About six months had elapsed since Shafto and Florian parted, as we have described, at Edinburgh.
It was June now. The luxurious woods around Craigengowan were in all their leafy beauty, and under their shadows the dun deer panted in the heat as they made their lair among the feathery braken; the emerald green lawn was mowed and rolled till it was smooth as a billiard-table and soft as three-pile velvet.
The air was laden with the wafted fragrance of roses and innumerable other flowers; and the picturesque old house, with its multitude of conical turrets furnished with glittering vanes, its crow-stepped gables and massive chimneys, stood boldly up against the deep blue sky of summer; and how sweetly peaceful looked the pretty village, seen in middle distance, through a foliated vista in the woodlands, with the white smoke ascending from its humble hearths, the only thing that seemed to be stirring there; and how beautiful were the colours some of its thatched roofs presented—greenest moss, brown lichen, and stonecrop, now all a blaze of gold, while the murmur of a rivulet (a tributary of the Esk), that gurgled under its tiny arch, 'the auld brig-stane' of Lennard's boyhood, would be heard at times, amid the pleasant voices of some merrymakers on the lawn, amid the glorious shrubberies, and belts of flowers below the stately terrace, that had long since replaced the moat that encircled the old fortified mansion, from whence its last Jacobite lord had ridden forth to fight and die for James VIII., on the field of Sheriffmuir—King of Scotland, England, France, and Ireland, as the unflinching Jacobites had it.
A gay and picturesquely dressed lawn-tennis party was busy tossing the balls from side to side among several courts; but apart from all, and almost conspicuously so—a young fellow, in a handsome light tennis suit of coloured flannels, and a beautiful girl were carrying on a very palpable flirtation.
The gentleman was Shafto, and his companion was Finella Melfort, Cosmo's orphan daughter (an heiress through her mother), who had returned a month before from a protracted visit in Tyburnia. They seemed to be on excellent terms with each other, and doubtless the natural gaiety of the girl's disposition, her vivacity of manner, and their supposed mutual relationship, had opened the way to speedy familiarity.
She was a dark-haired and dark-eyed, but very white-skinned little beauty, with a perfect mignonne face, a petite but round and compact figure, gracefully formed, and very coquettish and spirituelle in all her ways.
She had received her peculiar Christian name at the special request of her grandfather, that silly peer being desirous that her name might go down in the peerage in connection with that of the famous Finella of Fettercairn.
'A winsome pair they would make,' was the smiling remark of Mr. Kenneth Kippilaw, who was of the party (with three romping daughters from Edinburgh), to Lord Fettercairn, who smirked a grim assent, as if it was a matter of indifference to him, which it was not, as his legal adviser very well knew; and my Lady Drumshoddy, who heard the remark, bestowed upon him a bright and approving smile in return for a knowing glance through the glasses of his gold pince-nez.
In Craigengowan the adventurous Shafto Gyle had found his veritable Capua—he was literally 'in clover.' Yet he never heard himself addressed by his assumed name without experiencing a strange sinking and fluttering of the heart.
The once-despised Lennard Melfort's sword, his commission, and his hard-won medals earned in Central India and the Terai of Nepaul were now looked upon as precious relics in his mother's luxurious boudoir at Craigengowan, and reclaimed from the lumber-attic, his portrait, taken in early life, was again hung in a place of honour in the dining-hall.
'What a fool my old uncle was to lose his claim on such a place as this, and all for the face of a girl!' was the exclamation of Shafto to himself when first he came to Craigengowan, and then he looked fearfully around him lest the word uncle might have been overheard by some one; and he thought—'If rascally the trick I have played my simple and love-stricken cousin—and rascally it was and is—surely it was worth while to be the heir of this place, Craigengowan. To reckon as mine in future all this grand panorama of heath-clad hills, of green and golden fields, of purple muirland, and stately woods of oak and pine where the deer rove in herds; as mine the trout-streams that flow towards the Bervie; the cascades that roar down the cliffs; the beautiful old house, with its stables, kennels, and terrace; its cellars, pictures, plate, and jewellery, old china and vases of marble and jasper, china and Japanese work; and I possess all that rank and wealth can give!' and so thought this avaricious rascal, with a capacity for evil actions far beyond his years.
To the fair inheritance he had come to steal he could not, however, add as his the blue sky above it, or the waves of the German Sea, which the North Esk flowed to join; but he was not without sense appreciative enough to enjoy the fragrance of the teeming earth, of the pine forests where the brown squirrels leaped from branch to branch, and on the mountain side the perfume of the golden whin and gorse.
Appraising everything, these ideas were ever recurring to his mind, and it was full of them now as he looked around him, and at times, like one in a dream, heard the pretty babble of the high-bred, coquettish girl, who, to amuse herself, made œillades at him; who called him so sweetly 'Cousin Shafto,' and who, with her splendid fortune, he was now beginning to include among the many goods and chattels which must one day accrue to him.
Lord and Lady Fettercairn were, of course, fully twenty years older than when we saw them last, full of wrath and indignation at Lennard for his so-called mésalliance. Both were cold in heart and self-absorbed in nature as ever. The latter was determined to be a beauty still, though now upon the confines of that decade 'when the cunning of cosmetics can no longer dissemble the retribution of Time the avenger.' The former was bald now, and the remains of his once sandy-coloured hair had become grizzled, and a multitude of puckers were about his cold, grey eyes, while there was a perceptible stoop in his whilom flat, square shoulders.
He was as full of family pride as ever, and the discovery of an unexpected and authentic heir and grandson to his title, that had never been won in the field or cabinet, but was simply the reward of bribery and corruption, and for which not one patriotic act had been performed by four generations, had given him intense satisfaction, and caused much blazing of bonfires and consumption of alcohol about the country-side; and smiles that were bright and genuine frequently wreathed the usually pale and immobile face of Lady Fettercairn when they rested on Shafto.
We all know how the weak and easy adoption of a pretender by a titled mother in a famous and most protracted case not many years ago caused the most peculiar complications; thus Lady Fettercairn was more pardonable, posted up as she was with documentary evidence, in accepting Shafto Gyle as her grandson.
We have described her as being singularly, perhaps aristocratically, cold. As a mother, she had never been given to kissing, caressing, or fondling her two sons (as she did a succession of odious pugs and lap-dogs), but, throwing their little hearts back upon themselves, left nurses and maids to 'do all that sort of tiresome thing.'
So Finella, though an heiress, came in for very little of it either, with all her sweetness, beauty, and pretty winning ways, even from Lord Fettercairn. In truth, the man who cared so little for his own country and her local and vital interests was little likely to care much for any flesh and blood that did not stand in his own boots.
Lady Fettercairn heard from her 'grand-son' from time to time with—for her—deep apparent sympathy, and much genuine aristocratic regret and indignation, much of the obscure story of his boyhood and past life, at least so much as he chose to tell her; and she bitterly resented that Lennard Melfort should have sought to put the 'nephew of that woman, Flora MacIan,' into the army, while placing 'his own son' Shafto into the office of a miserable village lawyer, and so forth—and so forth!
Fortunate it was, she thought, that all this happened in an obscure village in Devonshire, and far away from Craigengowan and all its aristocratic surroundings.
She also thought it strange that Shafto—('Whence came that name?' she would mutter angrily)—should be so unlike her dark and handsome Lennard. His eyebrows were fair and heavy; his eyes were a pale, watery grey; his lips were thin, his neck thick, and his hair somewhat sandy in hue. Thus, she thought, he was not unlike what her husband, the present Lord Fettercairn, must have been at the same age.
As for the Peer himself, he was only too thankful that an heir had turned up for his ill-gotten coronet, and that now—so far as one life was concerned—Sir Bernard Burke would not rate it among the dormant and attainted titles—those of the best and bravest men that Scotland ever knew.
As for their mutual scheme concerning Shafto and their granddaughter Finella, with her beauty and many attractive parts, the former was craftily most desirous of furthering it, knowing well that, happen what might in the future, she was an heiress; that marriage with her would give him a firm hold on the Fettercairn family, though the money of her mother was wisely settled on the young lady herself.
Indeed, Finella had not been many weeks home from London, at Craigengowan, before Lady Fettercairn opened the trenches, and spoke pretty plainly to him on the subject.
Waving her large fan slowly to and fro, and eyeing Shafto closely over the top of it, she said:
'I hope, my dearest boy, that you will find your cousin Finella—the daughter of my dead darling Cosmo—a lovable kind of girl. But even were she not so—and all say she is—you must not feel a prejudice against her, because—because——'
'What, grandmother?'
'Because it is our warmest desire that you may marry her.'
'Why, haven't I money enough?' asked Shafto, with one of his dissembling smiles.
'Of course, as the heir of Fettercairn; but one is always the better to have more, and you must not feel——'
'What?' asked Shafto, with affected impatience.
'Please not to interrupt me thus. I mean that you must not be prejudiced against her as an expected parti.'
'Why should I?'
'One hears and reads so much of such things.'
'In novels, I suppose; but as she is so pretty and eligible, why the dickens——'
'Shafto!'
'What now?' he asked, with some irritability, as she often took him to task for his solecisms.
'Dickens is not a phrase to use. Exclamations that were suited to the atmosphere of Mr. Carlyon's office in Devonshire will not do in Craigengowan!'
'Well—she won't look at me with your eyes, grandmother.'
'How—her eyes——'
'They will never seem so bright and beautiful.'
'Oh, you flattering pet!' exclaimed my Lady Fettercairn, with a smile and pleased flush on her old wrinkled face, for her 'pet' had soon discovered that she was far from insensible to adulation.
Shafto certainly availed himself of the opportunities afforded by 'cousinship,' propinquity, and residence together in a country house, and sought to gain a place in the good graces or heart of Finella; but with all his cunning and earnest wishes in the matter—apart from the wonderful beauty of the girl—he feared that he made no more progress with her than he had done with Dulcie Carlyon.
She talked, played, danced, and even romped with him; they rambled and read together, and were as much companions as any two lovers would be; but he felt nearly certain that though she flirted with him, because it was partly her habit to appear to do so with most men, whenever he attempted to become tender she openly laughed at him or changed the subject skilfully; and also that if he essayed to touch or take her hand it was very deliberately withdrawn from his reach, and never did she make him more sensible of all this than when he contrived to draw her aside to the terrace on the afternoon of the lawn-tennis party.
She had long ere this been made perfectly aware that love and marriage were objects of all his attention, yet she amused herself with him by her coquettish œillades and waggish speeches.
'Finella,' said he, in a low and hesitating voice, as he stooped over her, 'I hope that with all your flouting, and pretty, flippant mode of treating me, you will see your way to carry out the fondest desire of my heart and that of our grandparents.'
'Such a fearfully elaborate speech! And the object to which I am to see my way is to marry you, cousin Shafto?'
'Yes,' said he, bending nearer to her half-averted ear.
'Thanks very much, dear Shafto; but I couldn't think of such a thing.'
'Why? Am I so distasteful to you?'
'Not at all; but for cogent reasons of my own.'
'And these are?'
'Firstly, people should marry to please themselves, not others. Grandpapa and grandmamma did, and so shall I; and I am quite independent enough to do as I please and choose.'
'In short, you will not or cannot love me?'
'I have not said so, you tiresome Shafto!' said she, looking upward at him with one of her sweetest and most bewitching smiles.
'Then I have some hope, dear Finella?'
'I have not said that either.'
'You may yet love me, then?'
'No; not as you wish it.'
'But why?'
'You have no right to ask me.'
His fair beetling eyebrows knit, and a gleam came into his cold, grey eyes as he asked, after a pause:
'Is there anyone else you prefer?'
'You have no right to inquire,' replied she, and a keener observer might have detected that his question brought a tiny blush to her cheek and a fond smile to her curved lips; 'so please to let this matter drop, once and for ever, dear Shafto, and we can be such delightful friends—such jolly cousins.'
And so ended one of many such conversations on this topic—conversations that developed indifference, if not quite aversion, on the part of Finella, the clue to which Shafto was fated to find in a few weeks after.