And the girl lay there thinking—thinking—it was impossible for her not to think and surmise. But for this sudden accident, how long might Sir Paget have lived at his years: and how long would he have tormented her about Evan?
As if to infer that she desired his death, how often had he said in the bitterness of his heart, before the news of Cameron's fall in action came, that 'he would cheat her yet, and live as long as she could do!'
She was free now, and not past her girlhood; and, if in life, Evan would be loving her still. But she thrust that natural thought aside; why brood over it now, when Evan was no more, for somehow there seemed in it a species of treason to her dead husband—little as she had loved him—now that he too was in his grave.
If this was her mode of viewing Evan Cameron, how little chance had Sir Harry Hurdell of affecting her heart!
Now that Sir Paget was gone, Eveline repented that his last thoughts of her as a wife had been bitter, and tried to think of him as a friend who had been kind at one time, a husband whose settlements had been generous, and would have been greater but for the jealousy that made him alter his will.
She now recalled with something like an emotion of pleasure, or certainly of satisfaction, that though she did not love, she had ever respected him, though his references to Evan Cameron had always made her wince and shiver.
'Poor man!' she exclaimed; 'and his soul went out into the night—in a moment—without time for a prayer or supplication to God!'
'So did the souls of our brave fellows at Tel-el-Kebir and elsewhere,' replied Olive, who had rather more metal in her composition than the softer Eveline.
Olive knew enough of life and of human nature to feel certain that her cousin was too young to relinquish all the hopes and fears, the many vague and brilliant dreams of girlhood. Another would come, but who?
Time would show that.