Like her father, Eveline was anxious to discover how the cousins were affected towards each other now; yet the course of this evening, in which Allan had plainly flirted with Ruby Logan, while Olive seemed to have been engrossed by Mr. Holcroft, did not seem to promise much, and she hinted this pretty plainly.
'I do think Holcroft loves me, or leads me to infer that he does,' said Olive, with a soft smile on her downcast face, as she took off her rings, bangles, and bracelets, and tossed them on the marble toilette-table.'
'And you—what is your feeling for him?' asked Eveline, with some anxiety in her face and tone; 'not love, I hope.'
'I don't know what I feel—perhaps it is only a girl's emotion of gratitude and vanity.'
'I hope it will never be anything more. You scarcely spoke to poor Allan to-night?' said Eveline, interrogatively.
'Rather say he scarcely spoke to me! But we are fated to see quite enough of each other, I suppose,' replied Olive, as with slender fingers she coiled and knotted up the silky masses of her rich brown hair. 'How absurd it is,' she added, petulantly, 'to think, as I have said a hundred times, that I have a lover cut and dry for me—a fiancé—ever since he was in jackets and knickerbockers!'
After a pause, during which she was critically and approvingly regarding herself sideways in the swinging cheval-glass, she said,
'When I heard that he was returning to Dundargue, I was quite prepared to dislike him intensely.'
'Olive!'
'Fact, dear; and since then he must have been sorely puzzled by my various moods towards him.'