A contemptuous smile, and a slight negative motion of the lips answered the question; and, for a moment, their eyes met. Alice’s must have been a singularly expressive glance, for Harry read therein that she was anxious and dispirited, but felt a vague and general reliance on his willingness and ability to afford her comfort and protection. Had Mr. Crane known the exact feelings with which Coverdale grasped a finger-glass, and mentally calculated the amount of force it would require to launch the missile against the chinchilla-crowned head of his opposite neighbour, that worthy man would scarcely have ventured to continue his mild and meaningless prosing so contentedly. CHAPTER XII.--HARRY PUTS HIS FOOT IN IT. The moment Harry reseated himself at the dining-table, two of his old college friends placed themselves beside him, and plunging at once into recollections of “auld-lang-syne,” completely monopolised him. The sound of his own name eagerly pronounced, roused him at length from an interesting reminiscence of how gloriously drunk Jones of Magdalen had been at Tippleton’s wine-party (when he _would_ sing a pathetic ballad, beginning, “There’s a wail on the mountain!” and was stopped by a roar of laughter, chorusing the inquiry, “how the deuce it--the whale--got there?”). The speaker was Mr. Hazlehurst. “Excuse my interrupting your conversation for a few minutes, Mr. Coverdale,” he began, “but we want your opinion. You’ve travelled and seen the working of different tariff regulations, and had opportunities of comparing the prosperity of other nations with that of our own, while at the same time you are a sufficiently large landed-proprietor to give you a stake in the country, and to induce you to feel a strong interest in the general prospects of the agricultural population. I am sure you must agree with me in considering protection a most essential and salutary measure.”