Lady Aberfeldie's face shaded with annoyance, for, only the day before, she and the petulant young lady in question had indulged in a tift between them. Perceiving a wistful look and fitful manner about Olive, and that she was more than usually restless and irritable, Lady Aberfeldie had unwisely spoken to her on the subject of Allan's regard for her. Olive had sat for a moment or two, with her delicate hands tightly interlaced in her lap, and then, turning defiantly to her aunt, she said, 'I will never marry Allan!' 'You must marry Allan, my dear girl,' replied Lady Aberfeldie, calmly and firmly. 'Why?' 'You know your father's wish.' 'Oh, the will, of course! So I am to be treated like a child? Well, if so, I may prove a wilful and dangerous one!' Her aunt's report of this conversation made Lord Aberfeldie more than ever anxious for the return of his son. 'You are very mysterious, Allan. You and Olive seem a pair of enigmas,' said Lady Aberfeldie. 'But your father waits you in the library, and perhaps you will condescend to confide in him, if not in me. I must own it will be a fatal thing for your future happiness if Olive thinks you seek her for gain; but for what does Mr. Holcroft so evidently seek her?' Allan smiled disdainfully. 'I have tried to think, mother dear, that she is not affected by this person Holcroft, but begin to own to myself that "the faith that worketh miracles" is not in me.' When questioned by his father, Allan made the same reticent reply, that he must see Olive before making any explanations. 'The time has come now, Allan,' said Lord Aberfeldie, 'when you are bound in honour to make your cousin an offer, for in this peculiar entanglement--for such, I grant you, it is--you and she do not stand in the position of most engaged persons.' 'But suppose I have no wish to marry----' 'Absurd--outrageous!' 'Or may not marry at all?' 'By the refusal of Olive?' 'Yes.' 'Then her fortune, or most of it, becomes yours, in terms of the will--' 'Which has been a curse to us both. In her mind, and in the eyes of all who may come to hear of it, we must lie under the degrading imputation of a mercenary motive.' 'Not if you act with tact and delicacy, and surely your boy-and-girl attachment must remain unchanged,' said Lord Aberfeldie, in a voice that was soft, rather than indignant, as his memory went back to the day when Olive first came a little orphan child to Dundargue--a tiny and graceful creature, with tender, wondering, and beseeching eyes--a child that climbed upon his knee, clung to him with sympathetic love, and played with his watch-chain or the tassels of his sash, if he was in uniform. 'And so,' he added, after a pause, 'you must propose to the dear girl as a mere matter of form.' 'I have already done so,' said Allan, recalling, what he was not likely to forget, all that had occurred during the homeward ride from Dunsinane. 'Well, sir?' asked his father. 'I was laughed at--mocked, I may say.'