'This is complete!' cried Elinor, laughing; 'and will this, too, Harleigh, move your knight-errantry? If it does—look to your heart! for I won't lose a moment in becoming black, patched, and pennyless!'
She flew with this anecdote to the breakfast parlour; while the stranger, yet more rapidly, flew from the inn to the sea-side, where she carefully retraced the ground that she had passed; but all examination was vain, and she returned with an appearance of increased dismay.
Meeting Harleigh at the door, his expression of concern somewhat calmed her distress, and she conjured him to plead with one of the ladies, to have the charity to convey her to London, and thence to help her on to Brighthelmstone. 'I have no means,' she cried, 'now, to proceed unaided; my purse, I imagine, dropt into the sea, when, so unguardedly! in the dark, I cast there—' She stopt, looked confused, and bent her eyes upon the ground.
'To Brighthelmstone?' repeated Harleigh; 'some of these ladies reside not nine miles from that town. I will see what can be done.'
She merely entreated, she said, to be allowed to travel in their suite, in any way, any capacity, as the lowest of attendants. She was so utterly reduced by this dreadful loss, that she must else beg her way on foot.
Harleigh hastened to execute this commission; but the moment he named it, Elinor called out, 'Do, pray, Mr Harleigh, tell me where you have been secreting your common sense?—Not that I mean to look for it!—'twould despoil me of all the dear freaks and vagaries that give zest to life!'
'Poor demoiselle!' cried Riley, throwing half a crown upon the table, 'she shall not be without my mite, for old acquaintance sake.'
'What! has she caught even you, Mr Cynical Riley?' cried Elinor; 'you, who take as much pleasure in lowering or mortifying your fellow-creatures, as Mr Harleigh does in elevating, or relieving them?'
'Every one after his own fashion, Miss Nelly. The best amongst us has as little taste for being thwarted as the worst. He has, faith! We all think our own way the only one that has any common sense. Mine, is that of a diver: I seek always for what is hidden. What is obvious soon surfeits me. If this demoiselle had named herself, I should never have thought of her again; but now, I'm all agog to find her out.'
'Why does she not say who she is at once?' cried Mrs Maple. 'I give nothing to people that I know nothing of; and what had she to do in France? Why don't she tell us that?'