'Lady Puddicombe!' he exclaimed, while playing irresolutely with the red hackle in his tropical helmet. 'I am not the wife of Sir Paget now,' said Eveline, sweetly and simply. 'What then?' 'His widow. Is it possible you did not know?' 'He is--dead then!' 'Yes, Evan--killed by a fall from a horse. I am in weeds, don't you see?' And, if a tearless, a very peerless little widow she looked. Then a half-stifled cry escaped her as she fell upon his breast, and her white hands groped feebly, as one might do in the dark, about his shoulders, as her arms sought to go round his neck. In her crape dress she seemed to appeal to him and to his tenderness, more eloquently than she had ever done in the past time, and he gazed into her delicate face, as he took it caressingly between his hands, with a growing intensity that showed how he had hungered for the sight of it. The first strong tide of emotion swept over that parted pair, meeting now so differently from how they had ever expected to meet again. In the intensity of her joy, Eveline had closed her eyes, as if the light of day had proved too much for them; then their long lashes began to quiver, the lids unclosed, and the dear eyes were again turned wonderingly, searchingly, and lovingly on Evan Cameron's face. She was _free_. His pulses quickened at the thought. He had never ceased to love her--never ceased to wish she should be his. Sir Paget was dead--dead as Julius Cæsar--and he, Evan Cameron, had been in possession of a treasure without knowing it--the free and unfettered love of Eveline! 'Dead fires are difficult to re-light,' said she, waggishly, while twirling the ends of his moustache with her fairy fingers. 'But, Eveline, with me the fire was never dead--as I loved you with a love that partook of adoration in the dear past days at Dundargue, so I love you still!' 'My poor, dear Evan!' cooed the girl. 'Yes--poor indeed--without you.' So true it was that 'the thing we look forward to,' as George Eliot says, 'often comes to pass; but never precisely as we have imagined it to ourselves.' Could Eveline ever have looked forward to this when at Hurdell Hall--to see Evan Cameron in life again, and feel his tender kisses on her lips and eyes? Evan had loved Eveline as a maiden; he had trained himself to suffer, endure, and think of her as a wife; but now he thanked God that he had not to think of her as a mother--the mother of a wretched little Puddicombe! Lady Aberfeldie, who had fresh views concerning her daughter, was somewhat irate when--on her return from the city of the Caliphs and Khedives--the latter, with perfect deliberation, informed her that Evan Cameron had been at the villa to see Allan, and had paid her a long visit. 'He spoke of his old fancy for you, no doubt?' said Lady Aberfeldie, rather freezingly. 'He did, mamma,' was the candid reply. 'He had not the hardihood to ask you to marry him?' 'Mamma!' 'Already--I mean.' 'Of course not.'