Miss M'Craw strained almost out of the window with astonishment. 'What on earth has brought him back after so long an absence?' she said to herself. 'He cannot possibly be going to call upon those horrible American people.'
From her employment of this adjective, it will be gathered that Miss M'Craw did not cherish a particularly friendly feeling towards the new occupants of Rose Cottage. The fact was that her inquisitiveness and propensity to scandal came speedily under the observation of Mr. Hiram B. Crocker, the American gentleman in question, who described them under the head of 'general cussedness,' declined the acquaintance of Miss M'Craw, and had huge hoardings built up in the corners of his grounds for the purpose of intercepting her virgin gaze.
No, the equestrian was not going to call at Rose Cottage; did not stop at the gate, but rode slowly on until he reined-in his horse in the accustomed spot on the brow of the hill, and raising himself in his stirrups stood for an instant looking into the garden. He remembered then how he had first seen her tending her flowers, and looking eagerly out, evidently awaiting the arrival of some one, and how in a subsequent ramble he had discovered that some one to be John Calverley of Great Walpole-street, and all that had happened therefrom.
'How well the cards lay to my hand at one time,' he said to himself with an impatient gesture; 'and what a mess I have made of the game.' And with that he shook his horse's bridle and cantered away.
When Mr. Wetter reached South Audley-street, he found his groom standing on the curbstone, and a gentlemen in the act of knocking at the door. Alighting, he found this gentleman, to his great astonishment, to be Mr. Humphrey Statham; and at sight of him an uneasy pang shot through Mr. Wetter's mind. Humphrey Statham was, as he knew, an intimate friend of Mrs. Claxton's, and his visit there was doubtless on business connected with her. If she had described the scene which had passed between them that morning, that business would doubtless be of a very unpleasant character, and Mr. Wetter was not a brave man physically. He had borne in his time a vast amount of moral obloquy, and borne it well; but he had a horror of anything like physical pain, and Humphrey Statham was a big, strong, and resolute man. No wonder, therefore, that the article which did Mr. Wetter duty for a conscience quailed within him, or that he felt sorely uncomfortable when he recognised the visitor on his doorstep.
But he was the last man to give any early outward sign of such emotion, and it was in sprightly tones and with an air of easy jauntiness that he said,
'My dear Mr. Statham, I congratulate myself immensely on having returned so exactly in the nick of time, if, as I imagine, you were about to do me the honour of paying me a visit.'
'I was coming to call upon you, Mr. Wetter,' said Statham simply.
'Then pray walk in,' said Wetter, opening the door with his key, and following closely after him up the stairs. 'Take that chair; you will find it, I think, a particularly comfortable one; and,' going to an old oak sideboard, 'let me give you an appetiser, a petit verre of absinthe or vermouth. They are both here, and either of them is a most delicious ante-prandial specific.'
'No, thank you,' said Humphrey Statham; 'I will not drink with you.'