‘Alma Bradley.
‘P.S.—My cousin George is back in town. Just fancy how he would scowl if he were to read the above signature.’
It so happened that George Craik, although he was not so favoured as to read his cousin’s signature as a married woman, and although he had no suspicion whatever as yet that she had entered, as she imagined, into the holy estate of matrimony, was scowling in his least amiable frame of mind about the time when Alma wrote the above letter. He had returned to London from Paris a good deal mystified, for, having procured an interview with Mrs. Montmorency, whom (as the reader knows) he had gone over to see, he had elicited nothing from that lady but a flat denial of any knowledge of or connection with his rival the clergyman.
So he came back at once, baffled but not beaten, took to the old club life, attended the different race meetings, and resumed altogether the life of a young gentleman about town.
But although he saw little of his cousin, he (as he himself figuratively expressed it ‘kept his eye upon her.’) The more he read about Bradley and his doings—which appeared shocking indeed to his unsophisticated mind—the more indignant he felt that Alma, and her fortune, should ever be thrown away on one so unworthy. Meantime he was in the unenviable position of a man surrounded by duns and debts. He had bills out in the hands of the Jews, and he saw no prospect whatever of meeting them. Having far exceeded the very liberal allowance given him by his father, he knew that there was no hope of assistance in that direction. His only chance of social resuscitation was a wealthy marriage, and with his cousin hanging like a tempting bait before him, he felt like a very Tantalus, miserable, indignant and ill-used.
His rooms were in the Albany, and here one morning his father found him, sitting over a late breakfast.
‘Well, George,’ said the baronet, standing on the hearthrug and glancing round at the highly suggestive prints which adorned the walls; ‘well, George, how long is this to last?’
The young man glanced up gloomily as he sipt his coffee.
‘What do you mean?’ he demanded.
‘You know very well. But just look at this letter, which I have received, from a man called Tavistock, this morning.’