Happy, indeed, was Olive alike in her Scottish home in the lovely Carse of Gowrie, and when the family took up their abode, according to the season or the sitting of Parliament, at their West-end residence in London. By will, Mr. Oliver Raymond left his entire fortune, which was very considerable, to his daughter; but, in gratitude to the family of his wife, on the strange condition that she was to marry his nephew, Allan Graham, whose death alone was to free her from that contingency. If she unreasonably refused, then, in that case, after her twenty-fifth year, she was to forfeit all that would accrue to her, save a very slender allowance--the share so forfeited to become the inheritance of her cousin Allan; and if _he_ declined to wed his cousin Olive, then, in _that_ case, the money so forfeited was to go to such Scottish charitable institutions as Lord Aberfeldie and the other trustees might select. This will was, undoubtedly, a strange one; but then Mr. Raymond had been a strange and eccentric man, animated by an intense regard and esteem for the family of his deceased wife, the Grahams of Aberfeldie, to whom he felt all his good fortune had been due. As children, the tenor of this tyrannical will in no way affected the relations of Olive and Allan with each other; and the latter--a manly and sturdy lad, when at home from the College of Glenalmond, where he pursued his studies and cultivated cricket, boxing, and football--petted and made much of the violet-eyed and brown-haired little cousin, who had dropped among them as if from the clouds; but after he had joined the Black Watch as a subaltern, and years passed on, and they began to be talked of and deemed in the family circle as an engaged couple, betrothed, affianced, and all the rest of it, the young beauty and heiress began to resent the terms of the will bitterly, perhaps not unreasonably; she became, as we have said, antagonistic, and was perplexed to think that her father could not have foreseen some difficulties on the part of his two legatees.