“Meet me, then,” said Alice, “in the wilderness to-morrow. But first tell me, are you well assured of time and place?—a mistake were fatal.”
“Assure yourself my information is entirely accurate,” said the Doctor, resuming his air of consequence, which had been a little diminished during the latter part of their conference.
“May I ask,” said Alice, “through what channel you acquired such important information?”
“You may ask, unquestionably,” he answered, now completely restored to his supremacy; “but whether I will answer or not, is a very different question. I conceive neither your reputation nor my own is interested in your remaining in ignorance on that subject. So I have my secrets as well as you, mistress; and some of them, I fancy, are a good deal more worth knowing.”
“Be it so,” said Alice, quietly; “if you will meet me in the wilderness by the broken dial at half-past five exactly, we will go together to-morrow, and watch them as they come to the rendezvous. I will on the way get the better of my present timidity, and explain to you the means I design to employ to prevent mischief. You can perhaps think of making some effort which may render my interference, unbecoming and painful as it must be, altogether unnecessary.”
“Nay, my child,” said the Doctor, “if you place yourself in my hands, you will be the first that ever had reason to complain of my want of conduct, and you may well judge you are the very last (one excepted) whom I would see suffer for want of counsel. At half-past five, then, at the dial in the wilderness—and God bless our undertaking!”
Here their interview was interrupted by the sonorous voice of Sir Henry Lee, which shouted their names, “Daughter Alice—Doctor Rochecliffe,” through passage and gallery.
“What do you here,” said he, entering, “sitting like two crows in a mist, when we have such rare sport below? Here is this wild crack-brained boy Louis Kerneguy, now making me laugh till my sides are fit to split, and now playing on his guitar sweetly enough to win a lark from the heavens.—Come away with you, come away. It is hard work to laugh alone.”