'A gambler, grand-uncle?'
'A gambler—and worse—who has sorely fleeced poor Hew! But I shall amply reimburse him, as it was by my old-fashioned folly our unlucky guest came here. How I shall be able to receive him at dinner to-day I scarcely know, for now I consider his presence in Eaglescraig an insult. You may have been foolish—girlish, Mary; but I know that you won't further vex your old grand-uncle, who loves you so, but will sedulously avoid or shun this person, Falconer, during the few hours he is under our roof: and when he leaves it let his existence be to you as a thing of the past—as that of the dead—but the dead who are forgotten!'
And with this cruel advice, which was all the more cruel and impressive from being coolly, calmly, and deliberately given, the general rose and quitted the library, leaving Mary in a flood of tears and quite overwhelmed with dismay; not at the invectives bestowed upon Falconer, as she knew their source and true value, but at the hostility so suddenly developed by Sir Piers, and the long term of domestic misery she saw before her in the future.
But, as indignation swelled in her heart against Hew, she dried her tears and gathered a courage from her growing anger. Yet she drew her breath with difficulty, and pressed a hand upon her side as if a pang of pain was there.
Unaware of all this scene, Falconer, even in the face of his approaching departure, was chatting away gaily with Annabelle Erroll, and having the full assurance of Mary's love, seemed to tread on air, and feel emotions only of gratitude and joy. He was as sure that Mary was not a girl to love lightly as he was sure that she had given her whole heart to him, despite the fiat, the 'general order' of Sir Piers, that was to assign her as a bride to Hew Montgomerie.
When the little circle assembled for dinner, the last of which he was to partake in Eaglescraig, Cecil became suddenly and painfully sensible that some change had come over all present, save Miss Erroll.
Though all were scrupulously polite, their old cordiality seemed to have evaporated!
Hew was colder than ever; not that Cecil Falconer cared much for that, but he felt that the usually chatty and genial Sir Piers was cold in manner too, and haughty and monosyllabic, for a time; and Cecil recalled the cordial welcome of his first night in that hospitable mansion, when his old host insisted on escorting him to 'his quarters,' as he called his room, singing his old Indian song about 'half-batta' as they went. He felt the change keenly, and angrily too, all the more that he failed to understand it.
'What the deuce does the general suspect—what does he know?' thought Cecil, whose own suspicions certainly pointed towards Hew; but he and Mary were without the means of comparing notes together, or even of taking of each other the tender farewell they would have wished.
At table—with the memory of all that had passed in the library—she was nervous, silent and reserved, while she kept listening to the voice and looking furtively in the eyes that as secretly sought hers—the voice and eyes she had been bidden to forget as those of 'the forgotten dead.'