Eveline made no response, but resumed her occupation of gazing listlessly from the back window of the drawing-room into one of those dull and flowerless London gardens which a writer has truly described as looking 'like a burial place without any graves;' so Sir Paget returned to the charge. 'It is said, when love fails to beget love, it often engenders hatred. Is it so, madam?' 'Not in our case, I hope,' said Eveline, wearily, as she sighed, and her slender foot in its satin shoe began to tap the carpet with nervous impatience. 'Why did you marry me--buy me from papa?' she asked, with a tone and bearing a little unusual in her, she was ever so gentle and meek. 'I married you because I admired your beauty, and believed in the love that would come after marriage--the love that is grounded not on childish fancy, but on tried friendship and esteem.' 'Then you believed in too much,' said Eveline, driven desperate. 'Too much?' he repeated, changing colour, and jerking his head forward. 'Yes, Sir Paget.' 'Indeed! I asked you to be my wife in full assurance that I should never find my confidence in you misplaced.' 'You asked mamma rather, and your confidence has not been misplaced.' Then she paused and coloured deeply for the first time, as she recalled that painful and passionate interview in the belvidere at Maviswood, and Evan Cameron's farewell glance; two episodes that seemed to have happened years ago. Thus had a life of jealousy and 'nagging' begun for poor Eveline--a life that was ere long to become almost insupportable--for the most trivial matter was liable to misconstruction, or to excite suspicion. If her eye followed a soldier in the street, which, as the daughter of a line of soldiers, was in her not unnatural; if she ventured to speak of the news of the day, or glance at a public journal, he watched her; it was 'Egypt again!' that she was thinking about; and, sooth to say, in that suspicion he was not far wrong. Punctually a few minutes before eight, Sir Harry Hurdell and his friend Mr. Pyke Poole were ushered into the drawing-room, and she received them with as much sweetness, ease, and grace as if no gloomy conversation had preceded their appearance, and she and Sir Paget billed and cooed from hour to hour. Fresh from the clever hands of Clairette her toilet was perfection, and her appearance excited the admiration of her husband's friends, who were both connoisseurs of female beauty, and disposed to be all the more appreciative that the husband was, as they thought, 'such a devil of a fogie.' 'I mean to have Sir Paget down at my place for a little cub-hunting,' said Sir Harry, glancing in a mirror at his accurately-parted fair hair and pointed moustache; 'and, if so, I hope you will accompany him. My sister Lucretia will make you most welcome, Lady Puddicombe.' Ere Eveline could respond, Sir Paget warmly accepted for both, again believing much in change of scene and change of society.