'Dead!' wailed the girl in her heart. 'Oh, God, that he might be raised up as Lazarus was, even though we should never, never cross each other's paths again. My love—oh, my love!' she murmured, in a hushed voice, as if the walls might hear her.
'Only to the dead,' says the author of 'Mount Royal,' 'to the utterly lost and gone, is given this supreme passion—love sublimated to despair. From the living there is always something kept back, something saved and garnered for an after-gift, some reserve in the mind or heart of the giver; but to the dead, love gives all—with a wild self-abandonment which knows no restraint or measure.'
She had felt at first a dull, vague, sensation which became an acute pang when certainty came upon her; but she dared not as yet shed a tear.
Henceforward, as before, she had a part to act—that of indifference. If possible, there must be no pallid face shown, no haggard eyes; no tell-tale sighs must betray the agony of heart—the great sorrow that consumed her for the loss of her dead love; and wonderingly she looked at her white and already worn countenance in her mirror.
Oh, that Allan were returned! from him she would know all. Allan knew the secret of her heart, sympathised with it, and would relate everything; but she could not divest herself of an awful and haunting fancy that this tragedy—beyond the chances of military life—was her fault; and that in the recklessness and despair of his heart, Evan Cameron had risked his life too rashly and lost it.
When this conviction came upon her, tears streamed down her cheeks—hot salt tears—which she made no effort to restrain; and on suddenly discovering her thus—after the departure of his guests, Sir Harry Hurdell and Mr. Poole—Sir Paget felt his soul stung with jealous fury.
He regarded her sternly rather than lovingly, and puffed out his chest with what he deemed an air of offended dignity. Yet he attempted to take her hand.
'Do not touch me,' said Eveline, imploringly; 'at least not just—just now.'
'Upon my word, madam! Do you understand what your romantic pity for this—this person implies?' he asked, grimly, while polishing his bald head with his handkerchief till it shone like a billiard ball.
'He has no father or mother—no sister to weep for him—none but myself to sorrow for him.'