Coverdale Park was reached without adventure, and appeared as cool, and calm, and happy as the country usually does to the eyes of fashion-wearied Londoners; and Harry, unaffectedly delighted to escape from the uncongenial atmosphere of a crowded city to his home,—which he loved with his whole heart,—forgot, in the pleasure he experienced, the amount of Alice’s misdemeanours, and was only anxious to be reconciled with her, and to assure her of his perfect and entire forgiveness. But since the previous evening a change—for which he could not account, and which began to render him very uneasy—had come over Alice, she was no longer irritable and petulant at one moment, yet amused and light-hearted at the next, but a settled gloom hung o’er her brow, which indicated sorrow rather than anger; and although she had never allowed him to surprise her in tears, her eyes bore unmistakeable traces of weeping. Their tête-à-tête dinner passed off heavily enough: as they sat moodily over their dessert, Harry observed, “The evening is most lovely—come out and take a stroll.” He spoke kindly, almost tenderly, and as Alice looked up to reply to him, her eyes filled with tears; hastily checking them before they could be observed, she agreed. Her husband carefully placed a shawl over her shoulders, brought from the hall her garden bonnet, and, drawing her arm within his own, they walked on for some distance in silence. At length Harry observed, “Alice, dear, you seem downcast and unhappy—why is this? surely you cannot regret that hot, miserable, artificial London? you must be glad to get back to our own dear, quiet home again?”
“I do not in the least regret London,” was the reply; “on the contrary, I am glad to be once more in the country again.”
“Then why this gloomy manner?” urged Coverdale; “I may have been a little annoyed with you at times lately, but I am quite prepared to believe it was mere thoughtlessness on your part; in fact, I never considered it anything else. I feel sure when you come to reflect seriously on the matter, you will yourself see that your conduct was a little injudicious; and, in that case, believe me the affair is from this moment forgotten and forgiven.” Harry paused for a reply, but for several moments none was forthcoming; at last, his patience being exhausted, he inquired in a tone of surprise, “Alice, did you hear what I was saying?”
“I beg your pardon,” rejoined Alice, starting, “I was not attending properly at that moment; you were blaming me for something, were you not? I am very sorry—what was it?”
As she spoke, Harry glanced towards her to discover whether she had been really too much pre-engrossed to attend to him, or whether she merely affected to have been so for the amiable purpose of provoking him; deciding in favour of the first hypothesis, he resumed: “I was saying, my dear Alice, that although your flirtation with that foolish boy, Alfred Courtland, had caused me some uneasiness—because people dared to remark on it, unluckily not in a way that I could take up—yet that I was convinced it was merely thoughtlessness on your part, and was anxious to forgive and forget it.”
If he had expressly tried to rouse Alice from the state of gloomy depression into which she had fallen, Harry could not have devised means more effectual than the speech he had just addressed to her. With flashing eyes she heard him to the end, then inquired: “And pray who has dared—(you may well use the word!)—who has dared to accuse me of flirting? But I need not ask,” she continued, bitterly; “no one but Miss Crofton would have ventured to asperse your wife’s character before you—from no one else would you have listened to such a falsehood—no one else could have induced you to believe it!”
Astonished, and, if the truth must be told, somewhat confounded at having the tables thus turned upon him, Harry exclaimed, “Alice, what do you mean? what are you talking about? have you taken leave of your senses all of a sudden?”
“If I had I should scarcely be surprised,” was the rejoinder; “but I know only too well what I am saying, and the cause I have to say and believe it; however, I do not want to reproach you, that would do no good; but—but—knowing what I know—” an hysterical sob choked her voice—“it is too hard that you should accuse me of flirting”—and here, utterly overcome by her feelings, she burst into a paroxysm of weeping. Wholly confounded at this unexpected result of his very mild remonstrance, which had been intended more as a judicious way of forgiving Alice’s misdemeanours than as a reprimand, Harry led her to a seat, and then used his best endeavours to console and bring her to reason; but in vain, nor was it until she was fain to stop through sheer physical exhaustion that her tears ceased; by which time, what between bodily fatigue (she had not been in bed until between three and four on the previous night, or rather morning, could not sleep then, and had accomplished a railroad journey since) and mental agitation, she was so completely worn out that even Harry, who was not usually too clear-sighted on such points, perceived this was not a fitting opportunity to continue the discussion.