'She'll get over all this nonsense by-and-by, poor little thing,' said Sir Harry to his chum, Pyke Poole, as they knocked the balls about in the billiard-room, trying canons and so forth for practice. 'She is, by Jove, the best groomed woman in the whole stud of our acquaintances—perfect in all her points. I'll go in for her, if I can—but it is too soon to begin the running yet. Girls' fancies are, however, easily drawn from one object to another.'

'And I don't think she could have fancied old Pudd much,' said Poole, as he mixed himself a glass of brandy-and-soda. 'I've seen many a rough spill in the field, but never such a devil of a cropper as he came!'

'You know I might do worse than marry such a sweet girl, Pyke?'

'You might, by Jingo!' replied Mr. Poole, with a knowing wink, and thinking—'Why should not he himself enter stakes for such a prize?'

'Puddicombe's settlements are splendid, I hear, but pass away if she dies without an heir. No chance of that, I think; and then some soft-headed Scotch fellow—if there is such a thing in the world—who loved her, has left her a place in the Highlands, where one could knock over the grouse and blackcock every year. We'll get married before the Derby. She'll have had plenty of time to air her grief and her weeds—Jay's "unutterable woe," no doubt—for old Pudd by that time. I've a heavy bet upon Dasher, and I'll have her in the grand stand on Cup Day, with my jockey's colours somewhere about her dress. She'll look, as she always does, a stunner!'

Poole could not help laughing as his friend ran on thus, in perfect confidence, and stroked his long yellow moustache. Though rather a bit of a reprobate, Sir Harry looked every inch a gentleman, a long-limbed sanguine blond, alternately blunt and overbearing; resolute and indolent, with the general air of a man who has seen everything that was to be seen—done everything that was to be done, and 'had found nothing in it.'

'To speak to her for a space would never do. I'll take my time,' he resumed; 'none but a fool meets trouble half-way.'

She would learn to love him in time—hang it all, how could she resist! This comfortable impression made him feel quite easy on the subject, and by degrees the satisfaction that always accompanies a weak mind took possession of him.

Olive never doubted that when Eveline got over the death, not of Sir Paget, but of Evan Cameron, she would marry again. She was too young to treasure a morbid grief; but Olive would not like to have seen her Lady of Hurdell Hall, for, with all a woman's sharp instincts, she had indefinable doubts about Sir Harry.

After Olive joined her, the two girls were never weary of comparing their hopeless notes and sorrows, and of searching the public prints. Eveline could do so freely and unchidden now for any further meagre tidings that might come of the lost one.