Shafto felt, with no small satisfaction, that he could, to a certain extent, control the actions of both these girls. Finella could not reveal the secret of her quarrel with him without admitting the terms on which she had been with Hammersley; and Dulcie, he thought, dared not resent his conduct, lest—through his influence with Lady Fettercairn—she might be cast into the world, without even a certificate that would enable her to procure another situation of any kind. Thus, to a certain extent, he revelled in security so far as both were concerned.
And deeming now that all must be at an end between Finella and Hammersley, he thought to pique the former perhaps by attentions to Dulcie—attentions by which he might ultimately gain some little favours for himself.
In both instances vain thoughts!
He was aware that he had an ample field of old and mutual interest or associations to go back upon with Dulcie; thus he thought if he could entangle her into an apparent flirtation for the purpose of mortifying Finella, and catching her heart on the rebound, sore as it must be with the seeming indifference of Hammersley, he would gain his end; and this mutual intimacy eventually annoyed and surprised Lady Fettercairn, and was likely to prove fatal to the interests and position of Dulcie, whom he felt he must either win for himself in some fashion, and, if not, in revenge have her expelled from Craigengowan.
One day the girl was alone. She was feeding the swans in the artificial lakelet that lay below the terrace. It was a serene and sunny forenoon; the water was smooth as crystal, and reflected the old house with all its turrets, crow-stepped gables, and dormer-gablets line for line. It mirrored also the swans swimming double, bird and shadow, like beautiful drifting boats, and the great white water-lilies that seemed to sleep rather than float on its surface.
It was indeed a drowsy, golden afternoon, and Dulcie Carlyon, an artist at heart, was fully impressed by the loveliness of her surroundings, when Shafto stood before her.
Shafto!—she quite shivered.
'Oh!' she exclaimed, as if a toad had crossed her path.
'A penny for your thoughts, Dulcie.' said that personage smilingly, seeing that she had been pondering so deeply that his approach had been unnoticed by her.
'They might startle you more than you think,' replied Dulcie, with undisguised annoyance.
'Indeed; are you weaving out a romance?'
'Perhaps.'
'With yourself for the heroine, or Finella; and that fellow Florian for the hero? Then there must be the requisite villain.'
'Oh, he is ready to hand,' said she daringly, with a flash in her blue eyes.
Shafto's brow grew black as midnight, and what coarse thing he might have said we know not, but policy made him ignore her reply.
'Please not to remain speaking to me,' said she, glancing nervously at the windows of the house; 'your doing so may displease the friends of Finella.'
'It is of her I wish to speak. Listen, Dulcie. I have not the influence over her I had hoped to have before you came among us. If that interloper Hammersley had not absorbed her interest, no doubt, as matters once looked, she might have pleased her relations and bound herself to me, provided she had never found out that I had loved a dear one, far away in Devonshire, and had but a half-concealed fancy for herself.'
Dulcie listened to this special pleading in contemptuous silence.
'I don't want to marry her now, any more than she wants to marry me,' he resumed unblushingly; 'but I may tell you it is rather hard to be ordered to play the lover to a girl who will scarcely throw me a civil word.'
'After the cruel trick you played her, is it to be expected?'
'So—you are in her confidence, then?'
But Dulcie only thought, 'What paradox is this? He dared again to make love to herself, after all that had passed with reference to Florian, and yet to be jealous of Finella's profound disdain of him.'
'Won't you try and love me a little, Dulcie?' said he, attempting his most persuasive tone.
'What do you mean, Shafto?' demanded the girl in great anger and perplexity; 'even if I would take you, which I would rather die than do, with all your wealth and prospective title, you could not marry me and Finella too!'
'Who speaks of marriage?' growled Shafto, under his breath, while a malicious smile glittered in his cold eyes, as he added aloud, 'You know which I wish to marry.'
'Then it cannot be me, nor shall it be Finella either, for the matter of that.'
'Does she act under your influence?'
'Do not think of it—she is under a more potent influence than I possess,' replied Dulcie, who, bewildered by his manner and remarks, was turning away, when he again confronted her, and the girl glanced uneasily at the windows, where, although she knew it not, the eyes of those she dreaded most were observing them both.
To marry Dulcie, even if she would have him, certainly did not suit 'the book' of Shafto; but, as he admired her attractive person, and hated Florian with unreasoning rancour, as some men do who have wronged others, he would gladly have lured her into a liaison with himself. He knew, however, her pride and purity too well, but he was not without the hope of blunting them, and eventually bending her to his will, under the threat or pressure of getting her expelled from Craigengowan, and thrown penniless, friendless, and with, perhaps, a tainted name, upon a cold, bitter, and censorious world.
'I know you better than to believe that you love me any more than I do you,' said Dulcie, with ill-concealed scorn; 'love is not in your nature, even for the brilliant Finella. You love her money—not herself.'
Dissembling his rage, he said in a suppliant tone:
'Why are you so cold and repellant to me, Dulcie?'
'I do not know that I am markedly so.'
'But I do: beyond the affair of the locket, born of my very regard for you, what is my offence?'
'What you are doing now, following me about—forcing your society on me, and tormenting as you do. I shall be compromised with Lady Fettercairn if you do not take care.'
'I think you treat me with cruel coldness, considering the love I have borne you so long. Why should not we be even the friends we once were at Revelstoke, and like each other always?'
'After all you have done to Florian!'
'What have I done to Florian?' he demanded, changing colour under the influence of his own secret thoughts.
'Cast him forth into the world penniless.'
'Oh, is that all?' said he, greatly relieved.
'Yes, that is all, so far as I know as yet.'
Again his brow darkened at this chance shot; but, still dissembling, he said:
'My dear little Dulcie, what is the use of all this foolish regard for Florian and revengeful mood at me? We shall never see him again.'
'Oh, Shafto, how can you talk thus coldly of Florian, with whom you went to school and college together, played together as boys, and read together as men—were deemed almost brothers rather than cousins! Shame on you!' and she stamped her little foot on the ground as she spoke.
'How pretty you look when angry! You do not care for me just now, perhaps; but in time you will, Dulcie.'
'Never, Shafto.'
'Surely you don't mean to carry on this game ever and always?'
'Ever and always, while I am a dependant here.'
'But I will take you away from here, and you need be a dependant no longer,' said he, while his countenance brightened and his manner warmed, as he utterly mistook her meaning. 'My allowance is most handsome, thanks to Lord—Lord—to my grandfather, and he can't last for ever. The old fellow is sixty-eight if he is a day. Forget all past unpleasantness; think only of the future, and all I can make it for you. I will give you any length of time if you will only give me your love.'
'Never, I tell you. Oh, this is intolerable!' exclaimed the girl passionately, finding that he still barred her way.
'Beware, Dulcie,' said he, as his shifty eyes flashed. 'The world and success in it are for him who knows how to wait; meantime, let us be friends. Friendship is said to be more enduring than love.'
'Well—we shall never be even friends again, Shafto.'
'Why?'
'Well do you know why. And let me remind you that all sin brings its own punishment in this world.'
'If found out,' he interrupted.
'And in the next, whether found out here or not.'
'Why the deuce do you preach thus to me?' he asked savagely, his fears again awakened, so true is it that
'Many a shaft at random sent
Finds mark the archer never meant.'
'And what do you take me for that you treat me thus, and talk to me in this manner?'
'What do I take you for? By your treatment of me I take you to be an insolent, cruel, and heartless fellow, who can be worse at times.'
'Take care! the pedestal you stand on may give way. It lies with me to smash it, and some fine day you may be sorry for the way in which you have dared to treat me, Shafto——'
'Gyle,' interrupted Dulcie almost spitefully.
'Melfort, d—n you!' he retorted coarsely, and losing all command over himself.
Tears now sprang to her eyes, and then, as he half feared to carry the matter so far with her, he apologized.
'Let me pass, sir,' said she.
'Won't you give me one little kiss first, Dulcie?'
She made no reply, but fixed her lovely dark blue eyes upon him with an expression of such loathing and contempt that even he was stung to the heart by it.
'Let me pass, sir!' she exclaimed again.
He stood aside to let her do so, and she swept by, holding her golden head haughtily erect; but Dulcie feared him now more than ever, and certainly she had roused revenge in his heart, with certain vague emotions of alarm.
Of all the thousands of homes in Scotland and England how miserable and unlucky was the chance that cast her under the same roof with the evil-minded Shafto! thought the girl in the solitude of her own room. But then, otherwise, she would never have known and shared the sweet and flattering friendship of Finella Melfort; and, as she never knew what wicked game Shafto might play, he would perhaps succeed in depriving her even of that solace as the end of his persecution.
The whole tenor of the conversation or interview forced upon her by Shafto impressed her with a keen and deep sense of humiliation that made her weep bitterly; how much more keen would the sense of that have been had she known what in the purity of her nature she never suspected, that, amid all his grotesque love-making, marriage was no way comprehended in his scheme!
Much as she disliked Shafto, an emotion of delicacy, with a timid doubt of the future with regard to Captain Hammersley, and what was behind that future with regard to 'the cousins,' as she of course deemed them to be, induced Dulcie to remain silent with Finella on the subject of his persistent and secret attentions to herself, though she would have deplored to see Finella the wife of Shafto.
The interview we have described had not passed without observers, we have said.
'Fettercairn, look how Miss Carlyon and Shafto are flirting near the Swan's Pool!' said the Lady of that Ilk, drawing her husband's attention to the pair from a window of the drawing-room.
'What makes you think they are doing so?' he asked, but nevertheless with knitted brows.
'Cannot you see it?'
'No; it is so long since I did anything in that way myself that really I—aw——'
'See with what empressement he bends down to address her, and she keeps her head down, too, though she seems to crest it up at times.'
'But she edges away from him palpably, as if she disliked what he is saying, and, by Jove, she looks indignant, too!'
'That may be all acting, in suspicion that she is observed, or it may be to lure him on; one never knows what may be passing in a girl's mind—if she thinks herself attractive especially.'
'Well—to me they seem quarrelling,' said Lord Fettercairn.
'Quarrelling—and with my companion! How could Shafto condescend to do so?'
'That is more than I can tell you—he is rather a riddle to me; but the girl is decidedly more than pretty, and very good style, too.'
'And hence the more dangerous. I must speak with Shafto on this subject seriously, or——'
'What then?'
'Get rid of her.'
'If we fail in marrying Shafto to Finella, who can say whom he may marry, as his instincts seem somewhat low, and after we are gone there may be a whole clan of low and sordid prodigals here in Craigengowan.'
'And Radicals!' suggested Lady Fettercairn.
'Desecrating the spots rendered almost sacred by association with a great and famous past,' said Lord Fettercairn loftily.
What this great and famous 'past' was, he could scarcely have told. It was not connected with his own mushroom line, whatever it might have been with the former lords of Craigengowan, whose guests had at times been Kings of Scotland and Princes of France and Spain.
'Finella is young, and does not know her own heart,' he resumed; 'besides, I believe it is enough generally to recommend a girl to marry a certain man, for her to set her face against him unreasoningly. But I think—and hope—that our Finella is different from the common run of girls.'
'Not in contriving, perhaps, to fall in love with the wrong man.'
'You mean that young fellow Hammersley?'
'Yes; I must own to having most grave suspicions,' replied Lady Fettercairn.
'She is a Melfort, and as such has no notion of being coerced.'
Lady Fettercairn thought of Lennard and Flora MacIan and remained silent, remembering that he too, the disowned and the outcast, was a genuine Melfort in the same sense.