It could be no sin, no crime—if an error—to meet one who loved her so well as Evan did, and whom she loved so dearly too. It could not harm her elderly adorer, from whose image just then she shrank with intense loathing; and, if it was a wrong against her parents, surely they were in error to coerce her, she thought.
On the other hand, the temptation was great; the joy of meeting Evan would end sadly and bitterly when, as he said, the regiment departed, and after that they might never see each other more!
'Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant,' say the Scriptures; and not less sweet and pleasant were the interviews that might be stolen thus in a green and lonely lane.
'God help me and direct me!' thought the girl, as she nestled her face in Cameron's neck, and, yielding to the natural impulses of her own heart, promised to meet him again and again, when time and opportunity served; and they did so in the lane between the holly hedges, by the rural woodland road that deep between the hills, leads to Ravelston Quarry and haunted Craigcrook; and at times near the old church, where the buried Forresters lie under their altar tombs with shield on arm and sword at side; and as the days went on each meeting—as it seemed to take place without suspicion or discovery—served to cement their hearts together more and more.
But once, when Evan was riding home in the dusk in the vicinity of Maviswood, he passed a wayfarer afoot, in whose face he thought he recognised—nay, was certain he saw—the features of Holcroft.
'Holcroft!' thought Evan; 'a man to guard against, by Jove. What can he be about in this neighbourhood—what but mischief?'
He wheeled his horse round, but the man he had seen, had stepped over a stile and disappeared.
CHAPTER IX.
'ALICE!'
My Lady Aberfeldie was all unconscious of the little romance that had been going on for some weeks past in the green lanes and wooded paths near Maviswood; while Eveline seemed now but to live for the purpose of meeting Evan Cameron, and her loving heart and busy little head were full of cunning schemes and contrivances to escape detection and achieve their meetings, which now seemed to make the whole sense of her existence; and when not with Evan, or if they failed (which was seldom) to see each other, even for a few minutes, her manner became abstracted and triste.