“He begged me to give his kind regards to Miss Moffat if she had not quite forgotten an old acquaintance.”
From that day it was a noticeable thing, Miss Moffat never spoke of him as John.
The old familiar name, retained almost unconsciously through years, was laid aside and Mr. Riley took its place. Of course, he could know nothing of what she had done for him and his. How she had offered her money to save Woodbrook. How she had looked forward to seeing him once again with a mingled feeling of pleasure and pain, and it was right, quite right, he should look upon and think of her almost as a stranger.
“A lover never can be a friend,” she thought a little bitterly. “He never is able to forget having been refused,” which is not perhaps so unnatural as Grace seemed inclined to imagine.
And now came this letter; ah! the John she remembered never would have written such an one—never could, she might have conceded.
His proclivities had always of course been towards Toryism, but he was not hard against the people; he knew their faults, but he loved their virtues; and now the first day he returned he could write an account of what he saw, and turn the very sins of the Irish into ridicule.
Further, he never once mentioned Nettie, although it was her husband’s effigy he beheld borne along by the populace, and he said little about Woodbrook and the state in which he found affairs; of Lucy’s marriage the only mention he made was a remark to the effect that, following the traditions of the family, she having no fortune had cast her lot with a husband who had no fortune either.
Altogether Grace felt far from satisfied. Mr. Riley recently returned from India, and John—dear old John of the happy days at Bayview—were two very different persons. On the whole Miss Moffat felt grateful to Lord Ardmorne for arranging the Woodbrook mortgage without any great amount of help from her.
“It might have made it very awkward,” she considered. “He might have fancied it necessary to be civil to me in consequence.”
And this as matters stood, Mr. John Riley evidently did not imagine necessary.