'If this tiresome couple, Olive and Allan, continue to pout and sulk at each other,' said Lady Aberfeldie; 'and he should decline to marry her, her money may be lost to us by her twenty-fifth birthday.' 'Unless----' the lord twisted his moustache and paused. 'Unless what?' 'Allan gets himself killed in Egypt,' replied Lord Aberfeldie, grimly. 'Good heavens, do not say such a thing, even in jest!' And now, perforce of their present situation, a change had come over the two cousins, Olive and Eveline--they never read, studied, sung, rode, or walked together, as they had been wont to do; a blight had come over both their lives apparently. Eveline only felt a little at ease when Sir Paget was absent from her, and even then she was pestered by his love-letters, which, like those written usually by men of advanced years, were of a grotesquely impassioned nature. 'Attachments at that age are deeper, and less anxiety not to compromise oneself is shown and felt,' says an essayist. 'After fifty, men are often wise enough to vote the writing of love-letters a bore, but some carry on the practice to a very advanced age. Their protestations are then ingeniously flavoured with touches of the paternal, which sometimes entirely mislead the unsophisticated recipients.' But the mere sight of Sir Paget's caligraphy, and of his heraldic note-paper, having a shield with some mysterious design thereon, and the motto _Puddicombe petit alta!_ (Puddicombe seeks lofty objects), proved always enough for Eveline, who tossed it into the waste-paper basket unread, but torn into minute fragments, while a sigh of weariness and repugnance escaped her. Evan Cameron loved Allan Graham dearly as a friend, and had naturally a desire to be on the best terms with him as the brother of the girl to whom he had given all his heart. Thus, while meeting him daily on parade and at mess, he was sorely puzzled to account for the change he felt in Allan's manner to himself, as he knew not that the latter resented the 'Mrs. Cameron' episode as an insult to Eveline, his sister. 'I presume you know that my sister is on the point of marriage--indeed, that the day is fixed?' said Allan, rather grimly, to him one day as he recalled the circumstance of how Evan greatly admired, to say the least of it, Eveline, and how her heart had responded thereto. Cameron made no reply, but a sudden pallor overspread his handsome, bronzed face, and all his studied calmness forsook him, while the memory of past hopes and joys shook his heart as if with a tempest of remembrance; but, stooping and half turning away to conceal the expression of his face, he attempted to light a cigar. 'What a sly fellow--a cunning dog--you are!' said Allan, with irritation of tone. 'In what way do you mean, Allan?' asked Cameron. 'Mean! How dare you ask, after your open admiration of my sister, Miss Graham, in a man in your position?'