'Allan--absurd!' exclaimed Olive, shrugging her handsome shoulders. 'You all seem to forget that he can only remember me as a little girl.' 'Still you are his _fiancée_.' 'In a manner of way.' 'Distinctly so, if the tenor of your papa's will is to be observed.' 'Then I think he might have had some curiosity about me, instead of spending days at that stupid deer-forest. For all he knows, I might have been a veritable fright!' added Olive, with growing pique, as she glanced at the reflection of her own beautiful self in an adjacent console-mirror. 'If he thinks that, as Master of Aberfeldie, he has only to come and see, and conquer, I shall teach him that he is very much mistaken.' 'Olive--how can you talk thus?' expostulated soft little Eveline; 'his delay is probably all papa's fault.' 'I am sure that I shall hate him then!' 'Query?' said Eveline, with a saucy smile on her lovely lips. 'There is no query in this case,' persisted Olive, as she set down her cup with a jerk; for in her spirit of freedom there was at times a curious but unexpressed antagonism in her heart to the family of Aberfeldie, as if she felt herself somewhat in their power, and even to her own disadvantage, and this spirit, which Holcroft was not slow to discover, had rather encouraged his hopes. 'He will be sure to love you, at all events, Olive dear, if he has any sense or power of observation at all--you are so pretty--nay, so charming.' 'Any fool may love a pretty face, and generally does so.' 'But you possess much more than a pretty face, Olive.' 'Yes--the fortune which I am to share with him ere my twenty-fifth year.' 'Or, if you refuse----' 'One half of it goes to him, and the other, or nearly so, to charitable institutions,' exclaimed Olive, her sweet face paling with absolute anger. 'He will love you for yourself alone, I am assured,' persisted Eveline, in defence of her brother. 'You are beautiful, Cousin Olive; you ride, row, dance, play lawn-tennis, and flirt to perfection. Are not all these qualities calculated to excite admiration in a young officer; and then, more than all, you have such dear, funny ways with you.' And the warm-hearted girl concluded by laughing and kissing her cousin on both cheeks effusively. The tenor of this remarkable will, which has been referred to more than once, was, to say the least of it, peculiar. Some years before this period, Olive Raymond arrived at Dundargue an orphan, left in charge of Lord Aberfeldie--the child of his only sister, Muriel Graham, who had married a Mr. Raymond, a poor man, whom means furnished by the Aberfeldie family enabled to become one of the wealthiest planters in Jamaica. Both her parents had died early, and after her location at Dundargue she became a species of sister to Eveline and Allan Graham.