“I’m sure I ought to feel very much obliged to you, Mr. Coverdale--and indeed I do; this is the second really good-natured thing you’ve done by me to-day.” The tone in which she spoke so completely betrayed that surprise was the feeling uppermost in her mind, that Harry, slightly piqued, could not help replying-- “You did not, then, give me credit for possessing the least particle of good-nature?” Alice smiled as she answered-- “If I had had a proper degree of faith in Arthur’s representations, I need not have felt surprise.” The delicate irony of this reply was not lost upon Coverdale; but he knew that he had deserved it, and, with the ready frankness which was one of his best characteristics, he hastened to acknowledge it. “I certainly have done little towards practically vindicating the character your brother’s partiality has bestowed upon me,” he said; “but I must be allowed to plead in justification, that I am quite aware of my own deficiencies, and told Arthur that I had been roughing it abroad so long, that I was totally unfitted for ladies’ society. He would not admit the excuse; but it was a full, true, and sufficient one, nevertheless.” As he uttered the last words, a dazzling flash of lightning appeared almost to envelop them, followed instantaneously by a deafening peal of thunder. Half blinded by the blaze of light, the frightened horses stopped abruptly, then, terrified at the prolonged thunder, tried to turn short round; foiled in this attempt by the skill and promptitude of their driver, they began rearing and plunging in a way which threatened every moment to overturn the phaeton. Fortunately the road happened to be unusually wide at this point, and Harry, who never throughout the affair in the slightest degree lost his presence of mind, deciding that whatever might most effectually frighten the horses, would create the impulse they would eventually obey, determined to try the effect of a little judicious discipline. Accordingly, standing up, he began to administer the whip to their sleek sides with an amount of strength and determination which, from the contrast it afforded to the mild and timid driving to which they were accustomed, so astonished the animals, that bounding forward with a snatch which tried the soundness of their harness, they dashed off at a furious gallop; at the same moment, a second peal of thunder, even louder than the preceding one, increased their alarm to such a degree, that Coverdale, despite his utmost efforts, found it completely beyond his power to hold them in. CHAPTER VIII.--HARRY CONDESCENDS TO PLAY THE AGREEABLE. “Miss Hazlehurst!--Alice! are you mad? Only sit still, don’t go and scream or anything, and all will come right.”