'I can mount you to perfection, Sir Paget, or you may send down your own horses,' said Sir Harry, his eyes wandering in secret admiration over the fair face, the soft, hazel eyes, and delicate contour of Eveline's head, neck, and little white ears. Sir Paget thought he would prefer his own. Strange horses had often tricks that might prove troublesome to a cavalier of his years and proportions, and it was carried that the first week of October was to find him and Lady Puddicombe at Hurdell Hall. But Sir Paget could little foresee the terrible and startling events to which the apparently simple acceptance of a hospitable invitation was to lead. 'You have just come from the club, I presume?' said Sir Paget to his brother baronet. 'Yes; just waited to see the last telegrams in the reading-room.' 'Anything fresh from Egypt?' lisped Mr. Poole, with his glass wedged in his eye. 'Only a single telegram, which, by the way, must interest you. Lady Puddicombe,' said Sir Harry, with a most serious inflection of his Voice. 'Me--how?' faltered Eveline, feeling herself grow paler, if possible, than she really was. 'It refers to your brother.' 'My brother!' She was pale to her quivering lips now. 'Yes; it states that an officer of the Black Watch had been killed in action with the Bedouins, and was buried in the sand of the desert by his friend, the Master of Aberfeldie.' 'And the officer's name?' said Sir Paget, icily. 'Was Evan Cameron.' 'Cameron!' repeated the dry lips of Eveline, who suddenly felt as one in a dreadful dream. Dead and buried; buried in the sand of the Egyptian desert! Did she hear aright--was this happening to herself or to some one else? She made an effort to speak, but her tongue had lost its power. 'Eveline,' she heard her husband say, 'your wits have gone wool-gathering.' 'I beg your pardon, Sir Paget. What is it?' she asked, faintly. '_Sir_! Can't you call me Paget?' said he; and the two guests exchanged glances as much as to say, 'What is up now?' At that moment the dinner-gong sounded, and giddily and mechanically she took the proffered arm of Sir Harry. Never while life lasted would Eveline forget the grotesque horror of that little dinner, with the solemn servants in attendance, and all its splendid yet, to her, sickening details and talk, the references to marriages and races--hurdle, steeple, and others--on the _tapis_, of flirtations and gossip--how terrible, how ghastly they all sounded to her, who felt as if in a mist, out of which their voices seemed to come hollowly, and from a vast distance, and she was compelled to listen with one face--a dead face--coming out of that mist before her! CHAPTER V. DEAD AND BURIED IN THE SAND.