The whole morning was devoted to shopping; in the afternoon the two ladies went out driving, and returned to the hotel, to find Captain Guest's card on the sitting-room table. "He has lost no time, anyhow!" said Mrs Moffatt, meaningly. "He has done the polite thing. Now he need not trouble any more," Cornelia replied. On the whole, she was not sorry to have missed the call. Conversation, with Mrs Moffatt as audience, would have been somewhat of a strain! CHAPTER SEVENTEEN. The Moffatts appeared to have few private friends in London, and to show no anxiety to add to their number. Though they displayed an insatiable curiosity about everything which concerned their guest, they volunteered very little information in return, and after three days spent entirely in their society, Cornelia knew little more about them than on the first day of their meeting on shipboard. A mushroom city of the West figured as "home," in occasional references; but the wife frankly declared a hatred of domesticity, while the husband regretted that constant travel was a necessity in his business. Evidently the present period was one of holiday-making, for Mr Moffatt seemed to do nothing but hang about the hotel, playing odd games of bridge or billiards with stray loafers like himself, and being correspondingly elated or depressed as he won or lost. On the whole, Cornelia preferred him when he was depressed. Exuberance of spirits is apt to wax offensive when divorced from good taste. At times she frankly disliked both husband and wife, and meditated an immediate return to Norton; but as a rule she was absorbed in the interest and charm of the grey old city, which was so unlike anything she had yet visited. It was like turning back a page of history, to see with her own eyes those historical landmarks, of which she had read since childhood; to drive about looking at the names of the streets, the monuments at the corners, the great, inky buildings. Visitors from sunnier lands often take away from our capital an impression of gloom and ugliness, but Cornelia's artistic sense realised a picturesque element which rose superior to smoke and grime. She loved the narrow, irregular streets, the Turneresque haze which hung over the sky, even in this fine summer weather.