ve 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.

The City was a solemn land of work, but the West End was a fairy realm
of luxury and pleasure. Flowers everywhere, stacked up in great piles
at the corners of the streets; hanging from window-boxes; massed
together in the beds of the parks. The carriages blocked one another in
the narrow roads; the balconies were draped with awnings; gorgeously-
clad flunkeys stood upon the doorsteps, ushering in long streams of
visitors. In the City men worked for money; in the West End they threw
it away, carelessly, heedlessly, as if