'How?' asked Eveline, colouring perceptibly.
'He loves you—and you know he does.'
'Yes,' said Eveline, as a soft smile stole over her mignonne face; 'I cannot doubt it, though no word from which I could infer it has ever escaped his lips; but poor Cameron has little more than his pay. His paternal acres are mortgaged to the full—even the shootings and fishings, believe, don't come to him. I heard papa express to mamma his surprise that Cameron could "pull through," as he phrased it; that he would have no ineligibles in future dangling about me, and that—as I have nothing—I must marry money! That was the word—oh, how selfish it sounds, and how hateful!' added the girl, while her rosy little nether lip quivered. 'Poor Evan!' she murmured, dreamily; and as she uttered his name her voice, which was soft even as Cordelia's, became like that of Annie Laurie, 'low and sweet.'
'Ineligibles!' said her cousin; 'and yet he invited here Mr. Holcroft, who is well-nigh penniless, and against whose attentions Aunt Aberfeldie specially warned me.'
'In the interests of Allan, of course.'
'Allan—absurd!' exclaimed Olive, shrugging her handsome shoulders. 'You all seem to forget that he can only remember me as a little girl.'
'Still you are his fiancée.'
'In a manner of way.'
'Distinctly so, if the tenor of your papa's will is to be observed.'
'Then I think he might have had some curiosity about me, instead of spending days at that stupid deer-forest. For all he knows, I might have been a veritable fright!' added Olive, with growing pique, as she glanced at the reflection of her own beautiful self in an adjacent console-mirror. 'If he thinks that, as Master of Aberfeldie, he has only to come and see, and conquer, I shall teach him that he is very much mistaken.'