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.
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.