Cigars were selected, and Holcroft handed his silver matchbox to Allan, who, with a leap of his heart, though without changing colour or a muscle of his dark and sunburned face, saw on his rival's wrist his own gift sent from Delhi, the gold bangle, which Olive had, perhaps, for the time forgotten, and on which was her own name in raised Roman letters.
He had seen Holcroft in rather close proximity to her during the most of the day, and if piqued thereat, more than ever was he piqued and startled now, and abruptly wheeling round his horse, he muttered some excuse and joined his sister and his friend Cameron, while the words of the song came ominously back to memory—
'Trust her not, she is fooling thee.'
The bangle! He blushed to think of it, and shrank as yet from speaking of it, even to Eveline, for he was altogether unaware of under what circumstances Holcroft came to possess it, or the effort Olive had made to procure its return without success, but imagination and jealousy now did much to fill his heart with secret fury.
Would the future hold love or hatred for these two cousins? It seemed just then difficult to say.
Like Eveline, he thought the gift of the photo a trifle when compared with this, yet the photo was eventually to prove the most serious and troublesome gift of the two.
Wounded self-esteem, disquiet, and intense mortification reigned supreme in the mind of the somewhat proud young Master of Aberfeldie; but he felt himself necessitated to dissemble. Hawke Holcroft was his father's guest, the son of his father's oldest and most valued friend; and while at Dundargue it would be necessary to treat him with courtesy, though Allan never doubted that he was a 'leg,' and resolved that his courtesy would be blended with watchfulness, if—bitter thought—Olive was now worth watching over!
Unprepared for such a crisis or catastrophe as the discovery of the bangle, and ignorant that Allan had made it, when a carpet-dance took place that evening at Dundargue, though Olive was arrayed in one of her most becoming toilettes for him, and him alone, he never even addressed her or looked near her; and, black though his brow, he entirely occupied himself with Ruby Logan; and, provoked by this, Olive again endured the attention of Holcroft, and thought to play—or affect to play—with them both.
In this, however, the little scheme was doomed to be disappointed by the events of the following day.
'I shall quit Dundargue for London, or give up my leave and go back to the regiment, and never look upon her fair, false face again till I have schooled myself into merely regarding her with a brotherly—well, say cousinly—eye!' thought Allan, with great bitterness of spirit.