After this, many days elapsed, and Roland, having ever before him the last crushing communication of Messrs. Hook and Crook, never went near the Chateau de St. Eustache, much to the surprise of Logan, whose mind was sorely exercised on that subject, and on some new and unwonted peculiarities of temper and system which he discovered in his old friend and once jolly comrade.
Aurelia, too, felt some surprise at his protracted absence, and that she never saw him at the promenades and public places where she had been wont to see him before.
She was thinking could he have fallen in love with some one else—she always thought he loved her—some one in Scotland where he had been? If so, what business had he to come to her and talk, and act, and look, too, as if he were free and fetterless? Could he have been playing with her, making a fool of her all along? How coldly and quietly he had talked about going to India, too.
Ah no! could she have seen Roland Ruthven at that very time! He was kissing, looking at, smoothing out, and caressing a tiny kid glove, which he had begged from her at that very ball where they first met, on the 5th of August—the fatal day of the Ruthvens, as Elspat Gorm was wont to call it.
"Roland, old fellow," said Logan, dropping into his quarters one evening when he was dressing for mess, "what is up—you look like the ace of spades? Never saw a fellow so changed in all my life."
"One day you may know all, Hector—meantime, don't worry me," replied Roland, with the hair brushes suspended in action above his thick head of dark brown hair, while Logan smoked and talked. His toilet table bespoke taste and that wealth which he no longer possessed, with its ivory-handled brushes having on them the Ruthven arms; his dressing-case of silver-gilt, with gold-topped essence bottles in nests of blue velvet; rings, jewelled studs, and sleeve-links, lay there scattered about, with pipe heads of rare fashion and costly material.
"You are not using that girl well, Roland—you know what I mean; before you went on leave you were like her shadow, and now——"
"I can't get over my scruples about—about——"
"What, in the name of heaven?"
"Well, about making up to a girl who has a fortune—a very handsome income, at all events—when I am so out at the elbows."