A few days stole away, and she tried to act a part, for watchful eyes were upon her. Hammersley was gone! Doubly gone! How she missed his presence was known only to herself. He was ever so sweetly but not obtrusively tender; so quick of wit, ready in attention and speech, though the envious Shafto phrased it, 'he would coax a bird off a tree.' He was so gentlemanly and gallant—every way such irreproachably good style, that she loved him with all the strength of her loving and passionate nature. The memory of the past—of her lost happiness—lost more than she might ever know, through the deliberate villainy of Shafto, rose ever before her with vivid distinctness; the evening on which their love was avowed in the drawing-room—the evening in the Howe of Craigengowan, when he gave her the two rings, and many other chance or concerted meetings, were before her now, and she could but clasp her hands tightly, while a heavy sob rose in her throat.
The wedding ring, he had given her to keep, was often drawn forth fondly, and slipped on her wedding finger in secret—a temptation of Fate, as any old Scotchwoman would have told her. She would have written a letter of explanation to Hammersley, but knew not where to address him; and ere long the announcement in a public print that he had sailed from Plymouth with a strong detachment of the 2nd Warwickshire, for the seat of war in South Africa, put it out of her power to do so, and she had but to bear her misery helplessly.
More than ever were they now separated!
CHAPTER II.
AN UNWELCOME VISITOR.
Lady Fettercairn was in the drawing-room at Craigengowan, and talking with Shafto seriously and affectionately on the subject of Finella and the wishes of herself and Lord Fettercairn; and Shafto was making himself most agreeable to his 'grandmother,' for he was still in high glee and elfish good humour at the mode in which he had 'choked off that interloper, Hammersley,' when a valet announced that an elderly woman 'wished to speak with her ladyship.'
'What is her name?'
'She declined to say.'
'Is she one of our own people?'
'I think not, my lady.'