A film seemed to pass over Evan's handsome eyes; a tremulous sensation, hitherto unknown, seemed to thrill over his nerves, and he was for a moment more full of emotion than herself; but he did not, as she expected, hasten to take her in his arms.
'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.
'His widow. Is it possible you did not know?'
'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.
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!'
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?