Mrs. Trelawney promised him, the moment she could obtain, through any source, some tidings of Alison's whereabouts, to let him know, and he bade her adieu with his mind full of doubt and anxiety—not doubt of Alison's faith, but of their mutual future; and anxiety for the annoyances to which she might be subjected, and the pressure that might in many ways be put upon her.
That Cadbury was in her society was an irritating circumstance; but a peer of the realm was some one of consequence, and his movements would ere long most probably be a clue to hers.
Mrs. Trelawney's mysterious hints about her knowledge of Dalton's past life gave Goring some food for reflection, and he knew not what to think of them.
'So—she seems to have refused Tony, as she did Jerry Wilmot; by Jove, she must be difficult to please!' thought he, as he turned his horse in the direction of Aldershot, often giving a long, earnest, and hopeless farewell glance at the old trysting-place beside the beeches.
But Jerry by this time had quite got over his fancy for Mrs. Trelawney, and found a new divinity in the person of her friend, Miss Bella Chevenix, whom he had known from her girlhood, but who now became invested with new and sudden interest to him.
Days passed slowly in succession now, but to Goring there came no tidings of the absent one. Thus life in the winter camp at Aldershot became an intolerable bore to him, and he longed for action of any kind; but now rumours went abroad that troubles were in store at the Cape, and the regiment would be one of the first dispatched to Africa.
CHAPTER XVIII.
WILMOTHURST.
His changed mood of mind did not escape the attention of his friend Jerry Wilmot, who said to him one day,
'My people at Wilmothurst are getting up a spread, or a dinner, or both, in honour of my august appearance in this world some five-and-twenty years ago. Get leave with me from the Colonel, and we'll start by train from Farnborough. Tell your man to throw your things together; O'Farrel is packing mine, and I am just going to the orderly-room about it.'