in a spirit of vanity, pique, and suspicion!'

'Allan,' she whispered to him softly, when an opportunity came, 'I
see now how foolish I have been and wilful--oh, so wilful!  But we
all make mistakes in life, and require at times each other's pity and
forgiveness.'

How sweetly and shyly she looked and spoke.

Hawke Holcroft felt intuitively, and indeed saw, that there was some
sudden change in the bearing of the pair to each other, and that a
sudden brightness had come into the faces of all--even that of
Eveline, usually now so _triste_ and pale--and under his sandy
moustache he 'wondered what the devil it all meant,' till his
watchful eyes detected the new and brilliant ring on the engaged
finger of Olive Raymond!


If Mr. Hawke Holcroft imagined he had nothing to dread personally
from the Master's sudden visit to Edinburgh he reckoned without his
host, as he would have found had he overheard a brief conversation
which took place between Allan and his comrade, young Cameron, as
they loitered in the gun-room looking over old Joe-Mantons, new
rifles, and central-fire breech-loaders, &c.

He was not slow to perceive very soon that Allan, usually so suave
and pleasant in manner, treated him now with a kind of stiffness that
was almost hauteur; but he dissembled his rage and so did Allan, who
had a keen sense of the laws of hospitality, with the genuine British
dread of aught that might approach a 'scene,' more than all as the
visit of Holcroft was nearly ended.

Poor wretch! he strove well to keep a brave front in society, while
letters that often lay beside his plate at breakfast were seen to
cloud his brow with perplexity, for they alluded to wrong horses
backed, I.O.U.'s, bills, and cheques 'referred to drawer,' and so
forth, and he must have left Dundargue before this, but for a
friendly slip of paper, which he had received from Lord Aberfeldie,
that 'Fool of Quality,' as he thought him.

'Look here, Cameron,' said Allan, as the twain smoked their cigars in
a quiet place.  'It is little wonder to me that you, Sir Paget
Puddicombe, and one or two others lost at cards with Holcroft as you
did.  I dined with our fellows at the mess in the Castle when I went
to Edinburgh.  There his name cropped up by the merest chance, and I
was told by Carslogie of Ours that he was present at a shindy in
London, where this fellow Holcroft, after having an unprecedented run
at cards at a place in St. James Street, was accused of having the
ace of trumps up his sleeve, from whence it fell when he was shying a
bottle at the accuser's head.  He talks to the pater largely of his
"place in Essex," or what remains of it.  Involved in debt to a
ruinous extent, he gave bills right and left, which were dishonoured.
£10,000 _had_ been raised upon his estate, in which he had only a
reversionary interest, and, when the mortgagees called in their
money, and the estate was sold, it did not suffice to pay a tithe of
the sums he had raised in every conceivable way, and everyone lost
their money all round.  Sharp that!  Yet he scraped through without
punishment.'

'By Jove!'

'Worse still.  Carslogie told me he was suspected of causing a horse
to fail in a race through having the bit poisoned; and how he left a
young fellow in the Hussars at Maidstone in the lurch, by refusing at
the last moment to ride for him a peculiarly vicious horse, which he
had solemnly undertaken to do, and so causing him to lose the race,
on which he had most imprudently made a ruinously heavy book.'

'And how did it end?'

'The report of a pistol that night in the cavalry barrack announced
that the Hussar had shot himself--that is all!  And this is the
"young man of the period" whom my father's confiding simplicity has
made a welcome guest for some weeks back at Dundargue, and thrown
into the society of my sister and Olive!  But I shall fully open his
eyes the moment our visitor is gone.'

But it was rather a pity for his own sake that Allan did not 'open'
Lord Aberfeldie's eyes a little before that event, and such being the
character of Mr. Hawke Holcroft the reader may feel less surprised at
some of the things we may have to record of him ere long.




CHAPTER XV.

THE CARPET-DANCE, AND WHAT CAME OF IT.

Though somewhat of the nature of an impromptu affair, the
'carpet-dance' partook of something of a more important kind.  Many
guests were invited; the ladies were in semi-toilet and the gentlemen
in evening dress: but the great dancing-room at Dundargue was
decorated to perfection by the care of Mr. Tappleton, the butler, the
housekeeper, and gardener, with the rarest plants, flowers, and ferns
the conservatories could produce, disposed in China and Japanese jars
on pedestals and marble console tables of the time of Louis XIV., at
whose court a Lord Aberfeldie had once been ambassador.

The fete had been brought about by the two fair cousins as a farewell
treat to the last of their present guests, who were departing--Ruby
Logan, Stratherroch, and--Mr. Holcroft!

Greatly to Eveline's relief, Sir Paget was gone, but, as if to worry
her further, Sir Paget left for her--with Lady Aberfeldie--a letter
referring to his admiration and regard for her since the last season
in London, and with it a handsome diamond necklet--the sight of which
in its fragrant Russian-leather case she loathed--with the hope that
she would accept and wear it, in token that she was holding out
brilliant hopes to him when 'they met in town again.'

Eveline flatly declined to accept and wear the jewellery, so, to her
intense annoyance, it remained as yet in her mother's hands.  She was
'biding her time.'

The wealthy suitor had attained a battered middle-age, while Eveline
was still in the glory of her youth.  True, but he had both wealth
and rank to offer, for though she was an 'Honourable Miss,' he was a
baronet, and so far as his love went, if it came late in life, it
was, nevertheless, a kind of overmastering passion.

The new emotions of her heart caused Eveline to reflect more than
perhaps she had ever done before.  It seemed but yesterday since she
and Olive conned their tasks and practised their scales together
under the eyes of a governess; since they had gathered bouquets of
wild flowers from the clefts of the rocks of Dundargue, and made
fairy caps of rushes and harebells by the burnside; happy children
both; but how miserable she was now that she was on the verge of
womanhood, and had learned to love and to hate; for she loved Evan
Cameron, and hated--yes, and she blushed as she admitted it to
herself--she did hate that smiling and rubicund old interloper, Sir
Paget.

'And you will not wear the necklet?' said Lady Aberfeldie, for the
last time.

'Do please to excuse me, dearest mamma--I cannot--yet a while.'

Lady Aberfeldie was pleased by the half obedience these words implied.

'What ornaments will you wear then?' she asked.  'You have so many to
choose from.'

'Let me wear the lovely diamond necklace that lies in the strong
casket in your room, mamma.'

Lady Aberfeldie's calm, patrician face darkened.

'I would rather you wore no diamonds at all, child; and these I never
wear myself.'

'But why, mamma?'

'Because that necklace always brings evil to whoever wears it.'

'So I have heard.  But it is a silly superstition, and they are such
lovely stones!  But what is the story of them?'

'The wife of a cavalier who died with Montrose on the scaffold of
Edinburgh gave them to an ancestor of ours to save his life.  This
was the first viscount, who was a zealous Covenanter, and the bosom
friend of Lord Warriston.  He certainly took the jewels from the poor
sorrowing wife----'

'And the cavalier?'

'Was beheaded by the Maiden at the market-cross, and a kind of curse
seems to have attended these diamonds ever since.'

'A cruel story.'

'But a true one.'

Eveline laughed at the superstition, kissed her cold, proud mother,
and carried her point; thus, at the time when carriage after carriage
was depositing guests at the great arched entrance hall, Eveline was
surveying her figure and face in the mirror with all a young girl's
satisfaction and thinking that her slender white throat never looked
as it did then, when encircled by the sparkling diamonds of the
luckless widow, and Olive at the same time was looking radiant in the
Maltese suite of Allan.

How the two last named enjoy the carpet-dance!  Perfect confidence
was so sweetly established between them, they had so many little
secrets to tell, so many revelations to make, so many comparisons, of
mutual hopes and fears, and so forth, while each seemed to exult in
the affection of the other, and felt in their hearts the words
ascribed to old Catullus:--

  'Let those love now who never loved before.
  Let those who always loved, now love the more!'


'Those two young fools seem to understand each other and each other's
interests at last!' whispered Lord to Lady Aberfeldie, with a smile
of amusement.

'But there are two _other_ young fools present who are doing their
best to mar each other's interests,' was her cold and warning
response.

Hawke Holcroft's shifty eyes lowered as he watched the cousins and
whirled in a waltz with Ruby Logan or any other girl who came to
hand.  He was in utter perplexity to find the new footing on which
these hitherto strange lovers so suddenly were, and that he himself
was, as he felt and thought, 'nowhere!'

What could she mean?  There was something of radiance in the faces of
all the family--even of the sweetly pensive Eveline--all indicative
of a new movement that _he_ was out of.

'As for Olive,' he muttered, while a sentiment of rage, mingled with
avarice and jealousy, grew strong in his heart, 'she is an infernal
weather-cock, but a deuced handsome one!'

Ruby Logan was equally puzzled, but found consolation with young
Carslogie of the Black Watch, whom Allan had invited to the
festivity, and who styled her, with reference to her hair, 'the amber
witch.'

'Happy Olive and Allan,' thought Eveline, as she rested for a minute
on the arm of Cameron, 'they may have as many round dances as they
choose without remark, while mine, with _him_, must be few and far
between.'

Her dress was white silk, trimmed with little laurel leaves and
crowberry--the latter a delicate attention to Evan, as it is the
badge of the Camerons.

'Will you wear my colours to-night?' she asked, as they promenaded at
that end of the room which was furthest away from 'papa and mamma.'
She broke off a spray and made him a button-hole.  'Allow me to fix
it for you,' said Eveline, and deftly she put it in his lapel, while
Evan's heart thrilled to feel the touch of her beloved hand--even
though gloved--so near his heart, as they swept into another waltz.

'Aberfeldie,' said the hostess to her husband, 'I feel certain that
Evan Cameron is in love with our Eveline.'

Lord Aberfeldie had no doubt about it whatever now, but he only said,

'He would be a fool to be otherwise.'

'But that is not what we seek!'

'Certainly not; but all young fellows have fancies; and he will be
gone from this in a few hours now.'

'Thank Heaven, yes!' responded Lady Aberfeldie, devoutly.

'By the way, why did you permit her to wear those unlucky diamonds?'

'She pled so hard, and then the idea of their bringing evil is so
behind the age.'

'Behind the age or not, something untoward or unlucky always
accompanies their appearance in public.  They should have been sent
to Bond Street long ago.'

And Lord Aberfeldie smiled on her affectionately, as at that moment
he could not help thinking how handsome and young his wife looked in
her costume of rich ruby velvet, trimmed at the square cut neck and
arms with the finest white old lace, while jewels that an empress
might have worn glittered in her ears and hair.

Replacing sometimes the professional musicians, making themselves
useful at the piano, and playing certainly good dance music were
two--the 'mermaids,' as Holcroft called them--the minister's
daughters, who were usually so fond of warbling that they 'were under
the blue sea.'

He knew nothing of what Allan had learned concerning him--of the
light Carslogie had thrown on his private life; thus, whatever change
had come over the spirit of Olive's dream, he deemed it necessary to
ask her for, at least, one round dance as usual; and Allan watched
them with a haughty grimace on his features as they danced it in a
silent manner that was peculiar and rather oppressive to both.  The
moment it was over, and he handed her back to a seat, Holcroft took
refuge in the refreshment-room, where Mr. Tappleton gave him a
foaming glass of sparkling champagne.

Young Cameron was rather grave, Allan thought, but the former was
oppressed by one idea then, that on the morrow he would have to
report himself at the headquarters of the Black Watch, and he gazed
like one in a dream at the dancers whirling round him; so Allan took
him to task and strove to rally him.

'Why so sad, old fellow?  You're down on your luck, somehow,' said he.

'Because, Graham,' replied Cameron, with a forced smile, 'there are
times when I am inclined to ask with Mr. Mallock, "Is life worth
living?"'

'Of course it is--but how with you?'

'Well,' replied Cameron, with whom just then one bitter thought was
more than usually keen, 'dipped nigh to sinking as my place of
Stratherroch is, I don't see so much to live for, and certainly
deuced little to live upon.'

'Don't take this gloomy view, old fellow,' said Allan, cheerfully.

'It is very well for you to take a jolly view of the world,
Allan--you, the son of a peer, and engaged to----'

'Take heart, man; we've lots of life before us--life in Egypt
perhaps.  There is Eveline sitting alone; take another turn with her,
and then we'll have some of Mumms' extra dry together.'

Eveline had opened an album as Cameron drew near her, but closed it
instantly as the first photo that met her eyes was a fine cabinet one
of Sir Paget.  There was an expression of pensive sweetness in her
otherwise radiant face, for she, poor girl, never for a moment forgot
that a parting--too probably a final one it might prove--was close at
hand now, and, after the two past delightful months, how dreary would
the future seem!

'Are you tired?' said a tender voice in her ear; 'it is our dance, I
think--but would you rather sit it out?'

'A little promenade rather.'

He bowed, and, rising, she took his proffered arm.  They made a
circuit of the room once or twice, and then, lured no doubt by the
coolness and seclusion of a long corridor, entered it, unnoticed as
they thought; but the watchful gaze of Lady Aberfeldie had followed
them.

There was much to see in this long, stately, and vaulted corridor,
and its deeply embayed windows overlooking the rock on which the
oldest part of Dundargue is perched.  Its floor was of _parqueterie_;
its walls of wainscot, with massively framed old pictures; some
trophies of arms and family armour hung there, and the windows were
furnished with ancient stone seats and modern stained glass, through
which the radiance of the setting sun was contending with the dim
shaded lamps.

Specimens of unique china and frail goblets of Venetian glass, with
other objects of 'bigotry and virtue,' as Holcroft had called them,
were there in oaken cabinets and on exquisite brackets.  Among other
things, on a pedestal, skilfully stuffed, the last golden eagle that
had been shot at the Birks of Aberfeldie, by the gun of Dugald Glas,
a glorious bird that measured five feet from tip to tip of his
shining pinions; yet none of these things caught the attention of the
two promenaders.

Her hand was on his arm; involuntarily that arm pressed the soft and
tremulous fingers which rested there, and in another moment his hand
stole over them without their being withdrawn--nay, it seemed as if
their load became more heavy.

Eveline was not unaware that there was something morally wrong in the
situation; but, then, 'the situation had its charm.'

'Eveline!'

Cameron had never before ventured to call her by her Christian name,
nor, until it passed his lips half unconsciously now, had he an
intention of so uttering it; but that utterance seemed scarcely a new
revelation to the girl.

Soft and lovely was the shy smile upon her upturned face as they
stood within the deep bay of a window.  Was it that smile, or what,
that dazed Evan Cameron and swept his senses away; but he caught her
suddenly in his arms and kissed her lips and eyes, whispering,

'Oh!  Eveline, my darling--my darling!'

And then there was a pause, full of sighs of happiness.  'The stone
was cast into the water, and the still lake broke up into a stormy
sea, where there would be peace and quiet no more!'  No more, at
least, unless the future held some happiness for these two poor
loving hearts.

'Have I done wrong?' said Cameron, in a breathless voice, after a
little time; 'God knows I never meant that you should see how dearly,
how desperately, and how hopelessly I love you when I let the
precious secret escape me as I did; but it is done now.'

She was pale as death and trembling violently, as she thought of her
mother; yet she nestled closely and clingingly to him.

'You love me, Eveline?'

'Can you ask?' she whispered.  'Yes--oh, yes--Evan.'

He was intoxicated, and drew her close to him again.  Such a moment
comes but once in life--once only!

'Let us go now--we shall be missed,' said Eveline.

'Oh, stay one moment longer, darling.'

'Mamma, if we could only get her to be our friend, all might be right
and go well.'

'Even with my poverty, Eveline?'

'Don't call it so.  Yes, papa always gives in to her in the long run.'

Cameron sighed.

'Are you two practising for amateur theatricals, or admiring the
stars through the stained glass?' said the voice of Lord Aberfeldie,
suddenly.

We have said that the eyes of his wife had followed the pair, and
hence no doubt his lordship's sudden appearance in the dimly-lighted
corridor.  Both were painfully confused.

How much had Lord Aberfeldie overseen, how much had he overheard, or
how little of both?  It was impossible for them to guess, but he
good-naturedly affected not to see all that his mind took in.

Cameron felt that he had nothing to explain, to urge, or to utter,
but bowed, smiled a very hollow smile indeed, and led his partner
back to the dancing-room, where neither waltzed more that evening, as
the impromptu affair was over, the guests were departing, and Lord
Aberfeldie was beginning to think that the diamonds of the legend
were already producing their evil results in this the first untoward
event in the young life of his daughter.

Allan and Cameron, avoiding Holcroft, sat long that night in the
former's room smoking and imbibing brandy-and-soda, but no word
escaped the lover of what had passed in the corridor; and, sooth to
say, full of Olive and himself, Allan had never missed the pair from
the dancing-room.

Cameron was to leave Dundargue betimes next morning, so he bade
farewell to his comrade, who charged him with remembrances to 'all
our fellows of the Black Watch;' and anon Cameron found himself alone
with his own loving, exulting, sad, and anxious thoughts, and with
the little bouquet--a dwarf laurel leaf and sprig of
crowberry--dearer to him then than even his Victoria Cross!

Again and again did he rehearse that sweet episode in the dimly-lit
corridor, and again and again in the time to come would it return
with sorrowful reiteration to his heart and memory!

Eveline loved him!  Her own lips had acknowledged it, her kisses
seemed still to linger on his lips; but to what end--my God! he
exclaimed, in bitterness of heart, to what end?  Again and again he
thought over her plaintive and child-like wish, 'if we could only get
mamma to be our friend,' and all that wish suggested.  Her mother
suspected much, he feared, and that her father knew all.  Sir Paget,
with his colossal wealth, was looming in the distance like a simoon
to the newly dawned love; and poor Evan could but come to the
terrible conclusion that, like too many others, his penniless love
could only be a hopeless one.

So wore the night away--the last, Cameron was assured, he would ever
spend in Dundargue; and morning came.

Unslept, Cameron made rapidly the prosaic preparations for his
departure, and a valet had borne off his portmanteaus, rugs, and
gun-case to the entrance hall, where the sleepy Mr. Tappleton and a
wagonette awaited him.

As he was about to descend the great, silent staircase, suddenly
Eveline, fully dressed for the day and softly slippered, stood before
him, her mignonne face very pale, and her soft hazel eyes inflamed by
past weeping.

'Evan!'

'My darling!'

No housemaids were about as yet, and no prying eyes were there, nor
had Ronald Gair with his pipes blown _reveille_.

'I could not let you go without--without one word of farewell,' she
sobbed.

Long and mute was their embrace, and the heart of Cameron swelled as
if to bursting with mingled love and gratitude.  He pressed her to
it.  It was their parting embrace, and both seemed to feel in it that
which a writer has described as 'the vibration of an agony.'

'I feel as if I were bereft of reason!' he whispered.

'My poor Evan--my own dear love!' cooed the girl.  One kiss more, and
he was gone.

When or where, if ever, would they meet again?

Eveline had nervously and sedulously avoided Sir Paget till the time
of his departure; and, when he did leave Dundargue in the dawn, he
was only seen off by the old butler; but Evan Cameron had an
unexpected farewell caress, the memory of a sad, soft, and clinging
kiss that he was to take away with him to what he deemed the land of
bondage, and tearful eyes watched his wagonette as it passed down the
avenue and out upon the high-road that led to the railway.

Evan looked backwards at the tall and stately pile of Dundargue, on
which the rays of the rising sun shone redly, and deep in his heart
he envied Carslogie, who was to remain behind for a couple of days'
shooting.  Yet wherefore should he envy any man while Eveline loved
him? was his afterthought.

And she, poor girl, seemed to feel herself left most terribly alone
with all her sorrow--alone amid her loving family and splendid
surroundings, and with Evan's words of love lingering in her ear she
was soon bidden to school herself to think of Sir Paget, and Sir
Paget Puddicombe only!  'The human creature,' it has been written,
'who would have suited us to every fibre of our being we have not
found, or, having found, have not possessed; but (perhaps)
undervalued, and so allowed to pass out of our lives.'

These two suited each other 'to a fibre,' as our author quaintly puts
it, and in perfect unanimity of sentiment; and yet for all that they
may be compelled to pass out of each other's lives, and live those
lives far, far apart.

Under her mother's scrutiny Eveline strove hard to dissemble, and on
receiving her morning kiss said,

'Well, mamma, no evil has come of the wearing the diamonds--Dundargue
has not taken fire.'

'No, child--indeed, good has come!'

'How, mamma?'

'This morning's mail has brought an enclosure for you--the formal
proposal of Sir Paget.'

Eveline was stricken dumb, but thought to herself,

'Unhappy I--evil _has_ come!'

And ere noon was passed she was taken to task by her father in the
library, prompted by her mother, no doubt.

He drew her to him caressingly, and, interlacing his fingers upon her
head, drew her soft cheek upon his breast.

'I think, Eveline,' said he, 'you may know by this time how well I
love you.'

'I do, indeed, papa,' replied Eveline, in a low voice, but feeling
her heart sink under this unusual prelude nevertheless.

'And yet you have been deluding me.'

'Deluding you--I, papa?'

'Yes.'

'Oh, how?'

'By encouraging--pardon me, not that--rather by permitting a visitor
to encourage certain hopes.  That, you know, it is impossible I
should view with favour.'

'You mean--you mean----' stammered Eveline, recalling the episode in
the corridor.

'Evan Cameron.'

'He is gone,' said she, with difficulty restraining her tears.

'To darken the door of Dundargue no more!  Not that I have any fault
to find with poor Cameron--a brave fellow who has won his V.C., and
is a Black Watchman to boot; but he is Laird of Stratherroch only in
name; his purse does not come up to the requisite standard, and may
never do so till both your heads are grey; but he is gone, as you
say, and we shall think of him no more.  I have other brighter,
better, and richer views for you, my dear child, and I hope you will
not disappoint us all.  Sir Paget loves you, and you will think
seriously over all this?'

'How can I do otherwise, papa?' was the dubious response, and the
girl stole away to her own room.  So wearing the diamonds seemed only
to be bringing about a sudden crisis in the affairs of herself and
the banished Evan Cameron, for such she deemed him.

And, ere she went to bed that night, Eveline, poor girl, strove to
pray that she might have some guide or assistance up the stony and
thorny path which she feared was before her now in life; but she no
longer now had the deep and unbroken sleep that had ever been her lot
the moment her soft cheek touched the pillow.  Too nervous to sleep
alone, she crept in beside Olive, and, nestling her little face in
the white bosom of her cousin, wept long and bitterly.

But events were now to occur that caused even the brilliant proposal
of Sir Paget to be forgotten.



END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.



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