'You mean that young fellow Hammersley?'
'Yes; I must own to having most grave suspicions,' replied Lady Fettercairn.
'She is a Melfort, and as such has no notion of being coerced.'
Lady Fettercairn thought of Lennard and Flora MacIan and remained silent, remembering that he too, the disowned and the outcast, was a genuine Melfort in the same sense.
CHAPTER XVI.
A THREAT.
To Finella, so pure in mind and proud in spirit, it was fast becoming utterly intolerable to find herself in the false and degraded position the craft of Shafto had placed her in with regard to so honourable a man as Vivian Hammersley; and the more she brooded over it, the deeper became her loathing of the daring trickster—a sentiment which she was, by the force of circumstances, compelled to veil and conceal from her guardians: hence, the more bitter her thoughts, the more passionate her longing for an explanation, and more definite her wishes.
Hammersley, though still a fact, seemed somehow to have passed out of her life, and thus she often said in a kind of wailing way to Dulcie:
'Oh, that he had never come here, or that I had never known or met him, in London or anywhere else! Then I should not have felt what it is to love and to lose him!'
'Pardon me, darling, but take courage,' replied Dulcie, caressing her. 'I have written to Florian at last, and his reply will tell us all about Captain Hammersley, and how he is looking, and so forth; though Florian, in a position so subordinate, cannot be in his confidence, of course.'