'I hope you do not find Dundargue dull, Sir Paget?' said Eveline, to change a conversation that rather oppressed her, as she was sharp enough to divine the thoughts of both men.
'Assuredly not, Miss Graham; how could it be so when I am enabled to renew my intimacy with one who can cast, as it were, bright sunshine in the most shady place?' he replied, with an unusual jerk of his head, a glance of eye, and accentuation of voice that annoyed her greatly, while Cameron's lip quivered under his moustache with mingled irritation and amusement.
And now at luncheon, inspired by a few bumpers of Clicquot, Sir Paget's glances at Eveline took occasionally the fashion of grotesque and languishing leers.
The wealthy baronet was older than she by a great many years, but they by no means warranted him being safe from a love, or passion rather, that might prove cruel as the grave—the passion of a middle-aged man for a very handsome young girl, whose parents were fully disposed to further his views and their own. It has been said that 'people for the life of them cannot be said to believe in the love pangs of a man over forty, or of a woman over twenty-nine,' but people may at times be wrong.
The present epoch was rather a trying one to Cameron and Eveline. As she had admitted to Allan, she knew that he loved her with a love unselfish and unspoken; and he felt intuitively that he was far from indifferent to her—knew it by the indescribable, untaught, and nameless signs by which a man learns instinctively that a woman loves him—in a first passion, a most intoxicating conviction; yet circumstances blended the happiness of Cameron with much that was alloy.
To avoid attentions or would-be tender speeches that might annoy poor Cameron, Eveline found herself compelled to talk intently to Sir Paget about local traditions and superstitions, and, thanks to her old nurse Nannie, she had—for a fashionable young lady of the present day—a curious répertoire of stories about wraiths and warnings, Daione Shi and other fairies, who were wont in pre-railway times to haunt the corries, cairns, and rocks.
'Have you no ghosts in or about Dundargue?' asked Sir Paget. 'A grand old mansion is scarcely complete without some such spectral visitor.'
'Surely that oubliette, whatever it is, of which I have heard more than once, must contain something of the kind?' said Holcroft, in a covert, but detestable kind of sneering tone, which he could adopt when his own interests were not concerned.
'In the gallery that leads to it I have heard of something strange,' said Allan.
'Oh, do tell us—what is seen there?' exclaimed Ruby Logan.