“What a detestable woman that Miss Crofton is! I’m sure I shall never be able to endure her. I see now where Kate’s faults came from. Miss Crofton has taught her to be worldly-minded, and ambitious, and all sorts of horrid things which she never used to be; and the creature is an old acquaintance of yours, too! Did you know her well--intimately?” “Eh? yes! I saw a good deal of her at one time. How slow this fellow drives, we shall lose the overture!” was Harry’s reply, which, if he intended thereby to change the subject of the conversation, proved a dead failure, for Alice continued:-- “Oh! then you are not mere acquaintances, as she tried to make out! I thought she wasn’t speaking the truth. Well, and did you like her?--I dare say you did, for I feel sure she was in love with you; indeed I think she is still, by the way she casts down those great rolling eyes of hers whenever you say a word to her. I declare I feel quite jealous.” Coverdale paused for a moment, ere he replied: “My dear Alice, you speak thoughtlessly, but you do not know how such remarks annoy me--faults I have, and more serious, ones than until lately I was at all aware of; but to suppose that since I first saw you, I have ever devoted one minute’s thought to any other woman breathing, would be to do me a foul injustice.” Alice perceived, from his manner of speaking, that her vague suspicions had really pained him, and having no other ground for them but an instinct which she confessed to herself to be utterly unsanctioned by reason, she determined to confess her sin and obtain absolution. This is in many cases a tedious and difficult operation, but when individuals are on those easy and agreeable terms which sometimes last so long as a year after marriage, the process becomes greatly facilitated. Thus, by a little graceful and appropriate pantomime, Alice caused it to be understood that she felt deeply penitent, and in a state of mental self-accusation only to be allayed by a remedy consisting (as some light-minded jester has phrased it), like a sermon, of “two heads and an application.” When this specific for female grief had been duly administered by Harry, peace was for the time restored, and the evening passed away most harmoniously in every sense of the word. CHAPTER XXXIII.--TELEMACHUS AND MENTOR.