Alison sighed as she entered it; an invitation to dinner was a small affair, but she felt as if the links of a chain were beginning to close around her while the easily-hung carriage rolled on between the hedgerows in the starlight.
'If his lordship makes any proposition to you to-night, I trust that for my sake, if not for your own, you will not, at least, insult him,' said Sir Ranald, breaking the silence suddenly.
'Papa—insult him!' exclaimed Alison, in a breathless voice, knowing but too well that the term 'proposition' meant a proposal, and her heart seemed to die within her as she pressed to her lips, in the dark, Bevil's engagement ring.
'For your sake and mine consider well and favourably his lordship's views,' said her father again.
She remained silent, fearing that the note her father had received must have contained something more than the mere invitation to dinner.
'I shall lose the half of my life, Alison, when I lose you, but I must make up my mind for it one of these days.'
Still she made no response, for her heart was away in a most unromantic-looking hut in the infantry lines at Aldershot, where, in fancy, she saw a handsome young fellow, his dark hair cropped close, his skin almost olive in tint, and smooth as a girl's, dark eyes and straight black eyebrows with thick lashes, a heavy moustache, and altogether with a dark manly beauty about him that would have become the costume of Titian or Velasquez, like the cavalier brothers in the portraits at Chilcote.
Through the large square entrance-hall of Cadbury Court, which was panelled with oak, and hung round above the panelling with the old family portraits of former proprietors, and had tall jars of curiously painted china standing in the deep old window bays, with a great lantern of stained glass shining overhead, they were ushered into the magnificent drawing-room, where Lord Cadbury, in evening costume, hobbled from an easy chair to receive them with no small empressement, for, though his age of ardour was past, he had not survived that of covetousness; and among other things now coveted was Alison, whom vanity prompted him to seek that he might exhibit her to society as a conquest.
Alison's drapery seemed to have a soft sweep in it; she held her fair head high; a scornful curl hovered on her lip, and yet she seemed a fragile thing to have so haughty a spirit.
She wore again—for, poor girl, her wardrobe was most limited—the lustreless silk with its rare old lace, and, though harassed, she looked charming in her pale beauty, while almost destitute of ornaments, save a few silver bangles on her slender wrists, for the family jewels—especially the Essilmont diamonds—were all things of the past, and had long since found their way to shop windows in Bond Street; but she wore at her neck a little circular brooch of snow-white pearls from the Ythan, near Ellon.