“What I should suggest is to walk slowly backwards and forwards inside the gate, and watch for their arrival,” returned Arabella, wishing in her secret soul that one of the barouche-horses might have fallen dead lame, or that any other catastrophe, not involving injury to life or limb, might have befallen the rest of the party. After parading up and down with most laudable perseverance for nearly half an hour, during which time the crowd grew thicker and thicker, and everybody arrived except the party they were in search of, Harry suddenly exclaimed,-- “You’ll be tired to death with all this pushing and squeezing; they must have come some shorter way, and got here before us; let us go on to the conservatory, we shall meet them there, I dare say.” When they reached the conservatory, however, they found the crowd so dense that to attempt to discover their missing friends would have involved a difficulty, beside which that popular definition of a forlorn hope, “looking for a needle in a bottle of hay,” would have sunk into comparative insignificance. There were a couple of chairs near the exit from the conservatory, from which a lady and gentleman rose as they approached. “Suppose we take possession of those seats,” suggested Arabella, “and watch the people as they come out; I must honestly confess I am both hot and tired.” “I sympathise in the first adjective,” returned Harry, taking off his hat to allow the air to cool his heated brow; “I’ve walked up hill through heather on the moors for six hours at a stretch, and not been so warm as this; but then I must own I was in better condition; one eats too many dinners in London, don’t you see, and can’t get exercise enough to keep a fellow in working order.” Having made a suitable reply to this and sundry other thoroughly Harry Coverdale-ish remarks, Miss Crofton turned the conversation by asking-- “Pray, is that Mr. D’Almayne a particular favourite of yours?” “Not a bit of it,” was the unhesitating reply; “rather the other thing, in fact. I consider him a confounded puppy; and have what you ladies call a presentiment that some of these days I shall be obliged to give him a lesson which he will not forget in a hurry.” “Then you also have observed--” began Arabella. “I have observed nothing in particular,” interrupted Harry, quickly; “but I know this, if I were old Crane I would not have an insufferable, ridiculous, young fop dangling about my house every day, and all day long.” “I think it is silly and imprudent in Kate to allow it,” returned Arabella, “and I ventured to tell her so, but she did not take the hint kindly, and I have not attempted to recur to the subject. I am afraid her marriage has not improved her; I really believe since I spoke to her she has been kinder to Mr. D’Almayne than before; he and his insinuating young friend, Lord Alfred Courtland, have almost lived in Park Lane this last week.”