“I am sorry he is your friend; I am afraid Mr. D’Almayne is a dangerous acquaintance for so vain and weak a young man.”
“Alfred is no fool, though perhaps firmness is not his strong point,” returned Coverdale; “vain perhaps he is—all handsome boys are, I suppose. But why do you say you are sorry he is my friend?”
Miss Crofton was silent for a minute, then in a timid and hesitating voice replied,—
“You will be angry with me if I tell you my reason for disliking Lord Alfred’s constant visits; you will doubt what I say, and impute to me all kinds of false and evil motives for saying it.”
“Go on,” returned Harry, in a low, stern voice, “you have said too much for me to rest satisfied not to hear more—tell me all you know or suspect; but take care—if, as you say, you value my good opinion—that you speak only the simple truth.”
Thus urged, Miss Crofton proceeded cautiously to relate, that much as it grieved her to say anything which might cause him pain or annoyance, she would not disguise from him that she felt convinced Lord Alfred Courtland was deeply smitten with Alice, and that his frequent visits to Park Lane were the result of his admiration—that, moreover, Horace D’Almayne was evidently doing his best to nurse what had been a mere boyish fancy into a warmer and stronger feeling; of his motive she was unable to judge, but of the fact she was certain; she believed, moreover, that he possessed a strong and daily increasing influence over the young man.
“And Alice?” inquired Coverdale, with flashing eyes, “what of Alice? Beware how you tell me that she encourages this misguided, foolish boy! for by heaven, if you do, and it should appear that you have misjudged her, I should be tempted to inform her and all the world the reason which has induced you to invent such malicious calumnies!”
“You wrong me by your unkind suspicions,” was Arabella’s calm reply, “as much as you wrong yourself by an ungenerous threat which you would be incapable of executing; it is not for me to judge Mrs. Coverdale one way or the other. I have satisfied my conscience in warning you; I leave you now to examine and observe for yourself, and test the truth of my statement—but of one thing I am certain, Horace D’Almayne has some deep scheme in petto, and that he is an unscrupulous adventurer, clever enough to render him a most dangerous associate for any one—a person to beware of, in short.”
“If I become convinced he is putting young Alfred up to any such rascality as you imagine, I’ll break the scoundrel’s neck for him!” growled Coverdale, in a tone like the rumbling of distant thunder.
As he spoke some one touched him on the shoulder, and looking round, he was more surprised than pleased to see the object of his kind intentions standing behind the chair on which he was seated. How long he might have been there, or how much of their conversation he might have heard, it was impossible to tell; but so convinced was Coverdale that D’Almayne had been playing the eavesdropper, that he was on the point of inquiring what amount of information he had thus acquired, and especially whether he had clearly understood the fate that awaited him, if he were really inciting “little Alfred” to make love to his wife, when D’Almayne, who possessed a womanly predilection for always having the first and last word, began—