Lady Aberfeldie bridled up a little and crested her handsome head; for, like Sir Paget, she had her own thoughts on the subject.
'Well, he is gone now,' said she, after a pause.
'And a devilish good thing, too,' added Sir Paget, roughly.
She made no rejoinder, conceiving that the less that was said on the matter the better.
Eveline found Olive in a very crushed state.
Allan had never written to her, and, as yet, even his mother's letter of explanation had not been replied to. Perhaps he did not believe in it. He had left her abruptly and passionately and with a sore heart. Many such hearts are caught by others on the rebound, for the void in them is more easily filled up, and often requires to be so.
'Oh, heaven,' she thought, 'if such should be the case with Allan—not in Egypt, for that was very unlikely, but at Gibraltar or Malta, where English ladies were to be met with.'
'Even if married, I fear you would never win the Dunmow Flitch,' Lady Aberfeldie had said to her angrily on one occasion.
'My unfortunate money has been the cause of all this,' replied Olive. 'It excited the cunning and cupidity of that unfortunate man, Holcroft, and has led to the saddest misconceptions and misconstructions from the first between dear Allan and myself,' she added, in tears.
'Most true.'