As he bade them adieu Stratherroch observed that Lord Aberfeldie did not ask him to call again at Maviswood, and keenly did he feel the omission and all it implied, and with it came the conviction that he must call no more! Slowly he rode back to his quarters full of alternately exultant and bitter thoughts--exultant that Eveline loved him and would never cease to love him, but bitter ones as he asked himself, to what end! If poor Cameron had vague and lingering hopes to which he clung (and doubtless he had)--hopes when seeing Eveline, of proposing or hinting of meeting elsewhere in the future--they were doomed to blight, for no such bore fruition; and they had now parted, and her father and mother thought they should part, as mere friends, who might meet casually in society, but at all events had better _not_ meet again. And Cameron feared that, so far as monetary matters stood with him, his friend Allan might endorse the same view of the situation. 'Stratherroch is a gentleman by birth and position, but poor, miserably poor,' said Lady Aberfeldie, after he had gone; 'so was that precious Mr. Holcroft, and when a declension takes place in tone, manner, and habits, as in his instance, we never know where it may end,' she added pointedly to Eveline. 'How can you speak of the two men in the same sentence!' exclaimed the peer, with an asperity for which his daughter thanked him in her aching heart. At anytime when Eveline looked south-eastward from Maviswood she could see the Castle of Edinburgh, and the towering mass of the western barrack, with all its windows shining in the sun, and she always did so with tenderest interest, as she knew that _he_ was there; but, natheless, her experience of at least one London season, there was much of the guileless child and mere girl in Eveline still, and she was so sweet and soft, so pliable, and so impressed with her mother's will and her father's authority, that--that how could Evan Cameron tell what pressure might be brought to bear upon her, to make her seem to transfer the allegiance of her heart to another--even to the wealthy old English baronet, Sir Paget Puddicombe? Alas! there was to be, in time, a pressure that none could then foresee. CHAPTER VIII. AT MAVISWOOD. The reports which Mr. Hawke Holcroft--spinning out his precarious existence by skill with the billiard cue, cards, and the betting ring--heard concerning the health of his intended victim, one whom he still absurdly and grotesquely deemed his successful rival, were undoubtedly true.