As he spoke, the Crane party came in sight, Kate and her husband leading the van, closely attended by Horace D’Almayne; while, at some little distance behind them, lingered Alice on the arm of Lord Alfred Courtland. As they came up, he was addressing her in an earnest, pleading manner. Alice appeared thoughtful and _distraite_, but the moment her eye fell upon Harry and Miss Crofton she started, coloured up, and turning to her companion, said in a hurried, eager tone-- “Such constancy and perseverance, my lord, deserve rewarding,” and as she spoke she gave him a rosebud she carried in her hand, which he fastened in his button-hole with an expression of eager delight. Alice’s words and action were neither of them lost upon her husband or his companion. CHAPTER XXXVI.--ARCADIA IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. It is popularly asserted and believed that everything has two sides to it. Even a plum-pudding has an inside and an out; and that romantic malady, yclept “love unrequited,” although at first sight it appears an entirely one-sided affair, often demonstrates its bilateral capabilities by proving a much less heart-rending business than was imagined, when the lapse of time enables one to discern the bright side of the picture. The Crane expedition to the Horticultural Fête formed no exception to this law of nature:--thus, at the moment when Harry, like Hamlet’s unfortunate papa, was having poison poured into his ear, and was gradually working himself up to the bolster-scene-in-Othello pitch, Alice, that pleasant little Desdemona, unconsciously amused herself with Cassio, Lord Courtland, emulating Dr. Watts’s “busy bee,” by flitting from flower to flower, laughing at very small jokes, and altogether conducting herself with great levity, and in a singularly undignified manner--at least, so Mr. Crane thought; and as he was said to be made of gold, his opinions ought to have partaken of the value of that precious metal. But Mr. Crane had never quite forgiven Alice for not appreciating his many excellences, and was disposed to judge her harshly. After a time, however, when the novelty of the scene began to wear off--when Alice had reviewed the contents of Howell and James’s, Swan and Edgar’s, Redmayne’s, and other ruination shops, on the fair forms of the ladies of the land--when she had “oh-how-beautiful-ed” and “isn’t-it-lovely-ed” the flowers to her heart’s content--when she had heard, and longed to dance to, the Guard’s band, suddenly a dark vision rose to her mind’s eye--her husband _tête-à-tête_ with that evil mystery, Arabella Crofton, obscured the sunshine of her spirit; the rose-coloured spectacles through which she had beheld Vanity Fair fell off; the serpent had entered in; and, for Alice Coverdale, Chiswick was Paradise no longer. Thereupon she decided that Lord Alfred was a silly, tiresome boy, and worried her with his childish nonsense; that Mr. Crane was a fractious old idiot, who ought to be shut up in an appropriate