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.