'Allan,' she whispered to him softly, when an opportunity came, 'I see now how foolish I have been and wilful—oh, so wilful! But we all make mistakes in life, and require at times each other's pity and forgiveness.'
How sweetly and shyly she looked and spoke.
Hawke Holcroft felt intuitively, and indeed saw, that there was some sudden change in the bearing of the pair to each other, and that a sudden brightness had come into the faces of all—even that of Eveline, usually now so triste and pale—and under his sandy moustache he 'wondered what the devil it all meant,' till his watchful eyes detected the new and brilliant ring on the engaged finger of Olive Raymond!
If Mr. Hawke Holcroft imagined he had nothing to dread personally from the Master's sudden visit to Edinburgh he reckoned without his host, as he would have found had he overheard a brief conversation which took place between Allan and his comrade, young Cameron, as they loitered in the gun-room looking over old Joe-Mantons, new rifles, and central-fire breech-loaders, &c.
He was not slow to perceive very soon that Allan, usually so suave and pleasant in manner, treated him now with a kind of stiffness that was almost hauteur; but he dissembled his rage and so did Allan, who had a keen sense of the laws of hospitality, with the genuine British dread of aught that might approach a 'scene,' more than all as the visit of Holcroft was nearly ended.
Poor wretch! he strove well to keep a brave front in society, while letters that often lay beside his plate at breakfast were seen to cloud his brow with perplexity, for they alluded to wrong horses backed, I.O.U.'s, bills, and cheques 'referred to drawer,' and so forth, and he must have left Dundargue before this, but for a friendly slip of paper, which he had received from Lord Aberfeldie, that 'Fool of Quality,' as he thought him.
'Look here, Cameron,' said Allan, as the twain smoked their cigars in a quiet place. 'It is little wonder to me that you, Sir Paget Puddicombe, and one or two others lost at cards with Holcroft as you did. I dined with our fellows at the mess in the Castle when I went to Edinburgh. There his name cropped up by the merest chance, and I was told by Carslogie of Ours that he was present at a shindy in London, where this fellow Holcroft, after having an unprecedented run at cards at a place in St. James Street, was accused of having the ace of trumps up his sleeve, from whence it fell when he was shying a bottle at the accuser's head. He talks to the pater largely of his "place in Essex," or what remains of it. Involved in debt to a ruinous extent, he gave bills right and left, which were dishonoured. £10,000 had been raised upon his estate, in which he had only a reversionary interest, and, when the mortgagees called in their money, and the estate was sold, it did not suffice to pay a tithe of the sums he had raised in every conceivable way, and everyone lost their money all round. Sharp that! Yet he scraped through without punishment.'
'By Jove!'
'Worse still. Carslogie told me he was suspected of causing a horse to fail in a race through having the bit poisoned; and how he left a young fellow in the Hussars at Maidstone in the lurch, by refusing at the last moment to ride for him a peculiarly vicious horse, which he had solemnly undertaken to do, and so causing him to lose the race, on which he had most imprudently made a ruinously heavy book.'
'And how did it end?'