“But, Harry, dear, I shall break my neck, or tumble into the sea, if I attempt to walk; just look how its rolling about!” remonstrated Alice, whose essentially terrestrial education had given her rather a horror of all nautical matters.
“We’ll fall in together then,” returned Harry, laughing; “at all events don’t let us fall out about it. Come along, little wife, and trust yourself to me; I’ve paced a vessel’s deck when the sea’s shown rather a different sort of surface from that which it wears to-day.”
As he spoke, he placed his arm round his wife’s slender waist, and half supported, half led her across the deck in safety.
“What is her name, Harry?” inquired Alice, as they were effecting the transit.
“Bertha seems to be her Christian name—of course her surname is something unpronounceable and appalling; but if you call her Countess Bertha that will do; at all events, as long as our acquaintance with her is likely to last,” was the reply.
Alice having never before encountered a real, live Countess, felt a little shy at first; but the young foreigner’s manner, which was perfectly easy without being too familiar, soon re-assured her, and the two girls (for the Countess appeared little older than Alice) chatted away, at first in French, but when it came out that the stranger likewise understood English, in that language, to their mutual satisfaction. But in about half-an-hour a breeze (not metaphorical, but literal) sprung up, and the Countess signified her wish to retire to the cabin, upon which Coverdale summoned her maid, and then assisted her to effect the desired change of locality.
CHAPTER XIX.—A COMEDY OF ERRORS.
“T There now, I consider I’ve done the polite in the first style of fashion and elegance,” observed Harry, self-complacently, as he rejoined his wife; “Horace D’Almayne himself could not have polished off the young woman more handsomely, for all his moustaches.”