As the two cousins, each so different in her style of loveliness, crossed the great apartment, the soft _frou-frou_ of their long silken dresses seemed to mingle with their soft laughter and silvery voices. Sir Paget jerked forward his head and remarked to his hostess that 'they made a charming picture.' Each had a sore place in her heart, but there was no appearance of it then. Though resenting the position in which she was placed, and much inclined to resist it, Olive Raymond--such is female caprice--also resented Allan's having hovered so much about the amber-haired beauty, and, when she bade him adieu for the night, she could not help singing softly, with some point and waggery, as she glanced back at him, the lines of Tennyson's song: 'I know a maiden fair to see, Take care! She can both false and friendly be, Beware, beware! Trust her not, she is fooling thee.' But whether she applied the words to herself or Ruby Logan it puzzled him to divine. Olive and Eveline were of an age, and able to sympathise with each other in every thought or fancy. They had grown up together like sisters, Olive, as an orphan, doubtless being the most petted of the two by the household ever since she came a little child to Dundargue, and both were frank, both were open-hearted, and proud of each other's personal attractions; and now, dismissing their maids, they brushed out each other's shining hair that they might have a quiet gossip together. 'So ends a tiresome night,' said Eveline, shrugging her white shoulders, which shone like ivory in the light of the toilette candles: 'a night when the conversation of everyone seemed of a nature so antagonistic, or as if it was all broken up into wrong duets.' Like her father, Eveline was anxious to discover how the cousins were affected towards each other now; yet the course of this evening, in which Allan had plainly flirted with Ruby Logan, while Olive seemed to have been engrossed by Mr. Holcroft, did not seem to promise much, and she hinted this pretty plainly. 'I do think Holcroft loves me, or leads me to infer that he does,' said Olive, with a soft smile on her downcast face, as she took off her rings, bangles, and bracelets, and tossed them on the marble toilette-table.' 'And you--what is your feeling for him?' asked Eveline, with some anxiety in her face and tone; 'not love, I hope.' 'I don't know what I feel--perhaps it is only a girl's emotion of gratitude and vanity.' 'I hope it will never be anything more. You scarcely spoke to poor Allan to-night?' said Eveline, interrogatively.