“I beg pardon—a—really I don’t think I can be mistaken—a—very absurd, I’m sure, if I am—but I was at school with one Arthur Hazlehurst—and—”
“And I am he,” was the reply; “but you have the advantage of me; for I was at school with some four hundred boys, and, to tell you the honest truth, it does not at this moment occur to me which of them you may have been.”
“Yet Alfred Courtland has to thank you for such slight skill as he may possess in the noble arts of boot-cleaning, brushing clothes, and frying sausages; besides early lessons in the demolition of oysters and porter—enforced by example rather than precept,” was the rejoinder; and, the unsocial ice of Old England being thus broken, the ci-devant school-fellows talked on until they grew quite intimate. At length, Lord Alfred looked at his watch, was silent and distrait for a minute or two, then began in a timid, hesitating voice, “I was waiting here to see Mrs. Crane; but, I don’t know—that is, I feel as if I could tell you all about it quite as well; you can do what I wish better than she could; and I don’t think you’ll be angry with me when I’ve made you understand the affair.”
“Suppose you come to the point, and try to do so at once,” replied Arthur, anxious to get him away, if possible, before Kate’s return.
“Well, you see, my dear Hazlehurst, I wish you hadn’t been abroad, and then you would have understood it all so much better; but since you went away—though, by Jove, now I come to think of it, I saw you here one day when Coverdale and your sister first came to town—deuced odd I didn’t make you out then; but if I recollect, you went away just as I came in—” and thus rambling on, he gave a true, though by no means a full and particular account of his intimacy with the Coverdales, continuing: “Your sister was very kind to me, and took so much trouble about our duets. She pianos, and I do a little in a mild way on the flute, you know, and we were great friends, and got on very serenely until the other night, when I was fool enough to do, or rather to say, something which made her angry—a good right she had to be so; but the fact is, I’d had some men dining with me, and we drank a lot of wine, and then sat down to cards, and I lost my money and my temper, and in this frame of mind I met Mrs. Coverdale at Lady Tattersall Trottemout’s ‘let off,’ and she snubbed me—I dare say I deserved it, but I didn’t like it; and, as my evil genius would have it, a man I know related to me a tale in regard to her husband’s flirtations with a pretty governess in Italy, and to tease her I, like a fool, must needs go and repeat it to her; and she took it more seriously to heart than I had expected, and was angry with me, and—but I see you are getting impatient—”
“Not at all, not at all,” returned Arthur, who, preoccupied with his own cares and anxieties, and nervous in regard to the approaching interview with his cousin, scarcely heard or understood half Lord Alfred was saying, and was only desirous to get rid of him before Kate should arrive; “no; it’s merely a legal habit I’ve fallen into of trying to bring people to the point with as little delay as possible. Yes; I quite understand—Alice told her husband of your flirting with a pretty governess, and he said something which offended you.”
“No; it was I who told the story,” interrupted Lord Alfred, aghast at the state of confusion his auditor appeared to have fallen into, and from which he immediately endeavoured to extricate him by commencing a long explanation.
Obliged in self-defence to attend, Arthur soon found out that Lord Alfred’s object in his ill-timed confidence was to ask him to convey his apologies to his sister, whenever he might be writing to her; whereupon, considering the whole affair a mere silly, boyish punctilio, he replied—
“If you’ll take my advice, my Lord, I should say, get a sheet of rose-scented paper and a diamond-pointed pen”—(a sheet of foolscap and a goose-quill would be more appropriate, was his mental commentary),—“and sit down and write your penitence to the fair lady yourself. Alice must be greatly altered for the worse if she does not grant you a ready pardon.”
“But do you really think—” began Lord Alfred, in remonstrance.