Thus appealed to, Alice was obliged to confess that, in point of fact, there was nothing wrong or romantic in the adventure from beginning to end—that Lord Alfred Courtland was an old schoolfellow of her husband’s, who had travelled in the same carriage with them, and who had naturally done all he could to save her from being inconvenienced by the effects of Harry’s stupidity, on which she dwelt rather more at length than Kate approved of,—that young lady having a very keen perception of right and wrong, although she by no means always acted up to the light thus afforded her.
Some few hours later Harry arrived, very anxious about his wife, and decidedly crest-fallen and penitent, and bore all the quizzing which fell to his share with most exemplary patience; although any attempt to excite his jealousy in regard to Lord Alfred Courtland proved a dead failure, his reply being that “He was always a very good little boy, and that he did not see much difference in him except in height.”
When the Coverdales went up to dress for dinner the following dialogue ensued:—
“How well your cousin Kate is looking,” observed Harry; “the pomps and vanities of this wicked world appear to agree with her; now she has grown a little stouter, she really is a splendid woman.”
“Yes, she appears in better health,” returned Alice, slowly, “but—”
“But what?” inquired Harry. “A woman’s ‘but’ is like the postscript to her letter; it unsays all she has said before. Come, out with this arrière pensée, as that puppy D’Almayne would call it. By-the-way, he seems regularly domesticated here. I wonder old Crane likes it; I should not, in his position, I know.”
“I wonder Kate likes it,” returned Alice; “however, my ‘but’ had nothing to do with the fascinating Horace. I was going to say that although Kate looked well, yet she had a listless, weary expression of countenance, which gave me the idea that, with all her riches and splendour, she was far from happy.”
“The same being a result rather to be expected than otherwise, when a lovely and talented young female sees fit to espouse an elderly and feeble-minded old scarecrow,” rejoined Harry, making frantic dives into his portmanteau, and fishing up patent bootjacks, miraculous razor-strops—everything but the dress-neck-tie he was in search of.
“I don’t believe they see anything of Arthur,” continued Alice, reflectively; “I asked Kate, and she seemed to know nothing about him—such friends as they used to be at one time—it’s very odd!”
“I don’t see the oddness, myself,” returned Harry, speaking through his dressing-room door, which stood ajar; “there is a great difference between feeling spooney about a pretty cousin, when you’re living in the house with her, and have nothing better to do, and dangling after her to the neglect of your business, when she lives at one end of London and you at the other—when, moreover, she’s married to a dreadful old muff, antiquated enough to be her father, and slow enough to be the father of every fool in the kingdom. I think it’s easily accounted for by prose means, without adopting the poetical hypothesis of a romantic attachment—two fond young hearts blighted, and all that ‘Keepsake’ style of business; besides, Arthur’s a great deal too good a lawyer to fall in love; it’s only idle fellows like myself who commit such follies.”