“All right,” returned Harry; “we’ll go in style, and call on the old duchess. I’ll wear a red coat, and stick a peacock’s feather in my hat, if that will please you. It’s a pity she’s so like a Chimpanzee! Most probably she is related to the monkey tribe--suppose we ask her when we call; it will be a new and original style of conversation, eh? Well, ta ta! It’s so late now that I’m afraid you won’t have the felicity of seeing me again till dinner-time;” and without allowing his wife an opportunity of remonstrating, Harry closed the door, and was soon paying off the long-bills in a way in which they scarcely approved of having their “little accounts” settled. Alice watched him depart with a smile, which faded into a sigh as she turned to write an acceptance to the dinner invitation, and then employ and amuse herself as best she might, during the weary hours which must elapse ere her husband would return. Lord Allerton was the eldest son of the Duke and Duchess of Brentwood, who were the great people, _par excellence_, of the Coverdale Park neighbourhood; and when the Duke and Duchess came to spend their Christmas in the country, Alice, stimulated thereunto by the conversation of the Mesdames Jones, Brown, and Robinson of those parts, felt slightly curious to know whether these ancient and venerable limbs of the aristocracy would deign to honour her by a call, and was proportionably gratified and bored when, on a dreary morning, the dull old Duchess came and paid her a singularly heavy and uninteresting visit. To induce Harry to accompany her when she returned this equally flattering and alarming civility, had been for several days the sole object of Alice’s existence,--an object in which, as the reader may perceive by the foregoing conversation, she had hitherto been unsuccessful.