'And oh, Olive, how am I to meet mamma?' was the first exclamation after they had got rid of Mademoiselle Clairette. She knew she would have to join in the conversation of the breakfast-table, when all her vigilance would be requisite to prevent her from pit-falls of suspicious silence or confusion of manner, with the helpless air and uncertain voice of one who seeks to conceal a new and hitherto unknown sorrow: and to undergo, with her sad, white, humiliated face, her mother's critical and observant eyes. If, in desperation, she did not act a part, that watchful mother would be sure to detect a change, and that there was something wrong. Eveline knew well that she would soon detect every flicker of her eyelashes, every tremor of the heavy white lids, that would droop in spite of her now; but luckily Lady Aberfeldie was busy in her boudoir with the housekeeper and Mr. Tappleton, the butler, giving orders; for Sir Paget Puddicombe would arrive ere long! Carslogie had gone back to Edinburgh, of course, last night. He would be with Evan Cameron this morning on parade and so forth; would the latter question him about his visit to Maviswood, about _her_ perhaps? But what did it matter now whether he did so or did not? Nothing--less than nothing! How long the hours seemed now when they were empty--_quite_ empty of all but bitterness. Meanwhile days passed on, and Cameron came, as was his wont, to the usual places of meeting, but Eveline was never there. What had happened--how was she detained? Had an illness come upon her? His mind was a prey to the keenest anxiety, which he was without the means of allaying. He could not write to ask for any explanation, neither could he call at Maviswood after the somewhat studied coldness of his last reception there by her father and mother. At each place and spot where so lately they had met and wandered, the thoughts that found utterance there, and many a tender caress came potently and poignantly back to memory now. Where was she, what doing, how engaged and with whom--in sickness or in health?--he asked of himself with endless iteration. Trivialities are often associated with the greatest eventualities in our lives. Thus long in the memory of Evan would his last visit to one of these beloved spots be associated with the shrill notes of a mavis perched upon the topmost bough of a tree. Ignorant as yet of what he himself had done, ignorant also of the mischief his friend Carslogie had unintentionally done him by retailing some mess-room gossip, in the vagueness of his thoughts and ideas of the whole situation, which we shall ere-long unravel, Cameron was inclined to attribute the total cessation of Eveline's meetings with him to some mysterious influence of Hawke Holcroft--if Holcroft it was whom he saw in the dusk.