Yet when night came again and the small hours of the morning, the somewhat simple M.P. for Slough-cum-Sloggit was again a heavy loser to Holcroft. 'He has some secret about him,' said the former. 'Most men have some secret which they generally keep to themselves,' replied Cameron. 'Secrets certainly, which they seldom tell to their wives or sweethearts,' said the baronet, laughing. We have said that Olive had a secret thought that might prove somewhat fatal to Allan's success with her, a mistaken idea that Holcroft loved her--loved her for herself--and despite the tenor of her father's will; while Allan might love her because he knew the value of its tenor to himself. And, now that the latter was so unaccountably absent, Holcroft was full of confidence, and, the ice having once been broken, thought it would be easy to go back to where he had left off on the ride home from Dunsinane. In his own selfish way he loved her; but then she was beautiful. Loved her! 'Oh, poverty of language, that we must so often use the word love!' exclaims a writer. It was some days before his inevitable departure from Dundargue (and not an hour too soon for that), when he and Olive were somewhat earlier, and before anyone else, in the breakfast-room, and the notes of Ronald Gair's pipes, playing his morning reveille, 'The Black Watch,' a slow and wailing air, were dying away on the terrace outside. Holcroft's face looked worn and haggard--more freckled, and the eyes more than usually shifty in their expression. He had received some letters and telegrams the evening before that upset him so much that he failed even to win at loo or écarté, and the live-long night he had been heard by Cameron pacing to and fro, as if unable to rest. Olive was struck by his pallid appearance. They exchanged 'Good-mornings,' and then a few minutes' silence ensued. 'We may have rain soon.' was the not very original remark of Holcroft. 'The sky looks very like it. Rain always comes when the mist is where we see it now, on yonder low spur of the Sidlaw Hills,' replied Olive. She was kneeling on a bearskin, beside the great staghounds, Shiuloch and Bran, with her little white hands outspread before the fire for warmth; and a charming picture she made, in her morning costume, fresh and lovely as a fairy, with the dogs in the foreground, and the great carved stone arch of the baronial chimney-piece for a frame. Hawke Holcroft turned from the window and came to her side, though curiously enough the hazel eyes of the hounds glistened, and they showed their teeth at him, suggestive of kicks secretly administered. 'We are down earlier than usual this morning,' said she. 'All the better.' 'Why?' 'I want so particularly to talk to you,' said he, with all the softness he could assume. 'And I with you,' said Olive, with a frankness that was a curious mistake. 'You leave us soon, I believe?' 'Yes.' 'For London?' 'For London,' he replied, mechanically, as it were.