Absorbed in thought, Harry made her no reply, until, surprised and slightly annoyed at his silence, she resumed—
“Has the mysterious epistle stricken you dumb, or have we become so thoroughly matrimonial, that you don’t consider it worth while to answer your wife when she asks you a question?”
“Eh! what? I beg your pardon, dear, the letter? no it was not from a dun. I never was preyed upon by those vampires, thank Heaven; ‘out of debt, out of danger,’ has always been my motto,” replied Coverdale, rousing from his reverie.
“If it was not from a dun, whom was it from then?” continued Alice, pertinaciously.
“You are singularly curious all of a sudden,” rejoined Harry; “all I shall tell you about the matter is that the note referred to a disagreeable affair which happened three or four years ago, and which I had hoped was entirely passed and forgotten.”
“And having raised my curiosity thus, do you actually mean to say that you will not gratify it farther?” inquired Alice.
“As you can have no good reason for asking, and as I have a very good and sufficient one for keeping my own counsel, I am afraid I must leave you in ignorance,” was Harry’s tantalizing reply.
Alice glanced at his face, and reading there that he was in earnest, and meant to act on what he had said, pouted like a spoilt child who had been refused some coveted plaything, while Coverdale betook himself to his dressing-room in a “who-the-deuce-would-have-thought-of-her-turning-up!” frame of mind, from which he had by no means recovered when, with his wife, still mildly vindictive, hanging on his arm, he descended to the drawing-room.
There they found Mr. and Mrs. Crane, and a lady whom Kate introduced as her old and particular friend, Miss Crofton. Having bowed to Alice, Miss Crofton turned towards Harry, observing to Kate, as she did so—
“I have never had the pleasure of meeting Mrs. Coverdale before; but Mr. Coverdale and I are old acquaintances; when I was travelling in Italy with the Muirs. Mr. Coverdale was also indulging his taste for the fine-arts, and we encountered each other at several points of the route.”