She had received plenty of admiration and adulation during her short season in London before, and to suppose that she was blind to the young Major's attentions would be to deem her foolish; no woman or girl is ever blind to that sort of thing. She, like the rest of her charming sex, knew by instinct when she had won a success; but she also knew that she had one powerful attraction—money—and knew, too, that her heart was engaged otherwise; and this knowledge made her tolerably indifferent to the admiration of her cousin, while the indifference laid her open to the appearance of receiving his close attentions. Meanwhile the latter was enjoying his Capua.
'How delicious all this is!' he often thought, as he lounged by Finella's side in the drawing-room, or rode with her in the Row, 'after sweltering so long in that hottest and most hateful of up-country stations, Jehanabad, on the shining rocks of which the Indian sun pours all its rays for months, till the granite at night gives out the caloric it has absorbed by day, and so the roasting process never ceases, and sleep even on a charpoy becomes impossible, all the more so that hyenas, jackals, and wild cats make night hideous with their yells. This is indeed an exchange,' he once added aloud, 'and all the more delicious that I have it with you, Cousin Finella.'
And Lady Drumshoddy, if she was near, would watch the pair complacently through her great spectacles, while pretending to be intent on her only paper (after the Morning Post), the Queen, which she read as regularly—more so, we fear—than she read her night prayers.
And while Garallan's attentions were gradually warming and leading up to a declaration, Finella was thinking angrily of Hammersley.
'Perhaps he has forgotten his love for me—nay, he would never forget that! but absence, time, change of scene, or a regard for some one else may have come between us. It is the way with men, I have been told.'
So, in the fulness of time, there came one fine forenoon, when Lady Drumshoddy had judiciously left the cousins quite alone, and when Finella, in one of her most bewitching costumes, was idling over a book of prints, with Ronald Garallan by her side, admiring the contour of her head, the curve of her neck, her pure profile, the lovely little ear that was next him, and everything else, to the little bouquet in her bosom that rose and fell with every respiration, let his passion completely overmaster him, and taking caressingly within his own her left hand, which she did not withdraw, he said:
'I have something to ask you, Finella—you know what it is?'
'Indeed, I do not.'
'Then, of course, I must tell you?'
'I think you must,' said she, looking him calmly in the face for a second.