He had not being dissipating in London all the time--or, indeed, any great part of the time of his absence from Fellside; but Molly had been left in Cimmerian, darkness as to his proceedings.

He never wrote a letter if he could possibly avoid doing so.

If it became a vital necessity to him to communicate with anyone he telegraphed, or, in his own language, 'wired' to that person; but to sit down at a desk and labour with pen and ink was not within his capacities or his views of his mission in life.
'If a fellow is to write letters he might as well be a clerk in an office,' he said, 'and sit on a high stool.' Thus it happened that when Maulevrier was away from Fellside, no fair _chatelaine_ of the Middle Ages could be more ignorant of the movements or whereabouts of her crusader knight than Mary was of her brother's goings on.

She could but pray for him with fond and faithful prayer, and wait and hope for his return.

And now he told her that things had gone badly with him at Epsom, and worse at Ascot, that he had been, as he expressed it, 'up a tree,' and that he had gone off to the Black Forest directly the Ascot week was over, and at Rippoldsau he had met his old friend and fellow traveller, Hammond, and they had gone for a walking tour together among the homely villages, the watchmakers, the timber cutters, the pretty peasant girls.