To go on with, his mind was more at ease with respect to the fate of the friend he had betrayed than it had been on the day of his interviews with John Dixon and Rathbeal. Six weeks had passed by and he had not seen or heard from John Dixon: a distinct proof that that astute person had been gasconading when he spoke of having caught a glimpse of Robert Grantham's face on a foggy night in March. Mr. Fox-Cordery had arrived at the conclusion that the tale was a clumsy invention, introduced for the purpose of winning compliance with John Dixon's suit for the hand of his sister Charlotte.
"Dixon thought I would strike my flag," he reasoned, "and that I would implore him to take Charlotte at once, and a handsome dowry with her, as the price of his silence. A likely thing when he had nothing to sell but an empty tale!" Of the legacy he had heard nothing more. Mrs. Grantham had not seen the advertisement in the _Times_, the paper being one which she did not read, nor had she been approached by the lawyers with respect to it, as had been threatened by John Dixon. "Lawyers don't part with money too readily," again reasoned Mr. Fox-Cordery, "when once it gets into their clutches. I know their tricks."
Then, Charlotte was behaving admirably. She and Mrs. Grantham and Clair were constantly together, Mr. Fox-Cordery believed that his sister was doing something--perhaps in an indirect way, but that was of no account--to advance his cause. And yet that cause was making no progress. It was unaccountable, and he was moodily reflecting upon this as he paced the lawn and smoked his cigar.
On the debit side of the ledger were some ridiculous, though mysterious, eccentricities on the part of Rathbeal. Rathbeal did not appear personally, but he kept himself in Mr. Fox-Cordery's mind by a series of written and pictorial communications. These, carefully sealed, were addressed to Mr. Fox-Cordery's London residence, and were forwarded on to his suburban home. He destroyed them, wrathfully, almost as soon as he received them, but it was an additional annoyance that he could not forget them after they were destroyed; indeed, the impression they produced was so strong that they were the cause of many fantastic and disturbing dreams from which he would awake in perturbation. The peculiar nature of these communications will be seen from the following examples: