This was a new view of the matter to poor Eveline, who began to have rather a horror of her hostess.
'There goes the dressing-bell, dear—we dine at eight,' said Lucretia, rising; 'let me conduct you to your room.'
Once there, Eveline was free to give full vent to her own thoughts. She would never see that lonely grave in the desert where Evan Cameron lay; but to her mind it was sacred, as of old was the place whereon the angel of the Lord alighted.
'Oh for some news—news of how it all came about! If Allan would only write to me—or to Olive; he surely will tell her. This is more than I can bear!' and interlacing her slender white fingers—a way she had contracted now when alone—she pressed them with palms outward, against her throbbing forehead, as if she meant to break them.
Alas! she was to learn too soon tidings of another dire calamity, and why Allan was unable to write to any one.
There was no trace of all this deep emotion in her soft face when she descended to the drawing-room, with a velvet dress of that blue which so suited her pale complexion, cut square at the neck, and having elbow sleeves with lace, and rich mosaics set in gold clasping her white neck, and exquisitely rounded arms that were so white and taper.
There could be no two opinions about her rare beauty, and Sir Harry Hurdell and his fast friend—fast in more ways than one—both acknowledged it at a glance, as their sharp and critical eyes took in every detail of her witching face, her rounded girlish cheek, her sweetly curved mouth, with its short upper lip, her nose and delicate nostrils.
Sir Harry Hurdell was very sceptical of the purity of all women. He would not have believed in that of his own mother had she been alive; so he was perhaps to be pardoned for deeming that Lady Puddicombe 'was just like the rest,' whatever that might mean.
He was intensely gratified and glad that the girl was so young and lovely, and that her husband was so old and so common-place: thus he resolved, in his own phraseology, 'to enter stakes for the filly—to make his innings if he could, or the devil was in it!'