CHAPTER VI.

A SKIRMISH IN THE DESERT.

Buried in the sand!

Yes—it was all true—too true; the gay, handsome, and usually light-hearted Laird of Stratherroch, one of the most popular fellows in the Black Watch—he who had won the V.C. in battle with his good claymore—he whom Eveline had known in the heyday of his life, when the world seemed so fresh and fair to both, whom she had last seen as a despairing and broken-hearted lover, was gone—struck down by a bullet of some nameless Egyptian savage, buried in the desert, and she would never see him more, though the poignancy of his farewell would haunt her for many a day.

And thus it all came to pass.

A band of Bedouins had been hovering in the vicinity of Matarieh, plundering and looting. These Allan, after a consultation with Cameron, resolved to make a demonstration against, and with Farquharson, his sergeant, and thirty picked men, in light marching order, they quitted the village, and about an hour before sunrise took their way towards the desert.

The light of the coming day shone along the latter, a sandy waste, overlooked by Jebel Mokattam, a chain of rocks abrupt and barren that extends from Cairo to the cataracts. They are generally flat, with beetling summits, while below, on the face which fronts the Nile, they are furrowed as if water-worn by the rain of ages.

On the other flank, towards Jebel Dimeshk, rises a ridge of sand-hills that follows in the same direction at an equal distance, all the windings and sinuosities of that which lines the eastern bank.

Between lay the winding line of the disused railway. In front the horizon seemed foggy or dusty, and along the desert the sun shone for a time, as he rose, like a red ball, shorn of his rays.

In rear the party left behind the village of Matarieh, with the clumps of palm-trees, beyond which, with the tall obelisk and the ruins of several sphinxes, rose the great mounds of earth that mark the site of Heliopolis, 'the City of the Sun,' the inhabitants of which worshipped a bull called Mnevis, with the same ceremonies as the Apis of Memphis, and where Apollo had an oracle.

Over the same ground where in 1800 a battle was fought between the French and Turks, in which the latter were defeated with the loss of eight thousand men and all their cannon and baggage, Allan's little band marched merrily on towards the desert in hope to 'polish off' a few of the Bedouins before returning to quarters.

They were well supplied with ammunition; each man had a day's rations in his haversack, and his water-bottle filled with the red sandy fluid of the Nile. In Exodus we are told that the Egyptians loathed to drink the waters of that river, and, as Cameron said, 'the men of the Black Watch were much of the same mind.'

Now, in making a reconnaissance, Allan Graham was a trained soldier enough to know that cover from view is important, as it enables troops, whatever their strength, to form for action; thus he hoped to utilise the railway bank, or, if not that, some of the sandy undulations around it.

As the first object in reconnoitring is to get observation, with his sergeant, who was a sharp fellow, he went at some distance in front of his men, field-glass in hand, and looked sharply about him.

He continued to move in a north-easterly direction for nearly ten miles till mid-day, but saw nothing of Bedouins, and then, halting amid a clump of palms, threw out some sentinels towards the front, piled arms, and the Highlanders in their kilts and red serges threw themselves on the grass and prepared to make a meal of what they had brought with them, washed down by Nile water.

There he remained till noon was long past, and he began to think of falling back on Matarieh.

Even under the shadow of the palms they were tormented by gnats and sandflies.

'We are in the land of the "Arabian Nights"—the land of giants, fairies, and genii, and all that sort of thing,' said Cameron, as he lit a cigar; 'but, if a little picturesque, Allan, the discomforts are abominably real.'

'Surely water is lying yonder, sir,' said Sergeant Farquharson, 'and we might get our water-bottles filled.'

All looked eagerly in the direction indicated, towards the base of the Jebel Dimeshk range. The sun was clear, bright, and powerful now. Amid the silent waste of sand a long, narrow lake seemed at no great distance.

'If water it is,' exclaimed Cameron, 'there are certainly men moving through it.'

'The Bedouins, by Jove!' cried Allan. 'Down, down,' he shouted to his sentinels, 'lie down, under cover if you can.'

They lay down flat, and Allan, adopting the same position, turned his field-glass towards the mirage, for such it was—that beautiful optical illusion produced by the sun's rays reflected from the heated sand, and which raises before the eye of the thirsty wayfarer the tantalising but perfect representation of distant lakes or pleasing sheets of water.

About eighty Bedouin horse were moving slowly from the direction of the Jebel Dimeskh range towards the line of the railway. Whatever their object was, from a description given to Allan, he was certain they were those of whom he was in search, and that their object was to turn up in the vicinity of Matarieh after sunset, intent on plunder, as everywhere these lawless sons of the desert were taking advantage of the confusion of affairs in Egypt.

Some were armed with long muskets of antique form, but by far the greater number had Remington rifles—flung away by Arabi's fugitive soldiers—slung over their backs, or at their saddles, weapons that had superseded the javelin, the bow, and in many instances the spear. They were clad in barracans of dark brown wool, with floating burnouses, many of them spotlessly white; and as they seemed to be making slowly, for shelter doubtless, towards the clump of palms occupied by Allan's party, which was yet beyond their range of vision, he drew the whole off and took post behind the bank of the abandoned railway, a movement which was fortunately quite unseen by the foe.

Formation against cavalry would be useless, as these wild horsemen have no idea of tactics; and, to deceive them as to his force, Allan formed his men in extended order, three paces apart, each man lying on his face, close under the line of the embankment.

Allan knew from experience how fire from a steep slope becomes plunging; thus he congratulated himself that the slope for his musketry was one that was parallel to the trajectory of the rifles.

By a single word he could, if necessary, form his men in a rallying square on the crest of the line. As the Bedouins came riding forward, in a disorderly group, at an easy, ambling pace, Allan, by means of his field-glass, was certain that in their leader he recognised the Arab, Zeid-el-Ourdeh, whom he had succoured after his wounds at Kassassin, and sent to the hospital at Ismailia.

He was wearing the same robes with wide sleeves, and the richly embroidered girdle he wore when found near the camp.

'Steady and still, men,' cried Allan, 'and we'll play old gooseberry with these beggars, as we have done everywhere else.'

They were about five hundred paces distant, a range for which the rifles were sighted, when suddenly a Bedouin uttered a shrill cry of alarm, and all began to unsling their firearms. His eye had detected a clay-coloured helmet with its red hackle on the left side.

Ere they could fire a shot, the Highlanders from their cover poured in a deadly fire, and more than twenty men and horses went down in confused heaps; the latter, in the agony of their wounds and terror, kicking and lashing wildly out with their hoofs, raising clouds of sand, while braining the skulls and breaking the limbs of the fallen riders, whether dead or wounded; then shrieks and groans, cries and curses loaded the air, as all who were untouched or able to keep their saddles, after firing, half at random, a ragged volley, wheeled round their light chargers and went off with the speed of the wind.

'Cease firing!' cried Allan Graham; 'we have taught these fellows a lesson severe enough for the day, and I don't think they will venture near Matarieh again.'

In that, however, he was mistaken, as he afterwards found to his cost.

'And now,' he added, as he crossed the line of railway, sword in hand, 'to give water to the wounded, succour any we can, smash all their weapons, and leave them to fate or their returning friends.'

He, with most of his party, approached the place where the victims of the fusilade lay, and, so far as blood, wounds, and agony went, they presented a very dreadful scene, and yet a trifling one when compared with that witnessed so lately in the trenches of Tel-el-Kebir.

Many were shot outright; others, severely wounded, lay wallowing and choking in their blood, and they regarded the victors with a firm, scowling, and defiant expression in their long, thin, tawny faces, and black, bright, glittering eyes, that made them look, as Allan said, like dying eagles.

But, before anything could be done for the survivors, the fatal episode of the day took place.

A little way apart from the group of death and agony, lay a Bedouin, who, though untouched, was partly under his horse, from which he freed himself, and then Cameron advanced to take him prisoner. He was an athletic and gigantic fellow, all bone and sinew, lithe as a serpent, and active as the antelope of his native deserts.

Drawing a long pistol from his girdle, he levelled it at Cameron, but it snapped, on which he flung it furiously at the head of the latter, who ducked, and escaped it.

Several Highlanders now rushed forward, as he had drawn a large and heavy Damascus sabre, but they paused with their hands on their locks when Cameron cried,

'Stand back, my lads, and leave him to me!' And in a moment both their blades were flashing in the setting sun, for Cameron fell upon him claymore in hand.

'May your head be covered by a whirlwind of fire!' hissed the Bedouin in Arabic, through his clenched teeth, while he hewed away without the least intention of surrendering. The hood of his red and white striped burnous had fallen back, and his whole head and face, with flashing eyes and gleaming teeth, were displayed to view.

Cameron was a skilful swordsman, but so was the Bedouin, who was his superior in height and muscular power. Their blades struck red sparks from each other. Cameron forgot to draw his long dirk: but he had 'Sir Garnet's' ugly jack-knife in his left hand, for parrying purposes. How the combat would have terminated, it is difficult to say, but a vile Bedouin, who lay wounded close by, armed with a long, straight sword, with the last effort of expiring nature, writhed himself up from the sand, ran poor Cameron through the body from behind, and fell back dead.

With a hollow groan, Cameron fell backward across him, and was about to receive a finishing stroke from his antagonist, when the latter was shot through the head by Sergeant Farquharson.

This catastrophe rather cooled Allan's humane ideas of succouring the wounded. Very few of the Highlanders had been touched, and these but slightly. However, it seemed as if Cameron was dying. He was speechless, and his mouth at times was filled with blood. It was impossible then to ascertain the exact nature of his wounds, or what part of the body was injured. Allan, full of tenderness, anxiety, and the deepest commiseration, formed a pad of his handkerchief, and, using his sash as a bandage, endeavoured, so far as in him lay, to stop the bleeding, while a litter was improvised by a couple of rifles, with a blanket stretched over them; and the party began to fall back on Matarieh, but often had to halt, for the agony of Cameron was great, and Allan began to despair of getting him conveyed in life to Matarieh, which, as we have said, was nearly ten miles distant, while, to enhance their difficulties, a troop of nearly a hundred Bedouins were visible, pouring down a rocky gorge of the Jebel Mokattam range; so nothing was left to Allan but to continue his retreat, which they seemed slow or disinclined to follow up.

Yet their presence was fraught with danger, especially after the sun, with its usual rapidity in these regions, went down like a red, fiery ball, and the lurid haze exhaled from the flat desert on which the darkness fell.

The stars were coming out in the blue zenith; the dew was already beginning to fall; long and dark shadows lay across the plain, but the line of the railway was a sure guide back to Matarieh and the vicinity of Heliopolis.

Every step of his bearers elicited a moan of pain from Cameron, and these went to the heart of his friend as if they had been the utterances of a brother, while now and then the sufferer muttered his thanks to the soldiers for their care and kindness, and his regret for the trouble he gave them after a day of toil, and his fears that he was retarding their retreat and thereby involving them in danger. Of his own pain or peril he never uttered a word.

Constellations new to him and his comrades were in the sky now—a vast blue dome that stretched far, far away, all bright with glorious stars.

At last it was absolutely necessary to halt for a time, for all thought the sufferer was dying, and the Highlanders said that if the Bedouins came on again they would form square round him; and soon it became too evident that Evan Cameron was lying 'on the bleak neutral ground between life and death.'

Accustomed though they were to suffering and slaughter, the Highlanders stood around him leaning on their muskets, full of commiseration, and looking attentively at the pale face of the dying officer and back to the desert where they had last seen the enemy hovering; and more than one wished that the Bedouins would only come on again.

'Has no man among us here any water?' asked Allan, for by this time the tin bottles of the detachment were empty.

A man who was in the act of taking the stopper out of his, paused instantly.

'Captain Graham, here is mine,' said he; 'there are only a drop or two left, but if it was my blood I'd give it for Evan Cameron,' he added, emphatically, with that familiarity which is peculiar to the Highlander, and has no rudeness in it.

'Donald, thank you,' said Allan.

'My mother bides nigh the braes of Stratherroch, and I am not likely to forget that to-night,' said the soldier, with a break in his voice.

Raising Cameron's head gently, Allan put Donald's water-bottle to his lips, and he drank thirstily of the fetid and odious water it contained, 'the Nile soup,' as our men called it.

Refreshed even by it for a few minutes, Evan Cameron spoke to Allan, but in whispers, and, as they seemed to be meant for the ear of the latter alone, the soldiers with one accord drew back a little way.

'I knew from the first that I should never pull through—nor do I wish to do so, Allan,' said he, speaking at long intervals and with a husky effort.

'We have faced death together in many ways, but I wish your case had been mine, Evan, even if it is to be a fatal one.'

'Don't say that, Allan, dear fellow,' replied Evan, with that strange, far-off expression of eye which belongs alone to a fast-ebbing life—an expression which Allan could see even in the starlight as he stooped close over the sufferer, 'my sight is failing me, yet I can in fancy see Eveline—oh! so distinctly, Allan—and I seem to hear her voice—you don't mind me saying this now, lying, as I am here, face to face with God—the voice that seemed to whisper to my heart.'

Allan could only press the clammy hand that never again would grasp the broad claymore. Evan spoke again, but still more brokenly,

'I am not jealous now of my married rival; I only sorrow for the lost future of Eveline; married to an old man whom she may respect but never love, and with whom she cannot have a sympathy in common.'

'You are talking too much, Evan.'

'And thinking of her rather than my prayers. When I am lying here in my long and peaceful sleep, far from my father's grave in bonnie Stratherroch, she will live all the years of a young life, and, in the time to come, will—of course, forget me.'

His voice was almost gone now, yet his eyes dilated when Allan said, with sorrowful emphasis,

'Evan, she will never forget you.'

'Nearer me—come nearer, Allan; I—I want you to tell her—tell her——'

What he was to tell Allan never heard, as the voice of Cameron ceased; a change, perceptible in the clear starlight, was passing over his face; a dew was gathering on his forehead, and dark shadows under his eyes.

'He's gone, sir,' said Sergeant Farquharson, lifting his helmet for a moment in mute reverence. 'Well, Captain Graham, the golden gates have never closed upon a better officer or a braver man! Poor Evan Cameron,' he added, stooping over the body and looking at it earnestly.

Allan cast a long and sad glance at it too; then he laid a hand on the heart; it might be only syncope—no, it did not seem to be that.

The profile of his face in its stillness looked like a classic cameo cut in high relief. His fair, almost golden, hair, clipped close with military precision, retained still its crispy ripple. The brown moustache shading the short upper lip had been somewhat untrimmed of late; but he looked so life-like that Allan almost shuddered as he spread the blanket over him and covered him up—for he felt that in that wretched substitute for a shroud lay one whom he knew his sister—married albeit as she was to another—loved better than life!

It was hard to think of so young and gallant a life being cut short thus by the inexorable scissors of Fate; but he was gone to the 'Land of the leal,' where there can be no sorrow nor thought of sordid things.

'We cannot leave him lying here thus; neither can we carry him off; while there is a chance of these Bedouin devils coming on again. Besides, there are always jackals about,' said Allan, as he took possession of Evan's claymore, dirk, and ring. 'Scoop a hole—a temporary grave in the sand—and cover him up, till we can return by daylight, and bring him into quarters for proper interment.'

The soldiers, with their hands, bayonets, and rifle-butts, hollowed a trench some three feet deep, and therein, rolled in a blanket, they reverently deposited the yet warm form of Cameron, and covered it up with sand.

Allan maintained a grim silence, and, though his heart was full of genuine grief, the remarks of his soldiers pleased him.

'Those who have lived with us and died as he has done will never be forgotten in the regiment, sir,' said Sergeant Farquharson.

'Mourn for the mourner, I have heard my mother say in Gaelic, and not for the dead, as they are at rest and we in tears,' said Donald, as he hooked-on his water-bottle.

'He has none to mourn for him now but one, and she is far away,' remarked Allan, with a swelling in his throat. 'And now fall in, lads.'

The Highlanders marched on their way back to Matarieh in silence, impressed by the recent episode; for, if gallant and reckless fellows in battle, they were thoughtful and full of sorrow for the brave young officer they had lost.

A shot or two, fired apparently at random in the distance, sparkling out redly amid the obscurity, showed that the Bedouins were following them up, and must have passed over the very place where Cameron lay.

The silence of the starry night was upon the world then—upon the ridgy summits of Jebel Mokattam, and darkness now enfolded the desert where Evan Cameron lay in such awful loneliness, without even the grim companionship of the dead—the last Cameron of the old fighting line of Stratherroch.

Two days after, with an ambulance waggon, Sergeant Farquharson, and some of his men, Allan went along the line of the old railway from Matarieh to the place where they had left the body—a place marked in their memory by the presence of two large stones and some shrubs near the embankment—but of these they could find no trace, though they searched for hours, believing they might have passed them or miscalculated the distance.

Nothing was to be seen about the real or supposed spot but sand, smooth and drifted sand everywhere. Thus Allan could but come to the sorrowful conclusion that some species of sand-storm must have swept from the desert south-eastward between the mountain ranges, and buried every trace of the hastily-made grave.

CHAPTER VII.

HURDELL HALL.

'Welcome to Hurdell Hall! My sister Lucretia—Lady Puddicombe and Sir Paget, Lucretia—Sir Paget, our mutual friend Poole, you know.'

Thus did Sir Harry Hurdell introduce Eveline and Sir Paget, with much empressement and effusiveness, to his home in Hampshire, when the carriage duly deposited them, with Mademoiselle Clairette, Sir Paget's valet, and 'no end' of trunks and boxes in a van, at the porte cochère.

Situated in the northern district of the shire, where the woods are chiefly hazel, birch, alder, and willow, where flocks of deer scour the coppice, Hurdell Hall is a fine example of the old Tudor architecture, and, as Eveline saw it for the first time with the rays of the evening sun casting dashes of golden light upon its ogee gables, mullioned bay-windows, its long gravelled approach, and stately terrace, she thought what a charming picture it would make, with its background of oaks, which in Hampshire seldom rise into lofty stems, but have branches that are usually twisted into picturesque outlines.

Below the terrace lay a kind of pool, in which a couple of swans were floating lazily, each with one leg tucked up under a wing, and where the snow-white water-lilies gleamed in the sunshine.

Nor was the inside of the Hall—which was to be associated with events never to be forgotten by Eveline—any way inferior to the outside. There were stately apartments furnished with every modern luxury in the way of upholstery, and others where the furniture spoke of an old, old past, and of generations of Hurdells who had long since been gathered together in the old family vault; panelled corridors adorned with busts of Roman emperors and gods; stuffed tropical birds and horns of gigantic size; cabinets, swords, daggers, helmets, and armour; and where portraits were hung of knights and dames in brilliant colours; one of Sir Harry, who accompanied the Royal Bluebeard to the field of cloth of gold; another who had been the comrade of Sir Horace of Tilbury in many a field in Flanders; and the Hurdells of later times in powdered wigs, toupees, and long stomachers.

There was also a charming little Gothic private chapel, which had now a luxurious divan around it, as the present Sir Harry, not being much addicted to devotions, had turned it into a billiard-room, and a most commodious and excellent one it was, as the niches were tall enough to hold cues and the basin of the font was admirably calculated to hold the balls.

Sir Harry was rather handsome, but blasé in aspect and bearing; there was an indolent and rather lascivious expression in his eyes, the light colour of which it is difficult to define; he had a transparent nostril and short upper lip, with long tawny moustache, and a face which, though difficult to say why, was not a pleasing one.

His sister Lucretia, his senior by several years, was somewhat his counterpart in appearance, and, nearer her fortieth than her thirtieth year, was still very handsome, but handsome in a faded way; and she received the young wife of old Sir Paget with considerable effusiveness, kissing her on both cheeks à la Francaise; though Eveline, fair, soft, and timid even in friendship, felt oppressed rather than soothed or pleased by the society of this somewhat blasé and disappointed woman of the world, with her cold, steely eyes, ashy-tinted hair, thin lips, and caressing manner; and Eveline soon discovered she was vain, shallow, selfish, and not unaddicted to white lies when they suited her purpose.

Perhaps the creature she cared most for in this world, after herself and her brother, was a little, wheezy 'King Charles,' with a blue ribbon and silver bell adorning its neck.

While the gentlemen were smoking and idling in the billiard-room—the same place where Philip of Spain, en route from Southampton to marry Mary, had made his devotions—she entertained Eveline with afternoon tea in a charming little room dark with oak-panelling, with rare old oak furniture, and hangings of ancient tapestry that testified to the industry of white-handed Hurdells in generations past.

Something of ennui, at least, in the young face of her new acquaintance did not fail to catch the attention of the sharp Lucretia, who knew from the first that Eveline's marriage had been an ill-assorted one; yet, she said, after a pause,

'You long to join the gentlemen, I think; they are not far off—only at the end of the corridor.'

'Pardon me, I am more pleased to be with you.'

'Thanks, dear; but I fear that you and Sir Paget are a pair of regular love-birds, and must go through a systematic amount of billing and cooing every day.'

Eveline smiled faintly, but made no response. Did Miss Hurdell mean this as a sneer? she thought; it seemed so.

'Dear Sir Paget!' said Miss Hurdell again, a little irrelevantly. 'I thought love-matches were out of fashion now.'

'She is mocking me,' thought Eveline, yet the rather aristocratic face of Lucretia was as inscrutable as her manner was suave to sweetness.

'All who know Sir Paget respect him—he is a thoroughly good man,' said Eveline, feeling the necessity of saying something.

'"Women always like wicked fellows," says Lefanu, in one of his novels. It is contrast; but it has been my experience that they do.'

'No right-minded woman would endorse this opinion of our sex, I am assured.'

Miss Hurdell laughed at Eveline's gravity, and refilled their cups of dragon-blue china.

'I always hated the idea of being married,' said she.

'Why?' asked Eveline.

'Because it would make life—I thought—so tame.'

'How odd!'

'Ah, no doubt you think so. I didn't care about being engaged and all that sort of thing; but no, I never would have married.'

Sooth to say, she had never had an offer, or been engaged, in her life.

'It is so nice to be a fiancée—the object of daily attention.'

'Then you must have been engaged to know all this, Miss Hurdell.'

'Like yourself, dear, of course—but call me Lucretia. A girl has more freedom when engaged than before it; though the envy of her female friends, she can be more natural with her gentlemen friends, and may say many a merry and rantipole thing she dared not have said before. Goldsmith was right when he makes Dr. Primrose declare that courtship is generally a happier state than marriage. To me it seems to turn the butterfly into a caterpillar.'

Eveline knew what to think of these novel views, but she sighed as she thought of what her own existence was now.

'To me,' resumed the fair Lucretia, 'it always seemed as if, when the wedding-ring was slipped on my slender finger, I should have nothing left to live for; that my existence would belong wholly to another person.'

Eveline set down her tea-cup and looked at the speaker with something of mute wonder. In society she had met with many strange persons, but none who had such odd views as the mature chatelaine of Hurdell Hall.

'But you would have your husband to live for,' she urged gently, but certainly not thinking of her own.

'A very commonplace style of living, I should think.'

'Not if one marries for love,' said Eveline softly.

'As you married' (old was on her lips) 'as you married dear Sir Paget.'

Eveline felt her colour rise, yet she only said, 'But—but to marry with any doubt in one's heart would be deception.'

'Well,' said Miss Hurdell, raising her eyebrows, 'if a woman may not deceive her own husband whom has she a right to deceive?'

This was a new view of the matter to poor Eveline, who began to have rather a horror of her hostess.

'There goes the dressing-bell, dear—we dine at eight,' said Lucretia, rising; 'let me conduct you to your room.'

Once there, Eveline was free to give full vent to her own thoughts. She would never see that lonely grave in the desert where Evan Cameron lay; but to her mind it was sacred, as of old was the place whereon the angel of the Lord alighted.

'Oh for some news—news of how it all came about! If Allan would only write to me—or to Olive; he surely will tell her. This is more than I can bear!' and interlacing her slender white fingers—a way she had contracted now when alone—she pressed them with palms outward, against her throbbing forehead, as if she meant to break them.

Alas! she was to learn too soon tidings of another dire calamity, and why Allan was unable to write to any one.

There was no trace of all this deep emotion in her soft face when she descended to the drawing-room, with a velvet dress of that blue which so suited her pale complexion, cut square at the neck, and having elbow sleeves with lace, and rich mosaics set in gold clasping her white neck, and exquisitely rounded arms that were so white and taper.

There could be no two opinions about her rare beauty, and Sir Harry Hurdell and his fast friend—fast in more ways than one—both acknowledged it at a glance, as their sharp and critical eyes took in every detail of her witching face, her rounded girlish cheek, her sweetly curved mouth, with its short upper lip, her nose and delicate nostrils.

Sir Harry Hurdell was very sceptical of the purity of all women. He would not have believed in that of his own mother had she been alive; so he was perhaps to be pardoned for deeming that Lady Puddicombe 'was just like the rest,' whatever that might mean.

He was intensely gratified and glad that the girl was so young and lovely, and that her husband was so old and so common-place: thus he resolved, in his own phraseology, 'to enter stakes for the filly—to make his innings if he could, or the devil was in it!'

CHAPTER VIII.

SIR HARRY.

There was an air of lassitude, of settled melancholy, and at times of abstraction, apparent about Eveline, which she could not always successfully conceal, that did not fail to impress and surprise the baronet of Hurdell Hall and his sister, and the latter observed her narrowly when they were together in the drawing-room.

'I have heard that you sing beautifully, Lady Puddicombe,' said she, opening the piano.

'I used to sing—a little,' replied Eveline.

'Used to sing! Why drop so charming an accomplishment?'

'I have had thoughts of late that make me sad.'

'We must cure you of all that. What style of music do you love most?'

'I love all music that is beautiful.'

'And songs?'

'That are melancholy.'

'Then sing me some favourite thing before the gentlemen join us—there is a dear, do.'

Thus urged, and fearing to appear ungracious, Eveline seated herself before the instrument—a grand and very stately one it was, and began to sing in a voice that became tender, passionate, and beautiful, touching; even the somewhat arid heart of her listener—by two of the verses especially:—

'Perchance, if we had never met,
I had been spared this mad regret,
This endless striving to forget,
                For ever and for ever!

.     .     .     .     .     .

Ah me, I cannot bear the pain,
Of never seeing thee again,
I cling to thee with might and main,
                For ever and for ever!'

She felt as if she were singing to Evan, who, perhaps, in spirit was hovering near her; for Eveline was beginning at times to have strange fancies now. There were tears in her voice as she sang, and there were tears in her eyes too; but she paused abruptly as the gentlemen came in from the dining-room, and the eyes of Sir Paget were fixed inquiringly and reprovingly upon her. Her voice seemed to pass away, nor could any entreaties of Sir Harry and his sister make her conclude the song—a well-known one.

'Hah—thereby hangs a tale!' thought the fair Lucretia, as Sir Harry conducted Eveline back to her chair, and took a seat by her side.

No idle or constitutionally dissipated man can withstand the temptation of attempting to fascinate a pretty woman, and, if possible, of eclipsing another man, and to eclipse one like old Sir Paget would seem no very difficult task; so, while talking quietly with Eveline on the last play, the last news, or any current subject, Sir Harry was thinking to himself, while admiring the contour of her head, her rich brown hair, long eyelashes, and lovely little hands,

'By Jove, if old Pudd would only go off the hooks, anyhow! She can't care a straw for him, don't you know, with his old bald pate that he is always jerking forward like a hen when she has laid an egg. She was in love with some fellow who has gone to Egypt—so Holcroft told me—been engaged to him perhaps; but her mother was set upon her marrying old Pudd's coin, and among them all they talked her into it, no doubt. Poor little girl, I must try to console her.'

Lucretia Hurdell, who at times affected girlish airs, now brought that piece of drawing-room foolery, her 'Confession Book,' upon the tapis.

'You must positively write me yours, dear Lady Puddicombe,' said she.

'Or permit me to write there for you,' suggested Sir Harry. 'Now to begin—"Were you ever in love?"'

'The idea of asking a married woman that,' exclaimed Miss Hurdell.

'If so, how often?' continued her brother.

'I would say "never," according to the novelist's idea of it,' replied Eveline, with an air of annoyance.

'Don't know what that idea is,' said Sir Henry, eyeing her askance and admiringly.

'I should rather say I have been in love, but never mean to be so again.'

Eveline shivered as she said this, for while conversing apparently with Mr. Pyke Poole the cold eyes of Sir Paget were upon her again.

She felt the rashness of her speech. It was offensive to him, and was not without some point in the mind of Sir Harry.

The cub-hunting was not to begin for a few days yet, and meanwhile the master of the house followed her about pretty persistently, so that she had, ere long, a restless feeling about it. When departing on a riding-party he anticipated Sir Paget by swinging her into the saddle, adjusting her skirts and reins, leaving Pike Poole to do that office for Miss Hurdell, to whom, in return for pleasant quarters, he usually devoted himself, while she, with all her alleged indifference to matrimony, was not indisposed to receive his attentions.

There was something in the occasional gaze of Sir Harry that puzzled the innocent Eveline and made her feel restless under it, especially when he hung over her at the piano, as he constantly did; and now she played more than she cared for, to avoid conversation and have freedom to indulge in her own sad thoughts.

'Surely you must be tired of standing there so long, Sir Harry,' she said once, with surprise.

'Tired of what—listening to you or gazing on you?' he replied, lowering his voice for her ear alone; 'either were impossible.'

If he had been addressing a barmaid he could scarcely have made a more pointed remark; but so full was Eveline of thoughts too deep for words—thoughts of the untimely fate of one who loved her so dearly—to whose fate or past existence she dared not refer, and for whom she dared not wear even a black ribbon—that she did not perceive the admiration she was exciting in the breast of Sir Harry and in the quiet purity of her own heart that such sentiments as his could exist, never occurred to her.

He ventured on one occasion to say something very pointed about the beauty of her hands as she idled over the piano keys.

'As there are other ladies in the room, I cannot compliment you on your discrimination, Sir Harry,' she replied, coldly. 'But what do you mean by saying such things to me?' she added.

She began at last to perceive that there was a meaning in his voice. She felt offended, and wished the cub-hunting would begin, that the visit of herself and Sir Paget to Hurdell Hall might come the sooner to an end.

'If I could only achieve a good long and quiet walk and talk with her,' grumbled Sir Harry to himself; 'but in this cursed place we are always interrupted—can't attempt to make my innings or be with her alone. Lucretia, Poole, or some one else always turns up, and she—herself—never gives a fellow the chance wanted.'

Though innately wicked in heart and rejoicing that the poor girl had made—or been compelled by others to make—an ill-assorted marriage, something of pity for her began to mingle with his nefarious ideas and hopes, and that pity was as much akin to love as his blasé soul could feel.

'It is a regular case of Beauty and the Beast, this marriage of old Pudd's,' thought he.

Finding her promenading on the terrace alone one evening overlooking the pool where the swans swam among the snow-white water-lilies, he hastened to join her.

'I don't think you have seen our conservatories,' he said. 'Permit me to show you them.'

'Thanks, I do so love flowers.'

They entered the long glazed avenues of potted plants and rich exotics, where rustic sofas with luxurious cushions were placed under the feathery foliage of acacias, and after idling a little, admiring flowers that were of great beauty and the perfection of professional gardening, Sir Harry brought her a tiny bouquet of beautiful and sweetly-scented violets, which, thoughtlessly, she placed in the bosom of her dress.

His eyes gleamed as he saw her do this. He said,

'So charmed to see the place assigned to my gift.'

'Why?'

'When I know what the flower imports in the language of flowers.'

'What does the violet import?' asked Eveline, shortly.

'Is it possible you do not know?'

'I do not.'

'It means eternal love and constancy.'

'Indeed,' responded Eveline, with a tone of indifference. She felt inclined to detach the bouquet from her dress, and restore it to the giver or deposit it on one of the iron shelves, but as that might have implied that she understood too much, she simply quitted the conservatory and went once more upon the terrace.

'The air is chilly here after the hot atmosphere of the conservatories,' said Sir Harry, greatly encouraged by the acceptance of his flowers; 'and that Shetland shawl is only an apology for a wrap over your head, though you look charming in it—permit me,' he added, as he drew it closer round her.

Their eyes met as he did so, and she read an expression in his downward gaze that made her pale cheek crimson, and then grow pale again; and to avoid anything more she re-entered the house.

'It is because I am married to an old man that he dares to treat me thus, and so thinks little of me,' she began to reflect—'an old man whose eyes are ever full of angry reproach about poor Evan, who never wronged him, even in thought. Oh, how hateful, how loathsome my life is! If luxurious it is duplicity, all!'

She actually began to think she would go away somewhere—where her father and husband would never find her—change her name and be a governess or something of that kind. The idea of suicide or anything so dreadful, in all her sorrow, bitterness, and humiliation of spirit, never occurred to her for a moment. She only hoped that God would direct her, pardon her for these rebellious feelings against fate, and let her live her own way and then die.

Why did she not run away before her absurd marriage? she thought now, and before her young life was so utterly wrecked by it? But she forgot how, under the motherly care and authority of Lady Aberfeldie, she had always been in a certain constraint and awe, and how her own sudden jealousy of Evan Cameron had helped to bring that catastrophe about.

But this growing admiration on the part of Sir Harry Hurdell was a new experience in life to her.

She was justly incensed by it, and knew that he was presuming upon her youth, her husband's age, and the too apparent aspect of an ill-assorted marriage. Their visit must be cut short at all risks; but what excuse was she to make to Sir Paget; for, with her knowledge of his jealousy of one who was dead, how was she to enlighten him on the subject of Sir Harry, whose manner proved to her somewhat obnoxious.

The truth was that he was so much in the use and wont of having 'sherry-glass flirtations' at railway buffets, and so forth, that he was quite incapable of showing his admiration or regard in a subtle or pleasing, respectful or cavalier way, and even his own grooms might have been better hands at it than he, the lord of that grand old ancestral home.

CHAPTER IX.

THE CUB-HUNTING.

The gong for breakfast sounded betimes at Hurdell Hall on the morning of the first day's cub-hunting, as an early hour is always most favourable for scent, and, as several guests were invited, an ample meal was spread in the great dining-room, the several bay windows of which overlooked the terrace and stately chase that spread far away beyond it.

Sir Harry and his sister were the first who appeared, and the latter looked round for the morning papers, but could see none.

Now, though the 'fair Lucretia,' as her friends frequently called her, cared nothing about the war in Egypt, she liked to read about the movements of 'the upper ten thousand'—their births, marriages, deaths, and so forth—to all of which she addressed herself first, as a City man does to the money article.

'Where are the papers, Harry?' she asked.

'I have ordered the butler to take them all away,' said he.

'Even the Morning Post?'

'Yes; even the Post.'

'Why?'

'Look here. I do not wish Lady Puddicombe to see this,' he replied, taking a newspaper from his pocket, and indicating a paragraph—another brief telegram from Egypt—which ran thus:

'The detachment of the Black Watch which was sent to Matarieh to make a demonstration against the Bedouins of Zeid-el-Ourdeh has been ordered back to head-quarters, and seems to have lost its other officer—a very distinguished one—Captain Allan Graham, the Hon. the Master of Aberfeldie, who is supposed to have fallen into some of the same butcherly hands amid which Professor Palmer and his companions perished.'

'Good heavens! her brother!' exclaimed Miss Hurdell, actually changing colour.

'Yes; and it must be kept from her—to-day, at least,' said Sir Harry, concealing the fatal newspaper.

'Taken by the Bedouins—but she must learn it some time.'

'Well, I don't want her to learn it just now, poor girl, at all events. I can't make a mull of the arrangements for the day, and I don't want her to learn it here, if possible.'

'Why not here?'

'Certainly not from me.'

'Why not from you?'

'I hate to be imparter of evil news.'

'Oho,' said Miss Hurdell, elevating her eyebrows; 'sets the wind in that quarter?'

'What do you mean, Lucretia?'

'Well, that she is not the first married lady you have taken a tender interest in.'

'Lucretia!' exclaimed the baronet, in a tone of angry expostulation, as some of their gentlemen guests came noisily in, in Russell cords, top boots, and spurs, some in pink and some in black coats.

At that moment elsewhere were others who were more deeply and terribly interested in the startling tidings from Matarieh, flashed by the same electric wire.

Lord Aberfeldie was leisurely opening the Times, which Mr. Tappleton had duly cut and aired for him, with the other morning papers. His eyes ran rapidly over the columns for the last, news from Egypt, which seemed very tame now, as all the fighting and excitement were over; so Lady Aberfeldie was not watching him, as she used to do, with anxiety, and neither was Olive, who was already deep in the pages of the Queen, when an exclamation that escaped him made them both start.

'What is the matter?' cried Lady Aberfeldie. 'You look ill, dear.'

'Uncle, what do you see?' added Olive. 'Is anything wrong with—with——'

'Allan—yes.'

He was pale with a strange grey pallor, totally unlike his usually sunburned and healthy tint, and he looked dazed as his face sank forward on his breast.

'Our poor boy—our poor boy!'

'God help us, Aberfeldie! What is it?'

Olive snatched up the paper, and, after reading the paragraph we have copied, reeled into a chair. And now a great horror fell upon all the three, the mother's memory flashing back to the baby-boy that had crowed and smiled upon her knee, and whose first tottering efforts to cross the nursery floor she remembered yet.

Lord Aberfeldie, after recovering a little from the shock, telegraphed to the War-Office for further information, but could obtain none. They read the fatal paragraph again and again, till every word of it seemed to be burned into their brains, and could but indulge in endless surmises, and hope against hope; for had not the public prints been teeming with the harrowing details of the capture of Professor Palmer, Captain Gill, and Lieutenant Charrington, and of them being pitilessly slaughtered by the Bedouins of the Aligal tribe?

As Olive recalled all this, her blood grew cold with apprehension. The paragraph, though a terrible one, was frightfully vague. He was 'supposed to have fallen' into the hands of the Bedouins. At all events, his party had come into Grand Cairo without him!

She, like Lady Aberfeldie, could not realise it for a time. Alternately she sat like one stunned, and then walked up and down the room with her slender fingers interlaced tightly and clasped upon her head, as if she would thereby still the trouble that throbbed in her brain and repress her heavy sorrow.

In memory and imagination how often did she rehearse her angry parting scene with poor Allan and the last time she saw him—the forcible embrace of Hawke Holcroft; the latter's mocking love-making; the horror and loathing with which his touch inspired her; and Allan's terrible glance as he flung away and left her—left her for ever, as it seemed now.

Allan taken captive; he was sure to be slain like those of whom she had read so much lately. He was gone from her, and never more—never again could she show her repentant love for him, or make up for the omissions and follies of the past by days of tenderness in the time to come.

All was over now!

Profound was the speechless grief of his parents, and she was past attempting to console them.

'Oh, Olive darling, don't look so strange!' said Ruby Logan, who had come on a visit to them at Puddicombe Villa.

The tears were running down Ruby's cheeks, while those of Olive were strangely dry, as if her fount of tears was frozen as yet.

Of Evan Cameron, if they thought at all amid this home calamity, they knew the worst—that he was dead and buried like so many of his brother-soldiers who fell at Tel-el-Kebir; but of Allan they had yet the worst to know, if aught was ever known at all, which was extremely improbable.

So the long day passed on and night came, and Olive stood at the open window looking out at the waters of Spithead, the cold air from the sea blowing upon her face. She was in a kind of waking trance rather than deliberate thought, and strange figures like a phantasmagoria seemed to evolve themselves out of the darkness.

But to return to the hunting breakfast at Hurdell Hall.

All unconscious that a fresh sorrow would fill her tender heart ere long, Eveline came down in a charming morning-dress, looking pure and pale as a young arum lily, and was at once the cynosure of many admiring eyes; for, in addition to Sir Harry, Sir Paget, and Mr. Poole, there were seven or eight others present, all in high spirits and eager for the sport. Not that Sir Paget affected field sports much, but he thought that it became his position to do so, and more especially as he was the husband of so young a wife, to display a certain amount of juvenility.

All present were ruddy-featured country gentlemen of various ages, and while discussing an ample and genuine hunting-breakfast, though some who were connected with the farming interest spoke of the weather and the turnip-fly, of the Devonshire breed and short-horns, of mangold-wurzel and the rotation of crops, matters about which, sooth to say, Sir Paget and Mr. Poole knew no more than they did about the philosophy of the Infinite, the conversation chiefly ran on the matter in hand that day—the disadvantage of having the dogs' collars too tightly buckled, of coupling a young hound with an old one, and so forth.

'A very bad plan,' said Sir Harry, 'as the older dogs always vent their spite on the younger by biting and rolling over them.'

'Because the pulling on both sides is not even,' said the Squire of Furzydowns, a noted old sportsman, 'and, if a pair of dogs so coupled come across a donkey, there is sure to be a row, for, when a bullock will look round in stupid wonder, a donkey is apt to fly at hounds with tooth and hoof.'

'A glorious morning this for the scent,' said Sir Harry; 'a dry autumn one. And now let us be off. The advantage of hunting early is that cubs or foxes, after a late supper or early breakfast, are seldom in a condition to run long, and get blown, as we all know.'

To Sir Paget, who had neither heart nor interest in sport, and was rapidly discussing the weather in all its probabilities, as to whether there would be a change or continuance of its present aspect and condition, Sir Harry said,

'Puddicombe, are you still determined to ride that bay horse with the white star?'

'Yes,' replied Sir Paget, with just the slightest soupçon of bravado.

'Remember, I have warned you that he is rather a vicious brute, and apt to shy his fences.'

'Please, do not ride him, Sir Paget,' urged Eveline, in a whisper; 'do not, for my sake.'

'I should rather think of my own, if I do it for anyone's sake at all,' he snarled. He could not forgive her the general pallor and sadness of her face. Death, it is said, hallows the dead anew to the living. So it would be with the memory of Evan Cameron in the mind of Eveline, thought Sir Paget bitterly, nor was he far wrong. And, no doubt, it was rather hard upon him to know that his wife's thoughts were all of another; but how innocently!

'As regards the bay horse,' he added, 'I will take my chance.'

He was loth to appear unable to do anything, and always deemed such advice as the present an imputation on his age or capability; thus, he did many a thing he would not have done had Eveline been twenty years older.

After a few words aside with Sir Harry, Eveline turned again to her husband, who had now left the table, and was finally adjusting his tan-coloured boot-tops.

'Do not ride the horse,' said she, entreatingly. 'From what I hear, he is beyond you.'

'Is he?' snarled Sir Paget, who was in one of his worst humours this morning. 'But let me tell you, Lady Puddicombe, that I know something about the choice of a horse, if I don't about the choice of a wife!'

Eveline shrank back at this rude speech, and thought that, sooth to say, he knew little how to choose either.

'Well—ride the horse, if you will,' said she, resignedly.

'I shall!' he replied, sharply.

Lucretia detected that something was wrong, and, raising her voice in reply to something the Squire of Furzydown had said, she exclaimed, laughingly,

'Ah, yes, the country is indeed glorious; for here you can have eggs to breakfast that are laid while your hair is being dressed, and flowers on the table fresh with the morning dew on them—yet, I love London most, after all, especially in the season. And now,' she added, 'shall my Charlie have its nicey, nicey breakfast of cream?'

And she emptied a silver jug of the latter into a china bowl for her wheezy spaniel.

'What's up with old Sir Peter Teazle?' whispered her brother.

'That is more than I can tell you, Harry.'

The two ladies came forth to the door to see the gentlemen mount and depart.

Sir Paget got into his saddle with some difficulty, as the bay hunter swayed round and round, laid its ears back, and looked askance at him, with red and bloodshot eyes.

Eveline knew not of her brother's calamity, and neither did Sir Paget, for none had spoken of Egypt or Egyptian news, and no one at Hurdell Hall was particularly interested in the Black Watch, herself excepted; but she felt a mysterious and unaccountable prevision of coming evil, and once more drew near to offer her pretty hand to Sir Paget, doing so with affected playfulness, as the eyes of others were admiringly upon her; but he, giving full rein to his thoughts about that dead Cameron, whom she had loved and he hated, stooped from his saddle, and said to her, with a bland smile meant also for other eyes,

'I have read, Lady Puddicombe, that "nothing exalts a man so much in a woman's mind as his dying. Look at the affection of widows as compared with that of wives." Ah, you are sorrowful, no doubt; but sorrow takes a long while to kill anyone.'

She knew well what he meant. Her pale cheek crimsoned, and she turned without a word, deeming it both absurd and cruel that he should thus be retrospectively jealous.

The hunters rode merrily off, all in high spirits, save Sir Paget, who jerked away with his head and was disposed to sulk, for the visit to Hurdell Hall had wrought no change on Eveline; thus he did not, like his companions, enjoy the delightful sense of rest and peace in the cool morning ride to covert.

The country was silent; ploughmen and shepherds were, as yet, scarcely abroad; and the full-fed cattle lay couched on the damp grass that glistened with dew, and from amid which their breaths rose like silvery steam, and ere long the pack was in sight—Grasper, Pilot, Holdfast, Catch, and all the rest of them—

'With tails high mounted, ears hung low, and throats
With a whole gamut filled, of heavenly notes'

—at least in the estimation of the huntsmen.

Ere long the pack was put into the covert, and stirrup leathers were tightened and readjusted in hot haste, but with the hunting, the whipping of unbroken hounds that took to running after sheep, the gallops over a few fields to get up an appetite for an early luncheon at the Squire of Furzydown's, the 'chopping' of cubs, our story has nothing to do, save in so far as one episode of the day is concerned.

Sir Paget in his heart wished 'the whole affair at Jericho,' or in a warmer latitude. To him it was no amusement to set out without time for shaving, to breakfast at an untimeous hour and before he could get up an appetite, and to ride through the morning mist, with icy feet and grasping reins sodden with dew, with the certainty of an attack of rheumatism, when he should have been cosily nestling in bed; and in addition to all these, having a terrible conflict ever and anon with the bay hunter. Sir Harry thought him 'a silly old fogie, who would go cub-hunting to show the world how juvenile he was,' and he was now beginning to console himself with the prospect of a luxurious luncheon at Furzydown and the long, lazy afternoon he would enjoy there before riding leisurely back in the evening to dinner at Hurdell Hall, when Sir Harry would be sure to sing them the old Coplow hunt song—

'Talk of horses and hounds
  And the system of kennel,
Give me Leicestershire nags
  And the hounds of old Menyell!'

To Eveline the long day after the early breakfast passed very slowly at the Hall. She was in no anxiety for Sir Paget's speedy return, especially after the cloudy manner of his departure, but there were no other lady visitors there just then, and she and Lucretia Hurdell had not a thought, sympathy, or topic in common, and she sighed in utter weariness of spirit as the October day drew to a close, and the brown and purple shadows of evening began to fall.

She thought how many such empty days as this were before her, as autumn passed into winter, winter into spring, and the joyless summer—joyless at least to her—would come again. Every morning with its hopelessness, every noon with its listlessness, every evening seeming more blank than the one that preceded it. Would she ever more feel bright and merry as at Dundargue, and regain her sweet and playful habits of caressing affection?

And for whom?

She stood in one of the many beautiful Tudor bay windows overlooking the terrace and chase, idly and full of her own thoughts, and curiously enough, to her, the rustle of the ivy on the painted panes, of leaves as they fell from the trees, the stillness of the evening hour, and the cawing of the rooks in the old belfry of the house seemed ominous of coming evil.

Dusk had come on, the trees were taking strange shapes against the sunset sky, a bat circled noiselessly before her, and the silver crescent of the moon came out above a coppice.

A few of these trivial things were, by after events, fixed in her memory, and associated with that calm and almost sultry October evening—the lurid brightness of the sun as he set beyond the black stems of the trees of the chase, the perfume of roses from a majolica jardinière in the bay window, and the angry hum of a great bee entangled among the lace of the curtains.

Suddenly she became aware that a group of men, some on horseback and some on foot, was slowly approaching the house by the avenue. Amid this group were four carrying a burden—a man apparently—on a door, or some such improvised litter.

Then appeared a groom leading a horse by the bridle—the bay hunter with a white star on his forehead!

A gasping cry escaped her; her poor, torn heart leaped, and then seemed to cease beating, with the dreadful certainty that something—a new calamity—had happened.