The early days of the spring subsequent to the events we have narrated, found the Aberfeldie family located at Maviswood, a handsome modern villa to the west of Edinburgh, whither they had removed from Dundargue, that Allan, on whom a kind of protracted illness had fallen, might avail himself of the great medical skill which is always to be found in the Scottish Metropolis.
By what means Allan was discovered and got out of the vault into which he had been flung, and, as Hawke Holcroft hoped, was entombed for ever, the latter never knew, from the plan adopted by the family, but the public prints had informed him more than once, that 'the Master of Aberfeldie had met with an accident—a fall—from the effects of which he was slowly recovering; wounds received when on service with the Black Watch retarding his progress to health.'
Evan Cameron, Carslogie, and others of the regiment, then in the Castle of Edinburgh, heard of Allan's affair or illness in a vague way, as Lord Aberfeldie shrunk from all gossip, publicity and surmise; and the first-named learned that Eveline's marriage had been delayed in consequence of that illness, chiefly through a letter written to him by Olive, at Allan's request.
So the early days of spring were passing on, and no particular change had taken place in the relative positions of our characters since we last saw them at Dundargue.
Eveline was alone one afternoon in a room at Maviswood—a room of vast proportions. The ceiling was divided into deep panels of oak colour; a dado of dead gold tint was carried round the walls to within eight feet of the cornice, and the chairs and ottomans were upholstered in blue maroquin leather, studded with elaborate gilt nails. The hangings were blue, with yellow borders, lining and tassels; great china bowls, full of conservatory flowers, stood on ornate tables and pedestals, within the recess of a great triple bay window, beyond which spread away southward the lovely landscape that is bounded by the Pentlands.
Spring is a lovely and joyous season everywhere, but nowhere is it lovelier than in the fertile Lothians; and nowhere may the eye rest upon a more varied and beautiful landscape than that which spreads from the southern slope of Corstorphine's wooded crags to the base of the green and undulating Pentlands, the highest summits of which range from sixteen hundred to nearly nineteen hundred feet.
There are corn-fields teeming with fertility, rows of stately trees, pretty cottages, stately white manor houses, and cosy farms embosomed among old woods and orchards; the picturesque rocks of wooded Craiglockhart, wherein the kites and kestrels build their nests; the rich alluvial land, where for ages a great loch once spread its waters; the quaint old village church, on the spire of which the red sunset loves to linger; and westward the Queen of the North, in all the glory of castled rock, and hill and crag, spire, tower, and countless terraces; and on all of these the wistful eyes of Eveline Grahame were wandering dreamily.
A golden glory was cast along the eastern slopes, the fleecy clouds were every moment assuming new forms and lovelier colours; the woods were budding forth; the Leith and its tiny tributaries were brawling along as if their waters had no time to toy with the brown pebbles. Seated, at times, sideways on their horses, the happy ploughboys were already going home from their labours. The early-yeaned lambs were frisking about the ewes, and cloud and sunshine seemed to chase each other over the tender grass, where the wild white gowan was opening its petals, and old folks were remembering that 'a peck o' March dust was worth the ransom o' a king.'
Of late, Eveline's bursts of girlish merriment had been few and far between. She was fretful—unusually so for a girl who by nature was so sweet and gentle, and at the mere mention of the name of Sir Paget—to whom she felt herself doomed, as it were, or allotted—she became more fretful, silent, and abstracted.
She shrank from smiling people, turned her back upon inquisitive ones, and often was found to answer briefly and beside the point.
In short, the pretty Eveline's heart or mind was quite unhinged.
The tenth day of her residence at Maviswood was creeping slowly on, and she was pondering, full of thought, alone in that stately room, when a servant startled her by announcing and ushering in 'Mr. Evan Cameron,' and, though her mind was full of him—of the evening of the carpet-dance at Dundargue, and the hour of joy in the half-lit corridor, a kind of gasp escaped her as she rose from her seat to receive him.
But why should he not call, reason suggested to her.
The Grahams had been for ten days, we have said, at Maviswood; and Cameron, who had been counting every hour of those ten days, and watching the villa with his field-glass from his quarters in the distant castle, had now ventured to make an afternoon walk, and found, beyond his hopes, that Eveline was alone.
Allan and Olive were out together in a pony-phaeton; Lord and Lady Aberfeldie were he cared not where; anyway, they were absent too.
Olive, feeling that she was in some way responsible, by her past thoughtlessness, petulance, and flirting with the daring and unworthy Holcroft, for much that had befallen Allan, now 'waited on him hand and foot,' as the old nurse Nannie phrased it. She was with him from hour to hour, and, though their marriage was delayed, how happy they seemed to be!
Fearing interruption as before, Cameron, too tender and true not to be a timid lover, found a difficulty just then in taking up the thread of the old story, and they stood in the bay-window talking commonplaces, while heart was speaking to heart and eye to eye. But 'what is speaking or hearing when heart wells into heart?'
Cameron heard all she chose then to tell him about Allan's 'accident,' the bewilderment and alarm of the family, and so forth. Many friends were spoken of, but Sir Paget was of course referred to by neither.
Eveline, though so young, had the frank and perfect air of repose in her manner that came of gentle breeding, and made her seem older than she was, but gave an assurance that whatever she said, or whatever she did, was said and done in the right way. Without coquetry, her manner was full of simple fascination; but it was undeniably nervous now, for she read by Cameron's softened voice, and in his brightening eye, the clear necessity for something else than common-place talk, when he discovered by a casual remark that Lord and Lady Aberfeldie were not in the house.
Eveline felt that she had given herself to Evan, and that the tenor of their interview in the corridor amounted tacitly to an engagement.
An engagement! But to what end? It all seemed but a dream, a delicious dream, of which there was nothing to remind her, not even a ring, a lock of hair, or the tiniest note.
Unlike Cameron, Eveline, while loving him dearly, had, singular to say, no thought of marriage with him in the ordinary sense of the word; for, hemmed round as she was, and destined as she was, the idea was a hopeless one, judged from her parents' point of view. She only felt, poor girl, that she loved, and was full of sad joy—if we may use the paradox—in the belief that she was truly loved in return.
'How silent you have become,' she said, in a low tone, after a nervous pause.
'I know not what to say; but love has no need of words, Eveline, nor needs he many at any time,' he replied, drawing closer to her. Then he took a conservatory rose from a vase and exclaimed, 'Eveline darling, you love me well and truly, don't you?'
'Well and truly, you know, dear Evan,' she replied, as his arm went round her, and her head dropped on his shoulder. 'What need to ask me?' she whispered, in a breathless voice.
'Because I cannot hear the beloved assurance too often.' He kissed her tenderly, we cannot say how many times, nor would it matter, while she lay passive in his arms, and then he said, 'Shall we try our fate with this rose?'
'How?'
'By plucking it, leaf by leaf, saying each time "Lucky, Unlucky," till the last leaf comes.'
'Somethingà la Marguerite.'
'Yes.'
'No, decidedly no, dearest Evan.'
'You are superstitious. Well, so am I.'
'Thus an omen would only torment us, and surely we have enough—enough——' Tears choked her voice, and she could only add, 'Trust, dearest Evan, trust.'
'In what, my darling?'
'The great goodness of God.'
The spell of a great love was on both. Their lips met in a long and silent kiss, and the rose fell at their feet between them.
A sound roused them—nay, startled them. They had only time to separate and affect a sudden interest in the artistic effects produced by light and shadow on the landscape, when Lord and Lady Aberfeldie entered the room together, a pretty palpable cloud of annoyance resting on the brows of both as they politely, but far from warmly, greeted the visitor.
The peer, who had evidently been out riding, appeared in a black morning coat and white cords, whip in hand, and the lady, who had been in the grounds, wore her garden hat and shawl. She had seen a visitor ride up to the door from a distant part of the lawn, and had hurried home, her heart foreboding truly who that visitor was.
And now, while their hearts were vibrating with tenderness, and with their lips yet tremulously sensible of the sweetness of kisses—the first kisses of a new and early love—they had to talk enforced commonplace—or, at least, Evan did so, while Eveline remained silent—of the news of the day, the expected plans of the ministry, the probable despatch of a fleet to Egyptian waters, of the chances of an army following it, of Arabi Pasha and the Khedive, the plot formed by the Circassian officers, and so forth, till it was time for the lingering Cameron to resume his hat and depart at last.
Cameron tried to ignore that which, under other and more prosperous circumstances, would have galled and roused his haughty Highland spirit—Lord Aberfeldie's coldness of manner when he spoke even of the regiment, and how certainly it would go to the East, 'as the Black Watch, thank God, was always in everything, and always with honour,' while Evan's eyes irresistibly wandered to the face of Eveline, and memory went back to the twilighted corridor at Dundargue.
But so did the memory of my Lord Aberfeldie.
The peer must have undergone a good deal of training or "drilling" lately at the hands of Lady Aberfeldie before he could have brought himself to behave so coldly to one he really liked so well as young Stratherroch, and one of the Black Watch especially; but then, perhaps, he was just a little soured by the sequel to the hospitality and kindness accorded to "the son of his old friend," which son had contrived by skilful lettering and figuring to add the sum of eighty pounds to his cheque.
As he bade them adieu Stratherroch observed that Lord Aberfeldie did not ask him to call again at Maviswood, and keenly did he feel the omission and all it implied, and with it came the conviction that he must call no more!
Slowly he rode back to his quarters full of alternately exultant and bitter thoughts—exultant that Eveline loved him and would never cease to love him, but bitter ones as he asked himself, to what end!
If poor Cameron had vague and lingering hopes to which he clung (and doubtless he had)—hopes when seeing Eveline, of proposing or hinting of meeting elsewhere in the future—they were doomed to blight, for no such bore fruition; and they had now parted, and her father and mother thought they should part, as mere friends, who might meet casually in society, but at all events had betternotmeet again.
And Cameron feared that, so far as monetary matters stood with him, his friend Allan might endorse the same view of the situation.
'Stratherroch is a gentleman by birth and position, but poor, miserably poor,' said Lady Aberfeldie, after he had gone; 'so was that precious Mr. Holcroft, and when a declension takes place in tone, manner, and habits, as in his instance, we never know where it may end,' she added pointedly to Eveline.
'How can you speak of the two men in the same sentence!' exclaimed the peer, with an asperity for which his daughter thanked him in her aching heart.
At anytime when Eveline looked south-eastward from Maviswood she could see the Castle of Edinburgh, and the towering mass of the western barrack, with all its windows shining in the sun, and she always did so with tenderest interest, as she knew thathewas there; but, natheless, her experience of at least one London season, there was much of the guileless child and mere girl in Eveline still, and she was so sweet and soft, so pliable, and so impressed with her mother's will and her father's authority, that—that how could Evan Cameron tell what pressure might be brought to bear upon her, to make her seem to transfer the allegiance of her heart to another—even to the wealthy old English baronet, Sir Paget Puddicombe?
Alas! there was to be, in time, a pressure that none could then foresee.
The reports which Mr. Hawke Holcroft—spinning out his precarious existence by skill with the billiard cue, cards, and the betting ring—heard concerning the health of his intended victim, one whom he still absurdly and grotesquely deemed his successful rival, were undoubtedly true.
With all his natural strength. Allan Graham recovered but slowly from all he had undergone, and the many hours he had lingered in that vault with his fractured limb unset, together with the effect of certain sabre wounds received when he served in India, retarded his progress to restoration; but amid his protracted convalescence how sweet it was, as the pleasant days of sunny spring stole on at Maviswood, to have the society, the hourly care and attendance of Olive, in whom he was always, he thought, discovering some new charm of mind or grace of manner, with much soft tenderness of heart and hand.
Thus, twice—once in India and again at home—rescued, as it were, from the verge of death, he had learned the sweetness of life, and that, whatever its sufferings and sorrows may be, what a priceless gift it is—a reflection that never occurred to him when going under fire, or leading a line of Highlanders in their headlong charge.
Lady Aberfeldie was content and happy; Evan Cameron seemed now a banished man; even Allan never spoke of him, and the progress of matters between the cousins proved all she could desire.
'Nothing could be more fortunate, dearest Olive, than the attachment which now subsists between you and Allan; it fulfils all your father's fondest wishes,' said she, as she met them one day in the garden, slowly promenading between the flowerbeds, Allan leaning, or affecting to do so, on the soft, round arm of Olive.
'Yes, mother dear—I agree with you, and also with Peter Simple,' replied Allan, smiling.
'In what?'
'That the life of a man seems to consist of getting into scrapes, and then getting out of them again.'
'And you forget now that I ever teased and tormented you so, my poor Allan,' said Olive, patting his rather pale cheek with her pinky palm.
'Of course I do, darling. I am not much of a philosopher, but Balzac is right in his view of human life—that it would be intolerable without a vast amount of forgetting.'
'And forgiving, too, he might have added,' said Olive, as she tendered her lips playfully and poutingly for a kiss, which he was not slow in according.
Poor Eveline, as she watched this happy pair daily under her eyes, sighed with natural and irrepressible envy; she thought of her own love for Evan Cameron—secret, ignored, and so liable to excite maternal scorn and bitterness, with paternal reprehension, when it came on thetapis; while even Allan, at all times so loving and so brotherly, amid the great selfishness or absorption of his own passion, seemed, as she thought, to have withdrawn his sympathy from her now.
One circumstance she deemed most fortunate—Parliament was sitting, and Sir Paget Puddicombe was in London.
It would seem, then, that between the botheration of Ireland and the interests of Egypt the affairs of Slough-cum-Sloggit—monetary, municipal, and commercial—were as likely to be forgotten and ignored as if that quiet borough had actually been an integral part of Scotland—a state of matters not to be tolerated. So Sir Paget was in his place at Westminster, jerking his head and puffing out his chest more than ever, and Eveline was freed for a time from his presence, and the would-be lover-like regard of his suspicious and keenly-critical old eyes.
And she knew not that almost daily, the moment that he was free from duty or parade was over, Evan, drawn by an irrepressible craving and desire to be near her—to see the roof under which she dwelt, the windows through which she might be looking, the trees under which she might be walking, was always hovering in the vicinity of Maviswood; while, by a strange fatality, she, filled by a similar desire, might be riding with her father, or driving with her mother, through stately George Street, along the magnificent terrace of Princes Street, and other great thoroughfares, looking eagerly, but in vain, for a chance glimpse of him, and perhaps a bow—a mere bow, and nothing more.
Circumstanced as they were, what more could she look for?
Twice only, and at long intervals, did she see Evan, and on each occasion how wildly did her loving heart beat as she detected his well-known figure; but he saw not her, as she rode slowly on by her father's side, who, if he saw Evan on the first occasion, steadily ignored the fact, and stared up at the Castle ramparts, where the sentinels of the Black Watch trod slowly to and fro.
Certainly Evan did not see her. He was on the garden side of Princes Street the wooded walk which somewhat resembles a continental boulevard—in close conversation with a young lady, who seemed to listen to all he was saying with greatempressement.
The second time she saw him was after an interval of some days, in the same place, at the same hour, and with the same fair companion, to whom her father—thinking, no doubt, to utilise the circumstance—drew her attention somewhat pointedly.
'Cameronagain!' said he; 'our friend seems to find other attractions in the gardens than trees or spring flowers.'
Eveline's heart beat painfully, and the second episode gave her occasion for much and rather harassing thought. Her father, by this remark, showed that he had observed Evan before; but who was the latter's companion?
Eveline blushed violently up to where the brim of her smart riding-hat pressed her bright brown hair upon her brow, and down to where a stiff and snow-white linen collar encircled her slender white neck; then she grew very pale with constrained emotion, which, fortunately, her father did not detect.
She did not speak, but pretended to smile, with an effort of self-mastery, while a lump seemed to rise in her slender throat; for though the circumstance of Evan, who was debarred from coming to see her, being seen there again with the same young lady might be a casualty, a trivial coincidence, and quite explainable, her pride was piqued and her affection wounded.
Still more were they piqued and wounded when, some days after, as she was seated in the carriage at the door of a shop in which Lady Aberfeldie was giving some orders, she saw this girl loitering in the same spot, looking anxiously around her, as if waiting for some one who did not come, and whom Eveline's heart foreboded could only be Evan Cameron!
She snatched from the carriage-basket or reticule a lorgnette, through which she could see that the girl was more than pretty, very pale, and though plainly yet fashionably dressed, with an undoubtedly ladylike air and bearing.
If he was Evan she waited for, he did not keep his appointment, for, after a time, the stranger turned sadly, lingeringly away, and disappeared.
A dancing-man, a popular young fellow like Evan Cameron, in one of the most popular of Scottish regiments, could not fail to have many lady friends in Edinburgh; but to have been seen twice in the same place, with the same girl, at the same time, and apparently expected there athirdtime, was a little peculiar, and apt to cause Eveline to speculate upon it unpleasantly.
Was this companionship a matter of daily occurrence? Or was he, amid the enforced separation from herself, beginning to replace her image by another already—already?
The tenderness of their last meeting, in the bay-window at Maviswood, seemed to preclude this cruel idea, and to the hope that tenderness inspired, she clung most lovingly; thus, as yet, she did not speak of the matter to her cousin Olive, who—full of her own love-affair and her new-found happiness—might not have sympathised with her as once she would have done; and, to add to her trouble, in a little time she would have her old admirer beside her again, as the member for Slough-cum-Sloggit was making arrangements to pair off with another, and would soon be able to leave London.
However, some happiness was in store for her still.
Cameron, to do him justice, spent too much of his spare time in hovering about the vicinity of Maviswood not to be rewarded. Thus, one clear, bright afternoon, in a lovely and lonely green lane, where the holly hedges grew close and darkly, where the wood violets spread their velvet leaves on the sunny banks, and where the mavis and merle sang, they suddenly met each other, as he came walking slowly along on foot, leading his horse by the bridle, which was flung over his arm.
His heart was so full of her that, when he met her suddenly face to face thus, he scarcely evinced surprise, while tremulously she put both her hands into his.
'Evan!'
'My darling—at last—at last!'
No eye was upon them there as his arms went round her, and in the great joy of seeing him, of meeting him thus, the two occasions on which she had seen him with another, promenading slowly under the trees in Princes Street, were forgotten and committed to oblivion; though ere long they were to be roughly brought to her memory.
'Oh, Evan—such long looked-for—such unexpected joy!' she exclaimed, as hand in hand they gazed into each other's eyes.
'Joy indeed, my own one. I had begun to fear we might never meet again; and I shall not leave you now but with the assurance that we shall meet as often as we can till—till——'
'When, Evan?'
'The regiment marches—marches for the East, as it is sure to do before long. Eveline, you must be out in the garden, in the grounds often; can I not meet you there or here again?'
She shook her head sadly, and looked at him lovingly and imploringly.
'The meetings in secret—without permission—would be wrong, Evan,' said she.
'Permission—who will give it? Whom—what have we to consult but our own hearts?' he continued, passionately. 'We may have but little time—less than we reckon on now—for the interchange of love and joy, my dear one; and meet me you shall—youmust,' he added, as he folded her to his breast and covered her sweet passive face with kisses, while something of hostility and defiance at her whole family and at Sir Paget welled up in his heart. 'You will meet me again?' he urged.
'Yes,' she replied, in a scarcely audible whisper.
It could be no sin, no crime—if an error—to meet one who loved her so well as Evan did, and whom she loved so dearly too. It could not harm her elderly adorer, from whose image just then she shrank with intense loathing; and, if it was a wrong against her parents, surely they were in error to coerce her, she thought.
On the other hand, the temptation was great; the joy of meeting Evan would end sadly and bitterly when, as he said, the regiment departed, and after that they might never see each other more!
'Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant,' say the Scriptures; and not less sweet and pleasant were the interviews that might be stolen thus in a green and lonely lane.
'God help me and direct me!' thought the girl, as she nestled her face in Cameron's neck, and, yielding to the natural impulses of her own heart, promised to meet him again and again, when time and opportunity served; and they did so in the lane between the holly hedges, by the rural woodland road that deep between the hills, leads to Ravelston Quarry and haunted Craigcrook; and at times near the old church, where the buried Forresters lie under their altar tombs with shield on arm and sword at side; and as the days went on each meeting—as it seemed to take place without suspicion or discovery—served to cement their hearts together more and more.
But once, when Evan was riding home in the dusk in the vicinity of Maviswood, he passed a wayfarer afoot, in whose face he thought he recognised—nay, was certain he saw—the features of Holcroft.
'Holcroft!' thought Evan; 'a man to guard against, by Jove. What canhebe about in this neighbourhood—what but mischief?'
He wheeled his horse round, but the man he had seen, had stepped over a stile and disappeared.
My Lady Aberfeldie was all unconscious of the little romance that had been going on for some weeks past in the green lanes and wooded paths near Maviswood; while Eveline seemed now but to live for the purpose of meeting Evan Cameron, and her loving heart and busy little head were full of cunning schemes and contrivances to escape detection and achieve their meetings, which now seemed to make the whole sense of her existence; and when not with Evan, or if they failed (which was seldom) to see each other, even for a few minutes, her manner became abstracted and triste.
But a rude awakening from her joyous dreams was at hand, and certain past events that seemed trivial in themselves were doomed to be recalled to her with a new and terrible significance!
They had one more than usually tender meeting and tender parting, because Sir Paget Puddicombe—thebête noir, the bugbear of both—was certainly coming to Maviswood, and Eveline was weeping bitterly.
'Take courage—take courage, my darling,' said Evan, as he kissed the tears from her eyes and strained her to his breast before he leaped on his horse; 'for my sake and your own have strength to resist, and all may yet be well—for my sake and your own, dearest Alice,' he added, with quivering lips, and was gone.
'Alice!'
Another's name uttered by his lips involuntarily while his heart seemed to be teeming with tenderness for herself—uttered in that moment of supreme sorrow, passion, and endearment—escaped him mechanically, as it were, yet too evidently by use and wont!
What did it mean—what could it mean, but one thing?
Her heart stood still for a moment and then beat wildly; she did not hear the noise of his horse's hoofs dying away in the distance, nor did she see his lessening figure, for the powers of hearing and of vision seemed to fail her.
She had received a cruel and terrible shock. Had she heard aright, or was it all a delusion of her ear, yet she repeated to herself with pallid face and quivering lips the word 'Alice!' while memory flashed back to the girl she had seen thrice—twice with Evan, and once evidently waiting for him at what seemed their trysting-place.
She remembered that the second time she had seen them they were walking silently together—full of their own thoughts apparently—and making no effort to entertain each other, and she had read that it is only 'the nearest and dearest' of kinships—the closest and sweetest of human intimacies that could explain such "wordless proximity." Strangers, acquaintances, when thrown togethermustpolitely talk; brother and sister, husband and wife, may be confidently, blessedly silent!'
She remembered now, with ready suspicion, that, when she and Evan first met suddenly afterwards, he scarcely evinced surprise. We have said that it was because his heart was full of her image, but this idea, this hope, did not occur to Eveline then—her mind was a chaos.
How she got through the remainder of that day she never knew; she had but one wish: to shun her mother's eye. To seclude herself in her own room would attract attention; thus she remained in the drawing-room and affected to read. She opened a book at the page and point where she had last left off.
Alas! it was beyond the power of books to soothe or win her from herself now. The Lethean power of the novelist had departed, and her whole mind seemed out of tune.
She threw aside the volume and took up another, but a cry escaped her as it fell from her hands. It was Bulwer's 'Alice, or the Mysteries;' the name seemed to enter her heart like a knife, and she rushed away to her room.
The dressing-bell for dinner, when it rang, found her very pale, and wrestling, as it were, with a strange and unusual pain that was eating its way into her heart.
She bathed her face again and again, but failed to hide the dark shadows under her eyes or the inflammation of their delicate lids.
And at dinner-time that evening an additional stab was given to her in the most casual and unexpected way. Her father had brought from his club to Maviswood Carslogie of the Black Watch, a heedless and thoughtless young fellow, of whom she overheard Allan making some inquiries concerning Cameron of Stratherroch.
'Oh, Strath is jolly as a sandboy,' replied Carslogie, 'but he has some mysterious affair of the heart on just now.'
'How?'
'In the usual way. There is a pretty girl he goes about with to all public places, but introduces to no one. She is without a chaperone, and no one knows whether she is maid, wife, or widow; funny, by Jove, isn't it?'
Carslogie said this in a low voice to Allan, yet not so low but that it reached the ears of Eveline, who had some difficulty in concealing her agitation.
With instinctive tenderness Allan glanced at his sister and skilfully changed the subject to the then invariable topic of Arabi Pasha and 'the coming row in Egypt.'
Times there were when she had thought that she would condescend to go once again to their trysting-place, and seek an explanation; but now, after what Carslogie had said, wild horses should not drag her there!
She would never upbraid Evan with his baseness, never more would she go there; she would simply tear his image out of her heart, and let the matter end. But this was easier to say than to achieve.
Her soul seemed to have become numbed within her—frozen, if we may use such terms.
Even in the matter of Sir Paget, she was conscious now of feeling neither repugnance nor ridicule, though she felt a little repentance at her opposition to the wishes of her father and mother, and for the duplicity of which she had been guilty towards them in her love for an unworthy object, and meeting him in secret, as if she had been a sewing-girl or waiting-maid, and not the daughter of a peer, and putting herself, perhaps, in an equivocal position.
She confided in Olive; otherwise her heart, she thought, would burst.
'The heart is said to be "deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked,"' said Olive, 'but I must confess that this affair passes my comprehension. He cannot be in love withtwoat once; yet I have read of such things. Forget him; you must do that—at least. You endure too much, Eveline; you believed in him too much, and, I fear, hoped too much. Even friendship has its limits; how much more so love.'
'And but yesterday I was so happy—happy in a love the end of which I could not foresee!' wailed poor Eveline, on her cousin's bosom.
What was she like, this Alice? Her rival—oh, disgrace! Fair or dark—she remembered that she was pale and pretty. But what did it matter, thought the now crushed girl, as she tossed feverishly on her pillow in the gloom and solitude of the night, when even our thoughts seem to assume distinct outlines that become sharp and vivid.
Night had passed—a new day dawned, and how far, far off seemed yesterday! The sun had risen in his glory; the blackbirds were singing in the dew-laden shrubberies of Maviswood; and the pale mists were clearing off Torduff and Kirkyetton Craig, the highest summits of the lovely Pentlands.
It was late ere Eveline had wept herself to sleep; but to her it seemed as if she had not slept at all. Thus it was proportionately late when she awoke heavily to the morning of a new day.
She had given her whole soul with joy to her hopeless love for Evan—hopeless, but pure—though any happy end to it she could not foresee; but this was a bitter collapse she did not anticipate, and now her 'occupation was gone.'
Was she the same Eveline Graham who but yesterday morning shook off sleep so lightly, and rose fresh, strong, and full of hope, with the conviction that her secret lover was true to her and to this hopeless passion?
Her affectionate heart was crushed; her self-esteem was in the dust; her proud head lay low indeed; and for the first time in her young life she had learned what it is to be cut to the soul—to be completely humbled.
And Alice—who and what wasshe?
'And oh, Olive, how am I to meet mamma?' was the first exclamation after they had got rid of Mademoiselle Clairette.
She knew she would have to join in the conversation of the breakfast-table, when all her vigilance would be requisite to prevent her from pit-falls of suspicious silence or confusion of manner, with the helpless air and uncertain voice of one who seeks to conceal a new and hitherto unknown sorrow: and to undergo, with her sad, white, humiliated face, her mother's critical and observant eyes.
If, in desperation, she did not act a part, that watchful mother would be sure to detect a change, and that there was something wrong.
Eveline knew well that she would soon detect every flicker of her eyelashes, every tremor of the heavy white lids, that would droop in spite of her now; but luckily Lady Aberfeldie was busy in her boudoir with the housekeeper and Mr. Tappleton, the butler, giving orders; for Sir Paget Puddicombe would arrive ere long!
Carslogie had gone back to Edinburgh, of course, last night. He would be with Evan Cameron this morning on parade and so forth; would the latter question him about his visit to Maviswood, aboutherperhaps? But what did it matter now whether he did so or did not? Nothing—less than nothing!
How long the hours seemed now when they were empty—quiteempty of all but bitterness.
Meanwhile days passed on, and Cameron came, as was his wont, to the usual places of meeting, but Eveline was never there.
What had happened—how was she detained? Had an illness come upon her? His mind was a prey to the keenest anxiety, which he was without the means of allaying. He could not write to ask for any explanation, neither could he call at Maviswood after the somewhat studied coldness of his last reception there by her father and mother.
At each place and spot where so lately they had met and wandered, the thoughts that found utterance there, and many a tender caress came potently and poignantly back to memory now. Where was she, what doing, how engaged and with whom—in sickness or in health?—he asked of himself with endless iteration.
Trivialities are often associated with the greatest eventualities in our lives. Thus long in the memory of Evan would his last visit to one of these beloved spots be associated with the shrill notes of a mavis perched upon the topmost bough of a tree.
Ignorant as yet of what he himself had done, ignorant also of the mischief his friend Carslogie had unintentionally done him by retailing some mess-room gossip, in the vagueness of his thoughts and ideas of the whole situation, which we shall ere-long unravel, Cameron was inclined to attribute the total cessation of Eveline's meetings with him to some mysterious influence of Hawke Holcroft—if Holcroft it was whom he saw in the dusk.
From Carslogie he learned that 'she was looking well and jolly,' as he phrased it. When Allan rejoined he would hear more of her, he hoped; but Allan's sick leave was protracted from time to time, and none seemed to knowwhenhe would be with the regiment again.
Once these parted lovers saw each other but for a moment only!
Accompanied by a groom, Eveline rode at a canter past him on a lonely part of the road near Maviswood, her eyes full of unshed tears, her face pale with resentment, and her veil in her teeth.
Past him, as if he was a stranger!
'Why stop to speak or expect an explanation?' thought the girl. 'In this world do not actions speak louder a thousand times than words can ever do?'
She was a Graham of Dundargue, and would show him that she was not of the kind of stuff that facile Amelias or patient Griseldas are made!
Yet to pass him by thus, cost her a mighty effort, though to Eveline it seemed that there was nothing left for her now 'but to wrestle valiantly with that pain which, in the world's eye, degrades the woman who smarts under it—the pain of an unshared love.'
'Young Stratherroch seems to have accepted the situation. He is much too sharp and well-bred a man not to have seen that he was—well—in the way rather,' said Lady Aberfeldie to her husband one afternoon. 'One thing is certain at least, he has ceased to visit here.'
'Dropped out of the hunt—yes,' assented the peer, as he filled and lit his briar-root. 'Poor fellow! he was—or is—undoubtedly fond of our little girl.'
'Such fondness was folly in one so poor; and now, as Sir Paget comes to-day, I do not see why we should not have the two marriages at once. I am most anxious to have all this fuss ended and done with.'
'There are several deeds to draw and so forth in the matter of Allan and Olive; and as for Eveline she has not yet consented.'
'She must do so now, I presume,' said Lady Aberfeldie, impatiently wafting aside with her white hand a cloud of smoke the peer was creating.
'Both marriages,' said he, reflectively; 'but how if the regiment goes on foreign service—and the corps expects orders of readiness daily, I understand?'
'Allan can send in his papers.'
'Impossible! You do not consider what you say.'
'He is not well enough to go abroad.'
'He is too well to remain behind; and if well enough to marry I fear that F.M. the Commander-in-Chief will deem him well enough to march.'
'Anyway it will secure Olive's fortune in the family.'
'It is secured as it is by her father's will so long as Allan is willing to consent; but as our loving daughter-in-law, there will be no necessity for the enforcement of the clause that is so grotesque. As regards Sir Paget and Eveline——'
'Leave me to manage Eveline,' said Lady Aberfeldie, bluntly and loftily.
The result of her management was soon apparent, though she knew not that circumstances, of which she was as yet unaware, were playing into her hands, and would yet more completely do so.
'Sir Paget, as you know, Eveline, will be here to-day,' said she, with an arm round her daughter's neck, 'and we—that is, your papa and I—trust, child, that you will receive him as you ought, and wear the jewels he sent you.'
Lady Aberfeldie used her softest yet firmest voice as she spoke to Eveline, but it sounded to the latter as the voice of one who was a long, long way off.
She made no immediate reply; but with her hands tightly interlaced, as if thereby she would quell emotion, seemed to be gazing down at her nicely pointed little foot that rested on a velvet fender-stool.
'Why mope here, growing pale and thin, for a thing without substance—a dream—a shadow, Eveline; you understand me?'
'A dream—a shadow, indeed, mamma!'
'You hear me, child?' said her mother.
'Yes, mamma,' replied Eveline, who seemed to shiver with cold as her mother left her, but with a long backward glance that had more of menace than entreaty in it.
'He never loved me,' Eveline was thinking. 'I have given my heart for nothing, and am now cast aside for another, like a broken toy discarded by a child. He dared to trifle with me—my father's daughter! It is clear now that he fancied, or merely pretended to be in love with me, while all the time his heart was given to—Alice!'
And she would have been either more or less than human, if with her just indignation there did not mingle a certain sentiment of revenge that bore her up in the part she meant to act now; though she shrank as yet from the conviction that, when esteem dies, love dies with it.
So that evening Eveline wore the suite of jewels—such jewels as Bond Street alone can furnish—and Sir Paget, as he sat by her side, jerked his little bald head about, in the exuberance of joy, and in a way that was really alarming.
Olive was looking radiantly beautiful, in a brilliant dinner costume, with Allan's Maltese suite of diamonds and pearls sparkling on her neck and arms, which Lady Aberfeldie had urged her to don in honour of Sir Paget, and in defiance of amoueand pitiful glance of Eveline, who had no small difficulty in acquitting herself at dinner in her new role offiancée, but nearly broke down when she heard Sir Paget raise his voice and say to her father something that he was not sorry he might say with a clear conscience, and as a matter-of-fact.
'Oh, by the way, Aberfeldie, when I arrived at the rail way-station this morning I witnessed a very tender leave-taking between a young friend of yours and a most charming girl—gad, the fellow has taste—a girl whom he was seeing off, to London, I presume, by the Flying Scotsman, it was quite pathetic, by Jove!'
'A young friend of ours—who do you mean, Sir Paget?' asked Lady Aberfeldie.
'Cameron, of the Black Watch, whom I had the pleasure of meeting at Dundargue—you remember,' said Sir Paget, playing with the stem of his champagne-glass, and not daring to look at Eveline, whose white hand he saw trembling as she toyed with her grapes.
'Oh—oh—indeed—and the young lady——'
'Had "Mrs. Cameron" painted on all her luggage—great Indian overlands, some of it.'
'Mrs. Cameron,' repeated Lady Aberfeldie, whose aristocratic face shone in spite of herself at these tidings, while Lord Aberfeldie looked flushed and perplexed, and like Allan, who pitied his poor sister, remained silent.
This astounding intelligence was to poor Eveline as 'the last straw' to the over-laden camel; she betrayed no outward emotion, though her heart and spirit were completely broken down, for a phase of duplicity which she could never have conceived was now suddenly laid bare to her.
When, with her aunt and cousin, she retired to the drawing-room, the latter pressed her hand affectionately and caressingly, while the former, too proud or too prudent to refer to what they had just heard so greatly to her satisfaction, sat in a shady corner and slowly fanned herself in silence with a great round feather fan.
An emotion of jealous spite at young Cameron, with rivalry, passion, and ambition to possess a young, beautiful, and highly-born wife, all now inspired Sir Paget, who, to do him justice in the anecdote he had told, had told no more than the truth, and, for the happiness of Evan Cameron, we are sorry to say it.
But though now permitting herself quietly to drift with the stream of events, and to become a tool in the hands of others, it was impossible for Eveline, when with Sir Paget in the grounds, or when alone in the drawing-room, not to shrink from his now privileged caresses and attentions; thus once she shocked him by saying, as she withdrew her hands from his clasp,
'Oh, Sir Paget, do you really mean to marry a woman who does not and never can love you?'
'Do not say "never can." How can we know what the future may have for me—forus, my dear girl?'
'Who, indeed, save One!' sighed the girl, wearily.
'I would rather have half your heart than the whole of any other woman's,' said Sir Paget, gallantly, while recapturing her hands, and jerking out his head in turtle fashion.
'My whole heart,' thought Eveline, 'is—oh, no—was full of Evan, but can have no vacant corner for any other, especially such a man as this.'
And even while she thought this she shivered as if with cold, when in right of his new position he caressed her.
'How, with all their innate pride, papa and mamma are content to abandon me to this absurd little man Puddicombe, as they do, passes my comprehension,' said she to Olive. 'Puddicombe—such an absurd name too,' she added, with a little laugh that was hysterical; 'and what object can the splendour of his settlements be to them? They seem to ignore the fact that the Grahams of Dundargue were barons of the Scottish Parliament when the ancestors of half the British peerage were hewers of wood and drawers of water—peasantry and artisans!'
So in the bloom of her youth and beauty, the time 'when the light that surrounds us is all from within,' Eveline Graham was to become a victim at the altar after all—after all!
And Cameron seemed to have prepared the path for her, for, stunned by his too apparent duplicity, she schooled herself for therôleof indifference to fate; but this was chiefly by day, for often at night she would lie where she had thrown herself, across her bed, forgetting even to undress, her tear-blotted face covered by her soft arm, and so in the morning the wondering and sympathising Clairette would find her.
June was creeping on now, with its sunny, fragrant breath; there were white and purple blossoms in the parterres of the garden; the graceful laburnums were dropping their golden petals in showers over the rosebuds and green lawns that were bordered by dark shining myrtles and deep-tinted laurels and rhododendrons.
From the fields came the rasping sound made by the mower as he whetted his scythe, before which the rich feathered grass and the wild flowers are done to death; elsewhere the joyous haymakers were hard at work, and the dust of June began to roll along the roads before the wind in the sunshine.
'June!' thought Eveline. 'Where will the winter find me?'
The preparations for her marriage were hurried on with a rapidity that appalled her; but, dear as the scheme was to Lady Aberfeldie, a somewhat unexpected event delayed that of Allan and Olive Raymond, and gave the Aberfeldie family once more something else to think of.
One evening when all the others were in Edinburgh save himself and Olive—for Eveline's forthcoming marriage kept all rather busy now—Allan, full of his own happy thoughts, and the joy that would be his ere long, was smoking in the grounds, when he was startled by a shrill cry that proceeded from an open window of the house—a French window that opened to the ground—and swift as light a man dashed past him and disappeared among the thick shrubberies.
'A thief!' was Allan's first thought; 'but whose cry was that?' was his second.
The face of the intruder, who passed near him—a pale and familiar one, seen just as Cameron had before seen it—seemed to be that of Hawke Holcroft.
'Impossible,' thought Allan, as he hurried towards the house; but it was not until he had further proofs that he became aware that the face he had seen—the face of ill-omen—was that of Holcroft!
He hurried into the apartment through the open window, and was horrified to find Olive prostrate on the floor, with her arms outspread, and in a fainting condition. He raised her up and laid her on a sofa, withdrawing the pillow from under her head, and looked round for water to lave her face and hands, one of which clutched a pen.
A large sealskin cigar case, with Rio Hondo cigars in it—a case which he well remembered to have seen in possession of Holcroft—lay upon the floor.
How came it there, unless the man he saw was, beyond all doubt, Hawke Holcroft?
Olive's cheque-book—for she had a bank account of her own—lay open on her davenport, and Allan's eye caught the counterfoil of one, dated that very day, and almost wet still, for £400.
'Four hundred pounds!' he gasped, and tried to tear open his necktie, while the room swam round him. 'Oh, God! can it be that she is playing fast and loose with me and that double-dyed villain?'
That she should have any intercourse, verbal or written, with such a wretch excited in Allan a gust of rage and bewilderment, disgust, horror, and intense perplexity.
Yet it might be all quite explainable—even the cheque.
She opened her eyes and closed them again, and pathetically he besought her to tell him what had happened, but could elicit no reply. Her slender throat seemed parched, as she failed to articulate.
'Oh, Olive,' said he, 'if I alarm you, forgive me. You know how I love you. Why torture me by this silence—tell me all—whathas happened—whohas been here?'
But he urged and pled in vain; her teeth were clenched.
'Is it some folly—some girlish imprudence?whatis it? Dear love, only tell me?'
Still she was silent, and Allan's brows knit darkly and ominously, while, in the excited state of his nerves, he felt sharp twinges in the arm that had been fractured, and, when consciousness came partially back to Olive, she covered her face with her hands, and sobbed heavily and spasmodically.
What had happened? Why was she so suddenly cast down, hurled, as it were, from the joy, rapture, and repose of an hour ago, to the apparent agony and shame of the present?
Nothing could be elicited from her, and the next day found her in a species of hysterical fever, and in the hands of the doctor.
In a short time it was discovered that her cheque—an open one—payable to Mr. Hawke Holcroft, and duly endorsed by that personage, had been presented and cashed at a bank; yet no explanation could be elicited from her about it.
'She had on the ill-omened diamonds, mother,' said Allan, interrogatively. 'How was this?'
'I lent them to her, as the bride of the house, and doubtless she had been trying them on when—when——'
'This scoundrel thrust himself upon her presence?'
'I suppose so,' said Lady Aberfeldie, weeping.
'Evil always comes of these accursed stones!'
'It is simply outrageous,' said Lord Aberfeldie, sternly and loftily, 'that even the family of the most humble tradesman should be haunted by a Frankenstein—a swindler, and worse, like this—but that a house like mine—the house of a peer of the realm——'
And his lordship in his indignation paused as utterance failed him.
'Mystery is involved here,' exclaimed Lady Aberfeldie, 'and I dislike it intensely, as vulgar and very bad style.'
'By Jove, I should think so,' added Allan, gloomily; 'but this affair, like Cameron's marriage, beats the mysteries of Udolpho!'
And now, ere it is too late, to let a little light on what must seem a mystery, and to tell a story which Eveline was not to hear until the fatal die was cast.
'Dear Evan,' said a handsome girl, as she interlaced her slender fingers on Cameron's arm lovingly in one of the most secluded walks of the Princes-Street Gardens, and under the shadow of the towering castle rock, 'I cannot bear to see you looking so unhappy—whatisthe matter?'
'Eveline Graham has ceased to meet me. She is ill—or—or I know not what!'
'Cannot you ascertain?'
'No. I have no means of ascertaining; moreover, only the other day she cut me.'
'Cut you—passed you?'
'Cut me dead!'
'Surely that was bad in taste.'
'And cruel too—so unlike her, Alice darling, that I know not what to think.'
'She has resolved to accept her rich old baronet—that is all; and I shall hear all about it when I am far away from you in India. How strange,' added the girl, dreamily, while a great, yet pensive, joy lighted up her blue eyes, 'how strange to think that I am still in Edinburgh, and so far away fromhim, when there was a time when I wondered if anyone in this world was ever so happy as I, when dear stupid Duncan asked me to be his wife! And oh, Evan dear, but for you and your great kindness to us, my heart must have broken and I should never have seen Duncan more!'
The fair speaker was the Alice whose name had unconsciously escaped Evan, as his heart was full of a great love and pity for her—the wife of his younger brother Duncan, from whom she had been separated in consequence of a foolish jealous quarrel, and having been, through that, sent home by him from India, had no other friend in Europe to whom to turn for succour and support than the kind-hearted, but half-penniless Laird of Stratherroch, who had at last effected an explanation and reconciliation between them.
When quartered in cantonments, in the first year of their marriage, not far from Hurdwar on the Ganges (where Allan got the idol he gave to Olive) there seemed to be no more loving and attached couple than Duncan Cameron and his little wife Alice, and both were prime favourites with the garrison; he, for his fine bearing which made him the pattern officer of his regiment—a Bengal Infantry corps—his skill in horsemanship, as a marksman and pigsticker, and his generalbonhomieand good nature. She, for her beauty and sweetness, her great abundance of animal spirits, and a charmingespiègleriethat made her the object of attention from all.
Ladies were scarce in these cantonments so far 'up country,' and thus Alice proved a wonderful attraction to all the young subs at the band-stand, or on the racecourse, and elsewhere; and they hovered about her rather more than Duncan Cameron quite relished.
She was a leading feature at all the entertainments given by Sir Bevis Batardeau, G.C.S.I., the brigadier, and his wife; and indeed no ball, picnic, or dance was deemed complete without the presence of Alice Cameron.
Now, Sir Bevis was a notorious oldroué, and the cause of much 'gup,' as scandal or gossip is called in India. He was a middle-aged man of fashion, grizzled and rather bald, with a reddish nose and wicked eyes, while Lady Batardeau, his senior by a year or two, was a kind and motherly woman, who loved Alice dearly; and 'gup' of course asserted that the General did so too, in a fashion of his own, and many things were said that never reached as yet the ears of Duncan Cameron.
The latter was sent to some distance from the cantonments on a particular duty, and poor Alice was left to mope in her bungalow alone.
'I often thought,' she said, 'if anything should ever separate us, I would die. The fear smote me like a sword's point, Evan, and the night Duncan left me a jackal howled fearfully in the compound. Was it ominous of evil? I fear so—for separated terribly we were fated to be, through no fault of mine.'
These forebodings made her pass sleeplessly the hot and breathless Indian nights while hourly the cantonmentghurrieswere clanged, and the jackals howled in the prickly hedges, and the mosquitoes seemed a thousand times more annoying—no chowrie would whisk them out of the muslin curtains; and her breakfast seemed so insipid now, and Gunga Ram, thekhansa-man, or native butler, could find nothing to tempt her appetite; yet Gunga, though, like most Hindostanees, doubtful of the virtue of every European woman, was devoted to his own particularmehm Sahib.
Every morning she had been wont to watch at the open Venetian blinds of their bungalow for the handsome figure of Duncan returning from the early parade, while the sun was yet on the verge of the horizon; and every evening was spent together in delicious idleness—riding on the course, promenading by the band-stand, or wandering among the groves where the baubool breathes an exquisite perfume from its bells of gold, as the oleander does from its clusters of pink and white blossoms, and where the lovely little tailor-bird sews two leaves together and swings in his sweet-scented nest from the bough of some little tree.
Hourly she longed for the return of Duncan.
She was a petted favourite with Lady Batardeau, who, when calling on her one day, found her asleep under the verandah outside Cameron's bungalow on a long low Indian arm-chair.
Thinking how charming the girl-wife looked, Lady Batardeau, in playful kindness, slipped on one of her fingers a rose-diamond ring, which had been in the past time a gift to herself from Sir Bevis, when she valued his gifts more than she had reason to do now; and, having done this, she went softly and laughingly away.
To the joy of Alice, Cameron returned suddenly while she was yet puzzling herself to account for the presence of the ring, and for a time, in the happiness of their reunion, she forgot all about it, till he, while toying with her pretty hands, observed it on her finder.
'A magnificent ring, Alice,' said he. 'Where did it come from?'
'That is more than I can tell you.'
'How?' he asked.
'I found that it had been slipped on my finger when I was asleep.'
'By whom?'
'I cannot say, Duncan dear.'
On examining the jewel he saw graven on the inside the name of that notorious oldrouéand Lothario, the brigadier!
Lady Batardeau had left the cantonments for awhile, and poor Alice could give no explanation as to how the mysterious ring with the name of Sir Bevis thereon came to be on her finger. Duncan loved her so trustfully, so utterly, that doubt failed for a time to find a place in his gallant heart; but 'gup' had playfully asserted that the old brigadier immensely admired young Mrs. Cameron—he recalled some jests he had heard, and now the poison they breathed was stealing upon his senses, and his face grew white as death.
Duncan mistook the genuine confusion of Alice for guilt—her dismay for dread of detection, and the whole affair for a feature in an intrigue. He knew how keen and bitter was scandal in India, and already he saw himself a source of mockery and disgrace, and figuring, perhaps, in the columns of theHurkara!
He saw it all now! He had been sent on duty to a distance for some days, as he believed out of his turn, and by the express order of the brigadier.
That circumstance had surprised him, but he believed it was fully explained now by finding the ring of Sir Bevis on his wife's finger, and he became transported with fury. Alice cowered for a time beneath the expression she read in his face.
Could it be possible, he thought, that she was proving as one of the 'dead-sea apples of life, which a mocking fate so often throws in our lap, charming to the imagination, but bitter to the sense?'
'Duncan!' said Alice, softly and imploringly; but he felt all the mute despair of a broken heart, the agony of a shaken faith, and he put her soft white hands gently from him, as if he would never seek them in this life again.
He at once sought the presence of the brigadier, who, on hearing what he had to say, certainly—to do him justice—was rather bewildered.
'I beg leave, sir, to return to you this ring,' said Duncan, tossing it contemptuously on the table.
'My ring—my wife's ring it was—'
'Was—eh!'
'Yes, Captain Cameron. Where did you find it?'
'Where you placed it, I doubt not.'
'I do not understand your tone and manner, Captain Cameron; but I certainly placed it on the finger——'
'Of my wife,' said Duncan, hoarsely and scornfully. 'I thank you for your kind attention, but trust that it will end here ere worse come of it. I am not a man to be trifled with, Sir Bevis.'
Now, Sir Bevis had no dislike to be thought 'a gay Lothario, a sad dog, and all that sort of thing,' so he actually simpered provokingly, shrugged his shoulders and said, deprecatingly,
'Really, you wrong Mrs. Cameron.'
'She has deceived me!' exclaimed Duncan, furiously.
'If a woman can't deceive her own husband,whommay she deceive!' asked the unwise brigadier.
'In the days of the pistol this matter would not have ended here.'
'Come, come, don't let you and I fall to carte and tierce in this fashion,' said the general; 'it may be explainable——'
'I want no explanations!'
'As you please. It seems there is a little romance in most lives——'
'With your grey hairs you should have outlived all that, I think.'
Now his years proved a sore point with old Sir Bevis, and he became inflamed with anger; but, ere he could retort, Duncan had jerked his sword under his left arm and swept from his presence with a rather withering expression in his face, and that very evening saw Alice in the train for Delhi,en routeto Europe.
'Innocent, I suffer all the shame and all the agony of guilt! Oh, it is hard, Duncan—very, very hard,' were the last words she said, brokenly, to her husband, who heard her with a stern silence that astonished her.
Now that Lady Batardeau, on her return to the cantonments, had explained the whole story of the ring, Duncan was—when too late, for his wife was on the sea—full of shame and contrition for his suspicions and severity, and had written to crave the pardon of Alice and insure her return to him again; hence the farewell and departure of 'Mrs. Cameron,' with her overlands and other baggage, as witnessed by the sharp little eyes of Sir Paget Puddicombe at the Waverley Station, and thus it was that, by an unexplained mistake, two fond hearts were separated for ever; but separated they would have been eventually by fate or fortune—the lack of fortune, rather—as time may show.
But for a time poor Eveline had to ponder bitterly on the humiliating thought that Evan Cameron had been thinking ofanotherface, form, and name while in the act of caressing herself, and that the other was—as Sir Paget had left them no reason to doubt, and never himself doubted—Evan Cameron's wife!
Another mystery has now to be accounted for—the state in which Allan found Olive when her cry reached him as he idled with his cigar in the grounds at Maviswood in the evening, when the rest of the family circle were in town.
Olive was seated alone in one of the drawing-rooms when a gentleman was announced—a gentleman who no doubt thought Allan was absent in Edinburgh also.
'Mr. Holcroft.'
'Mr. Holcroft!' A book she was reading fell from the hand of Olive, and she started to her feet as that personage, hat in hand, stood smilingly before her. For a moment she could scarcely believe her eyes as they met the pale, watery, and shifty ones of her unexpected visitor.
Terror and horror filled her heart on finding herself face to face with this man—an assassin in intent! It was too horrible—toooutréand grotesque to think of.
But what was his intention now? She was not left long in ignorance. Why did she not rush to the bell—summon the household, and have the daring intruder expelled or arrested? But no—she felt a very coward just then, with a great dread of Allan discovering him, and a heavy, sickening foreboding of coming evil.
There came dreamily to her memory, too, some threatening words of his when he had said that he would let no man come between them, and that, though he might fail to compel her to love him, he might compel her to marry him: but neither love nor marriage were in the mind of her horrible visitor just then.
Mr. Hawke Holcroft seemed rather 'down on his luck,' and looked somewhat shabby and seedy. The last fragment of his patrimony had been swallowed up; his betting-book had proved a mistake, as he had for some time past backed the wrong horses; cards had failed him and play of all kinds; in short, he was desperate, and hence his appearance at Maviswood.
To attempt the role of a lover again, after all that had passed, and after all that he was aware must be known to Miss Raymond, was, he knew, impossible; but he had a trump card to play in the way of extortion—plain, blunt, rascally extortion; so, conceiving that the girl was utterly alone, he could not for the life of him resist bantering her a little, all the more as the utter loathing and dread her face expressed, enraged him.
'Mr. Holcroft!' she exclaimed, in a breathless voice, as she recoiled and became white as a lily.
'Yes, Hawke Holcroft, the man your fatal beauty has made him,' said he, with melodramatic gloom and folded arms; 'when I met you first I met my fate—a love that was my doom. But for you, would I ever have been mad enough to attempt the life of Allan Graham?'
'How dare you come here—how dare you speak to me thus!' said Olive, glancing at the bell handle; but he planted himself between it and her.
'The love of you came to me when first you looked into my face,' he resumed, in his melodramatic style; 'I remember it was but a smile—a smile; yet a mist came before my eyes—a something stirred my heart. Ah, Olive Raymond, it was your beautiful eyes that suddenly kindled new life within me—that will only end with the old.'
Olive was more irritated than alarmed now.
'How dare you come here?' she asked.
'I can't help it—needs must when old Boots drives,' said he; 'I came to show you a work of art. Look here.'
From his pocket-book he drew out and held before her at arm's length the cabinet photo of herself in a ball-dress; the photo, or one like it, that she had the folly to give him at Dundargue; but to her horror and dismay she saw that it had been reproduced, reversed, and manipulated in some way by some low photographer, and combined with one of Holcroft himself, posed as if in the act of embracing her, forming a strange group of two, whose likenesses there would be no mistaking, more especially that of her, as it was a miraculous work of art in its truth and individuality.
It was Olive to the life, with her brightest and sweetest expression now bent on his face!
'I am glad you recognise us,' said he, mockingly, as he replaced the photo in its receptacle, and the latter in his breast pocket; 'and now to business. What would your drawing-room hero think of this, if he saw it? Ha, ha! He did not approve of Byron at Dundargue, I remember—would rather we stuck to Dr. Watts' hymns, I suppose—'How doth the little busy bee," and so forth; well, like that industrious insect, I mean to improve "the shining hour." How would he—how will you and your family, with all their cursed Scotch pride—like to see this photo in every shop window exposed for sale to the British public, among ballet-girls in snowstorms, countesses swinging in hammocks, bishops, and generals—murderers, too, perhaps—eh? In a week or two I may have a million copies of this precious photo for sale in London and elsewhere. Do you realise the meaning of this, my scornful beauty? and the result it must have on you, your name, your character, your family, and your future—Miss Olive Raymond posed in the arms of Hawke Holcroft?'