A little cap of snowy white lace rested on her soft brown hair; all the rich beauty promised but a short time ago had been amply fulfilled, amid the sorrow she had endured, or in the dignity of her girlish widowhood.
A film seemed to pass over Evan's handsome eyes; a tremulous sensation, hitherto unknown, seemed to thrill over his nerves, and he was for a moment more full of emotion than herself; but he did not, as she expected, hasten to take her in his arms.
'Lady Puddicombe!' he exclaimed, while playing irresolutely with the red hackle in his tropical helmet.
'I am not the wife of Sir Paget now,' said Eveline, sweetly and simply.
'What then?'
'His widow. Is it possible you did not know?'
'He is—dead then!'
'Yes, Evan—killed by a fall from a horse. I am in weeds, don't you see?'
And, if a tearless, a very peerless little widow she looked.
Then a half-stifled cry escaped her as she fell upon his breast, and her white hands groped feebly, as one might do in the dark, about his shoulders, as her arms sought to go round his neck. In her crape dress she seemed to appeal to him and to his tenderness, more eloquently than she had ever done in the past time, and he gazed into her delicate face, as he took it caressingly between his hands, with a growing intensity that showed how he had hungered for the sight of it.