'You asked mamma rather, and your confidence has not been misplaced.'
Then she paused and coloured deeply for the first time, as she recalled that painful and passionate interview in the belvidere at Maviswood, and Evan Cameron's farewell glance; two episodes that seemed to have happened years ago.
Thus had a life of jealousy and 'nagging' begun for poor Eveline—a life that was ere long to become almost insupportable—for the most trivial matter was liable to misconstruction, or to excite suspicion.
If her eye followed a soldier in the street, which, as the daughter of a line of soldiers, was in her not unnatural; if she ventured to speak of the news of the day, or glance at a public journal, he watched her; it was 'Egypt again!' that she was thinking about; and, sooth to say, in that suspicion he was not far wrong.
Punctually a few minutes before eight, Sir Harry Hurdell and his friend Mr. Pyke Poole were ushered into the drawing-room, and she received them with as much sweetness, ease, and grace as if no gloomy conversation had preceded their appearance, and she and Sir Paget billed and cooed from hour to hour.
Fresh from the clever hands of Clairette her toilet was perfection, and her appearance excited the admiration of her husband's friends, who were both connoisseurs of female beauty, and disposed to be all the more appreciative that the husband was, as they thought, 'such a devil of a fogie.'
'I mean to have Sir Paget down at my place for a little cub-hunting,' said Sir Harry, glancing in a mirror at his accurately-parted fair hair and pointed moustache; 'and, if so, I hope you will accompany him. My sister Lucretia will make you most welcome, Lady Puddicombe.'
Ere Eveline could respond, Sir Paget warmly accepted for both, again believing much in change of scene and change of society.
'I can mount you to perfection, Sir Paget, or you may send down your own horses,' said Sir Harry, his eyes wandering in secret admiration over the fair face, the soft, hazel eyes, and delicate contour of Eveline's head, neck, and little white ears.
Sir Paget thought he would prefer his own. Strange horses had often tricks that might prove troublesome to a cavalier of his years and proportions, and it was carried that the first week of October was to find him and Lady Puddicombe at Hurdell Hall. But Sir Paget could little foresee the terrible and startling events to which the apparently simple acceptance of a hospitable invitation was to lead.