Miss Erroll was a singularly attractive and bright-looking girl—bright in her manner and blonde beauty. Her fair, golden hair rippled back from her broad, low, snowy forehead; and she had a tender, rosebud-like mouth, and very lovely eyes. In the full preoccupation of his thoughts with Mary, Cecil Falconer had not been quite conscious that on several occasions Miss Erroll had led him to talk of his solitary friend at Dumbarton, Leslie Fotheringhame, as if she had some interest in him; and also, that if he attempted to question her on the subject, she skilfully or nervously changed it, or evaded it.
'You know Fotheringhame, it would seem?' he asked.
'I do—or did, rather,' she replied, in a low voice.
This implied that there had been a coolness, a quarrel, or a dropping of acquaintance somehow.
'He was not always in the Cameronians,' said Falconer.
'I am aware of that.'
'Perhaps you knew him when in his former regiment?'
'When in his former regiment—yes,' she replied, repeating his words, as if afraid to trust herself to any of her own. 'How long will Mary puzzle over her king?—she is quite checkmated!' she said with a forced laugh, as she moved towards the chess-table, to conceal from Falconer an expression of genuine pain that shot over her soft, fair face.
He noticed now an unmistakable agitation of manner and sudden sadness of eye and tone in Annabelle Erroll; and though he almost immediately forgot this amid the anxiety of his own love affair, he remembered it all at a future time.
The brief evening that followed the late and fashionable dinner-hour passed rapidly—too rapidly for Cecil; yet heavily withal. The evening was so unlike its predecessors, for the once pleasant circle seemed entirely changed. How Falconer's heart would have swollen with just rage had he known the reason why!