After luncheon he was seated beside Lady Fettercairn; he was too wise in his generation to have placed himself where he would have wished, beside Finella, whose little hand, on entering, Shafto thought he retained in his rather longer than etiquette required; for if Shafto's eyes were shifty, they were particularly sharp, and he soon found that though Finella, to a certain extent, had filled up her time by flirting in a cousinly way with himself, 'now that this fellow Hammersley had come,' he was 'nowhere' as he thought, with a very bad word indeed. We have said that Finella had paid a protracted and--to her--most enjoyable visit to Tyburnia. There at balls, garden parties, and in the Row she had met Vivian Hammersley repeatedly; and these meetings had not been without a deep and tender interest to them both; and when they were parted finally by her return to Craigengowan, though no declaration of regard had escaped him, he had been burning to speak to her in that sweet and untutored language by which the inmost secrets of the loving heart can be read; and now that they had met again, they had a thousand London objects to talk about safely in common, which made them seem to be what they were, quite old friends in fact, and erelong Lady Fettercairn began, like Shafto, to listen and look darkly and doubtfully on. But when they were alone, which was seldom, or merely apart from others, there was between them a new consciousness now--a secret but sweet understanding, born of eye speaking to eye--all the sweeter for its secrecy and being all their own, a conscious emotion that rendered them at times almost afraid to speak or glance lest curious eyes or ears might discover what that secret was. What was to be the sequel to all this? Hammersley was far from rich according to the standard of wealth formed by Lady Fettercairn, and the latter had destined her granddaughter with all her accumulated wealth to be the bride of Shafto. Hammersley knew nothing of this; he only knew his own shortcoming in the matter of 'pocketability;' but then youth, we are told, 'is sanguine and full of faith and hope in an untried future. It looks out over the pathway of life towards the goal of its ambition, seeing only the end desired, and giving little or no heed to hills and dales, storms and accidents, that may be met with on the way.' So, happy in the good fortune that threw him once more in the sweet society of bright Finella Melfort, Captain Hammersley gave full swing in secret to the most delightful of day-dreams. In all this, however, we are somewhat anticipating our narrative. But, like a wise man, while the luncheon lasted he was most attentive to his hostess, from whose old but still handsome face, like that of Tennyson's Maud, 'so faultily faultless, icily regular, and splendidly null,' he ever and anon turned to that of Finella--that _mignonne_ face, which was so full of varying expression, warmth, light, and colour.