CHAPTER X. COLTONSLOUGH. Francis Tredethlyn went back to his hotel in Covent Garden after that quiet dinner at the Cedars, and his mind was full of the new images suggested by that brief glimpse of a life that was strange to him. He had been very much interested by Miss Desmond, and he tried to believe that he preferred her to Maude Hillary. Had she not been kinder to him, more friendly and familiar? and was it not reasonable that he should like her the better of the two? He was naturally of a grateful disposition, disposed to think meanly of his own merits; and he attributed all Miss Desmond’s kindness to the purest promptings of a benevolent disposition. The idea that the young lady had regarded him from a speculative point of view, that she had entertained any notion of possible marriage contracts and settlements, by which she might acquire the use of his thirty thousand per annum, never for a moment entered Mr. Tredethlyn’s mind. He knew, in a general way, that he was admitted to Mr. Hillary’s drawing-room because his money gave him a kind of right to such society as that of the merchant’s household; but he never for a moment imagined that any one of these delightful and high-bred creatures could contemplate any contingency by which his money might become of service to them. Wealth and beauty, elegance and refinement, seemed to find their natural home at the Cedars. Miss Desmond of course was rich, like Miss Hillary. Francis counted the days which must elapse before that delightful Sabbath to be spent by him at the Cedars. Only three days, and during those three days stern duty called him away from London. Had he not declared himself ready to go to the end of the world in search of his cousin Susan Tredethlyn? He felt ashamed even of that one wasted day on the banks of the Thames. He had left his hotel in the morning, intending to despatch his City business with all possible speed, and start immediately afterwards for Coltonslough. He had found out all about Coltonslough by means of all manner of inquiries; for it seemed rather an out-of-the-way place, known to very few people as yet. Indeed, Coltonslough turned out to be a recently discovered watering-place on the Essex coast, a place whose shores were supposed to be washed by the salt waves of the ocean; but the waste of waters that rolled along the muddy shores of Coltonslough was only an ocean in its hobbledehoyhood, and savoured too much of the Thames and Medway to be considered a full-grown sea.