Chapter X: 'the Mysteries of Udolpho.'

'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 a _moue_ and pitiful glance of Eveline, who had no small difficulty in acquitting herself at dinner in her new role of _fiancée_, 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--for _us_, 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 the _rôle_ of 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--_what_ has happened--_who_ has been here?'

But he urged and pled in vain; her teeth were clenched.

'Is it some folly--some girlish imprudence? _what_ is 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!'