'Our Allan is young and handsome, noble and most unselfishly in love with her, as I am beginning to hope, Eveline, so what more would Olive Raymond wish for?' said Lady Aberfeldie to her daughter.
'She would have that, which she has not, mamma, perfect freedom to accept or refuse whom she chose. Unselfish in love I know Allan must be; but that is precisely the point which Olive is left to doubt.'
'Wherefore?'
'Through that unlucky will, which makes a kind of bondswoman of her.'
'I would to heaven the silly document had never been framed! I have often feared that it might lead to all our attention, care, and affection being misconstrued by her; but Allan might have been sickly, weakly, even deformed, and, with the terms of this will hanging over her, what would she have thought then?'
'Then, as I have heard her say, the will might be reduced by a court of law.'
At this reply a clouded expression came into the fair, colourless face of Lady Aberfeldie, but just then a servant in the Graham livery, yellow and black, approached with a note on a salver.
'From papa!' she said, while cutting it open with a mother-of-pearl knife. 'Just a line or two to say he will be home in a couple of days, and is certainly bringing with him Mr. Hawke Holcroft, "the son of his old friend," and that other young detrimental, Stratherroch. He is well-nigh penniless, but, with your papa, to be in the Black Watch is quite equal to a patent of nobility.'
Eveline felt her colour fade, while a sad expression stole over her soft face, and her mother, after glancing at her narrowly, added,
'He also brings our wealthy friend, Sir Paget Puddicombe, the M.P. for Slough-cum-Sloggit, in Yorkshire. You remember him in London last season, and how much he admired you, dear?'