"She said that, did she!" muttered Kelvin.
"'Oh, by-the-by,' continued the Captain, 'I want to consult a lawyer on a point of business while I'm down here, and I daresay this fellow of Sir Thomas's would do as well as anybody else.'--'Yes, I should rather like you to see him, Frank,' said Miss Lloyd.--'Why him in particular?' asked the Captain.--'Because this very man--this country attorney--actually had the audacity, no very long time ago, to ask me to become his wife!'--'Confound his impudence!' said the Captain, and then they both laughed, and left the room."
A deep flush mounted to the face of Matthew Kelvin. He got up from the table, and went and rested his two elbows on the chimney-piece, and stood gazing into the fire without speaking. The lie just told by Olive, but which he had accepted as truth, had evidently touched him to the quick. Olive, playing with her tea-spoon, watched him narrowly.
"Do you think of telling Miss Lloyd before long that she is not Miss Lloyd?" Olive ventured at last to remark.
"No, not yet--not yet!" answered Kelvin. "Now that I have kept the secret so long, it shall not be told till the eve of her marriage with this man. I leave it for you to let me know when the proper time has come. Let her suffer--as she has made me suffer."
With that he left the room. Nor, during Olive's visit, was the subject again alluded to between them.
All too soon, to Olive's thinking, did her visit come to an end.
"You must steal another holiday before long," said her aunt to her as she was putting on her bonnet on the morning of her return to Stammars. "Matthew has brightened up wonderfully while you have been here, and I can't tell you how thankful I am for it." Matthew himself kissed her as he handed her into the fly that was to take her back. He had not kissed her since that never-to-be-forgotten day at Redcar, now long years ago. How strangely her heart thrilled to the touch of his lips! "Oh! that I could be with him altogether, never to leave him more!" she murmured. She lay back in the fly and cried all the way to Stammars; but already in that crooked brain of hers the embryo of a strange, dark scheme was beginning to take shape and consistency, although as yet she herself was hardly aware of its existence.
Gerald, too, had his holiday at Easter. Not that he wanted it, or even asked for it. To know that he was under the same roof with Eleanor, even though his chances of seeing her might have been few and far between, would have been holiday enough for him. But Sir Thomas's offer was made in such a way that he could not refuse to accept it. He had no suspicion that the prime mover in the affair was Lady Dudgeon, who thought that, by isolating Eleanor as much as possible, she was materially increasing Captain Dayrell's chances of success.
The demon of Jealousy was tugging at Gerald's heart-strings as he left Stammars for London, and all by reason of this same Captain Dayrell. He knew perfectly well that that gentleman, and he alone, had been specially invited to Stammars. He had met the captain once or twice at luncheon, and had seen enough of him to know that he might prove a most formidable rival. Before leaving Stammars he would fain have seen Eleanor, would fain have given her some hint more pointed than any he had yet given as to the state of his feelings, and have tried to win from her some sort of promise in return. But, either through accident or design, he found himself unable to see her even for five minutes; and he was compelled to go away without one word of farewell, but with the bitter knowledge--and bitter indeed it was to him--that his rival was expected to reach Stammars that very day in time for dinner.