These amiable anxieties were the exact sentiments suited to the occasion. Mrs. Thorne expressed them with agitated dignity, and, of course, no one laughed again. Consolations, even, were forthcoming. Dr. Thorne had been seen, in the flesh, outside Luc Casino; or, if not the Doctor, some old gentleman exactly like him, with a puggaree, sand-shoes, a white umbrella, and smoking an enormous cigar, just like the cigar poor dear Doctor Thorne always used to smoke. It was the prettiest, least wise, of the De Carteret sisters who offered this bit of evidence. The gentleman was observed to look in for a while at the dancing, and then to walk away in the direction, Ada de Carteret believed, of the sea. ‘The sea! And who can tell that the sea has not surrounded him! In out-of-the-way French places the tide always swells up with a circuit.’ Tears were in Linda’s voice as she proclaimed this maritime fact. ‘I am most uneasy.’ She adjusted her Indian shawl with grace round her shoulders, then skipped lightly to land. ‘Robbie ought never to have been brought--it was all my selfishness--I am torn in pieces by remorse.’ The young ladies, with the exception of one flint soul, cried, ‘No, no,’ in chorus. Mrs. Thorne positively must not say these dreadful things, when every one knew she had such a _character_ for unselfishness! Mrs. Verschoyle felt for her smelling-salts, then settled herself gloomily down, prepared for the worst. Mrs. Verschoyle felt within her the courage of a prophet whose own dark sayings are on the eve of fulfilment. Gaston Arbuthnot, in his quiet, unmoved manner, rose. Stepping on shore, Gaston volunteered to go in search of the missing Doctor. These were just the scenes wherein Linda so infinitely diverted him,--Frenchman as he was in three-fourths of his nature,--little scenes in which, on the boards of domestic life, she played such admirable farce without knowing it! ‘I shall walk straight back to Langrune, Mrs. Thorne. Notwithstanding your solemn tone, in spite of Miss de Carteret’s evidence, I believe the Doctor has never missed any of us, and at this moment is smoking his cigar, possibly sipping his “little glass,” at the Hotel Chateaubriand.’ ‘Unless you are here in a quarter of an hour, sharp, we shall leave you behind,’ called out Lord Rex, when Gaston had proceeded some paces on his errand. ‘The _Princess_ is chartered until to-morrow only. Whatever the rest of us do, the skipper will take care not to lose his tide.’ Linda Thorne, by this time, in her agitation, and her Indian shawl, was at Gaston’s side. So the exordium might be taken as addressed to them both.