DULCIE CARLYON.
CHAPTER I.
SEPARATED.
'Something must be done, and deuced soon too, to separate this pair of spoons, or else they will be corresponding by letter, somehow or anyhow, after he has taken himself off; and Lady Fettercairn is always saying it is high time that something was definitely arranged between the girl and me! But, of course, Finella thinks him handsome enough to be the hero of a three-volume novel.'
Thus muttered Shafto, who, after a long absence, had returned to Craigengowan again, believing that Hammersley must now be gone; but he found, to his extreme annoyance, that two days of that officer's visit yet remained; so, with the futile fracas about the cards in his mind, Shafto avoided him as much as possible, and the house and grounds were ample enough to give him every scope for doing so.
He was sedulously bent on working mischief, and Fate so arranged that, on the second day, he had the power to do so.
They were on the very eve of separation now, yet Finella knew their love was mutual and true, and a glow of exultation was mingled with the sadness of her heart—a glow which had a curious touch of fear in it, as if such joy in his faith and truth could not be lasting. It was a kind of foreboding of evil about to happen, and when the time came that foreboding was remembered.
On the day of Hammersley's departure, he was to leave Craigengowan before dinner: thus, after luncheon, he contrived, unseen, to slip a little note into her hand. It contained but two lines:—
'Darling, meet me in the Howe of Craigengowan an hour hence, for the last time. Do not fail.
'V. H.'