“How you do hate that poor Mr. D’Almayne!” returned Alice, laughing. “Do you know, I think you are jealous of him.”
“I was once, and that’s the truth—very savage it made me too; for if you could have been fascinated by such a puppy as that, I felt I had mistaken your character in toto, and that the Alice I loved was a creature of my own imagination, not a reality—but I soon saw my error.”
Alice glanced at him archly. “Are you quite sure you did not fall into a greater mistake when you fancied yourself so certain of my indifference?” she inquired.
Harry fixed his eyes upon her with a look of inquiry, which, when he saw that she was joking, changed to an expression of tenderness;—“I could not look in that dear face, where every thought can be read as in a book, and remain jealous for five minutes,” he answered.
Alice made no reply, unless placing her little hand in that of her husband, with a confiding gesture, can be called so.
The wind continuing fresh, the unfortunate Countess did not re-appear; but Coverdale and his wife, being so happily constituted that the tossing produced no ill effects upon them, remained upon deck till the vessel reached Dover. Amid the scene of confusion attending the arrival of a steamer, Harry, having secured his luggage, was standing sentinel over a moderately-sized pyramid, which he had caused to be erected of the same, when Alice, then seated upon a large black trunk, which she had seduced her husband into buying in the Rue St. Honoré, and which would very easily have held her, bonnet, cloak, and all, suddenly exclaimed, “Oh, Harry! do look at that young exquisite who has just come on board; why he’s the very moral, as the old women say, of the person we’ve been discussing—Mr. D’Almayne!”
“By Jove, he’s more than the moral!” returned Coverdale, as the individual thus alluded to advanced towards them bowing and smiling, “it’s the veritable Horace himself, I vow—talk of the devil——. My dear fellow, how are you? who’d have thought of seeing you here! You’ve not turned Custom-house officer, have you? I’ve nothing contraband about me, except this morning’s Galignani; if you are inclined to make a seizure of that, you’re very welcome.”
“You’re nearer the mark than you imagine, my dear sir,” was the reply; “though not exactly a professional attaché to the Customs, I must own that I am here as an amateur in that capacity—my object being to facilitate the transmission of a lady’s luggage.”
“Yes?—how interesting! I hope she’s young and pretty,” observed Alice. “Come Mr. D’Almayne, having let us so far into the secret, it’s no use to affect the mysterious, so tell us who and where she is.”
“Where she is, perhaps you may be able to inform me, my dear Mrs. Coverdale,” replied D’Almayne, smoothing his moustaches. “The object of my search is a young German lady, the Countess Bertha von Rosenthal, to whom I have promised my friend, the Honourable Mrs. Botherby, to act as preux chevalier. Accordingly I came down by train this morning, provided with an order from the Board of Customs to the people here to pass the Countess’s luggage unexamined, and show her every attention which may facilitate her transit; thence I am to escort her and her property to Park Lane; by all which ‘double, double, toil and trouble,’ I secure an early introduction to, and confer a favour upon, a young and lovely heiress.”