'By the refusal of Olive?'
'Yes.'
'Then her fortune, or most of it, becomes yours, in terms of the will—'
'Which has been a curse to us both. In her mind, and in the eyes of all who may come to hear of it, we must lie under the degrading imputation of a mercenary motive.'
'Not if you act with tact and delicacy, and surely your boy-and-girl attachment must remain unchanged,' said Lord Aberfeldie, in a voice that was soft, rather than indignant, as his memory went back to the day when Olive first came a little orphan child to Dundargue—a tiny and graceful creature, with tender, wondering, and beseeching eyes—a child that climbed upon his knee, clung to him with sympathetic love, and played with his watch-chain or the tassels of his sash, if he was in uniform. 'And so,' he added, after a pause, 'you must propose to the dear girl as a mere matter of form.'
'I have already done so,' said Allan, recalling, what he was not likely to forget, all that had occurred during the homeward ride from Dunsinane.
'Well, sir?' asked his father.
'I was laughed at—mocked, I may say.'
'Impossible! The girl must have been jesting with you.'
'I do not think so,' said Allan, both sadly and bitterly as he thought of the bangle and many other circumstances, the inevitable 'trifles light as air.'