No response had ever come to the letters he had written Finella under cover to Dulce; thus he ceased to send them, all unaware that these letters addressed to 'Miss Carlyon' had been returned to the Post Office, endorsed, by order of Lady Fettercairn, 'not known at Craigengowan;' and now the heavy thoughts of Hammersley affected his manner and gait, and thus he often walked slowly, as if he were weary; and so he was weary and sick of heart, for the sense of hope being dead within the breast will give a droop to the head and a lagging air to the step.
Lady Drumshoddy rented a grand old-fashioned house in that very gloomy quadrangle called St. James's Square, the chief mansion in which is that of his Grace of Norfolk, and round the still somewhat scurvy enclosure of which Dr. Johnson and Savage, when friendless and penniless, spent many a summer night with empty stomachs and hearts heated with antagonism to the then Government. About a hundred years before that, Macaulay tells us that St. James's Square 'was a receptacle for all the offal and cinders, and all the dead cats and dogs, of Westminster. At one time a cudgel-player kept his ring there. At another an impudent squatter settled himself there, and built a shed for rubbish under the windows of the gilded salons in which the first magnates of the realm—Norfolk, Ormond, Kent, and Pembroke—gave banquets and balls. It was not till these nuisances had lasted through a whole generation, and till much had been written about them, that the inhabitants applied to Parliament for permission to put up rails and plant trees.'
Here, then, in this now fashionable locality, had my Lady Drumshoddy pitched her tent, and hence it was that Vivian Hammersley, being almost daily at 'The Rag,' close by, saw Finella and her cousin so frequently; yet it never occurred to him to think of the old Scoto-Indian Judge's widow, of whom he knew little or nothing.
The circumstance that Finella was undoubtedly still wearing his engagement ring made Hammersley, amid all his misery and anger, long for some more certain information than mere Club gossip and banter afforded, and for that which was due from her—an explicit explanation. He thought, as a casuist has it, 'that to know her false would not be so bitter as to doubt. To mistrust the woman we love is torture. To have a knowledge of her guilt is the first step towards burying our love. Our pride is then thoroughly aroused, and that contempt for treachery, inherent in our nature, flames out.'
On her part, Finella had some cause for pique—grave cause, she thought. She had twice, at intervals, seen Vivian Hammersley riding in the Row, when it was impossible for her to address him or afford him the least sign; and now, knowing that he was home, and in London, she naturally thought why did he not make some effort to communicate with her, in spite of any barrier Lady Fettercairn might raise between them, if he supposed she still resided at Craigengowan. Thus she too was beginning to look regretfully back to his love as a dream that had fled.
'A pretty kettle of fish they have made of it at Craigengowan, my dear!' snorted Lady Drumshoddy, when she heard of the late events that had transpired there. 'They have been imposed upon fearfully—quite another "Claimant" affair; but I always had my suspicions, my dear—I always had my suspicions, I am glad to say,' she coolly added, oblivious of the fact that she always aided and abetted Shafto in all his plans and hopes to secure Finella and her fortune.
It was convenient to ignore or forget all that now.
'My Ronald is all right,' snorted the hard-featured old dame to herself; 'he is the right man in the right place; but, as for Finella, she is like most girls, I suppose—will not fall in love where and when it is most clearly her duty to do so—provoking minx!'
It was a prominent feature in the character of my Lady Drumshoddy, contradiction, though she would not for a second tolerate it in anyone else; and as Major Garallan was temporarily a resident at her house in St. James's Square, she, like Lady Fettercairn on the other occasion, put great faith in cousinship and propinquity.
What a different kind and style of cousin Ronald Garallan was from Shafto, Finella naturally thought; not that as yet she loved him a bit, as he evidently loved her, but he was such a delightful companion to escort her everywhere.