'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. CHAPTER XII. VIVIAN HAMMERSLEY. The persistent attentions of Shafto were alternately a source of amusement and worry to Finella Melfort; and when she found them become the latter, she had more than once retreated to the residence of her maternal grandmother, Lady Drumshoddy, though she infinitely preferred being at Craigengowan, where the general circle was more refined and of a much better style; for Lady Drumshoddy--natheless her title--was not quite one of the 'upper ten,' being only the widow of an advocate, who, having done without scruple the usual amount of work to please his party and the Lord Advocate, had been rewarded therefor by an appointment (and knighthood) in Bengal, where he had gone, at a lucky time, with the old advice and idea-- 'They bade me from the Rupee Tree Pluck India's endless riches, And then I swore that time should see Huge pockets in my breeches.' Thus Sir Duncan Drumshoddy's pockets were so well filled that when he came home to die, his daughter was heiress enough to be deemed a 'great catch' by the Fettercairn family, though her grandfather had been--no one knew precisely what. And now Finella, by education, careful training, and by her own habit of thought, was naturally so refined that, with all her waggery and disposition to laughter and merriment, Shafto's clumsy love-speeches occasionally irritated her. 'I have somewhere read,' said he, 'that a man may get the love of the girl he wants, even if she cares little for him, if he only asks her at the right time; but, so far as you are concerned, Finella, the right moment has not come for me, I suppose.' 'Nor ever will come, I fear, cousin Shafto,' she replied, fanning herself, and eyeing him with mingled fun and defiance sparkling in her dark eyes. Ere Shafto could resume on this occasion Lord Fettercairn came hurriedly to him, saying,