“May I ask you, has he consented to receive instruction in deportment and pronunciation?”

Annette did not answer.

“If practice makes perfect, he must be near the mark by this time.”

She continued silent.

“I dare say, in domestic life, he’s as amiable as he is hospitable, and it must be a daily gratification to see him in his Court suit.”

“I have not seen him in his Court suit.”

“That is his coyness.”

“People talk of those things.”

“The common people scandalize the great, about whom they know nothing, you mean!  I am sure that is true, and living in Courts one must be keenly aware of it.  But what a splendid sky and-sea!”

“Is it not?”

Annette echoed his false rapture with a candour that melted him.

He was preparing to make up for lost time, when the wild waving of a parasol down a road to the right, coming from the town, caused Annette to stop and say, “I think that must be Mrs. Cavely.  We ought to meet her.”

Fellingham asked why.

“She is so fond of walks,” Anisette replied, with a tooth on her lip

Fellingham thought she seemed fond of runs.

Mrs. Cavely joined them, breathless.  “My dear! the pace you go at!” she shouted.  “I saw you starting.  I followed, I ran, I tore along.  I feared I never should catch you.  And to lose such a morning of English scenery!

“Is it not heavenly?”

“One can’t say more,” Fellingham observed, bowing.

“I am sure I am very glad to see you again, sir.  You enjoy Crikswich?”

“Once visited, always desired, like Venice, ma’am.  May I venture to inquire whether Mr. Tinman has presented his Address?”

“The day after to-morrow.  The appointment is made with him,” said Mrs. Cavely, more officially in manner, “for the day after to-morrow.  He is excited, as you may well believe.  But Mr. Smith is an immense relief to him—­the very distraction he wanted.  We have become one family, you know.”

“Indeed, ma’am, I did not know it,” said Fellingham.

The communication imparted such satiric venom to his further remarks, that Annette resolved to break her walk and dismiss him for the day.

He called at the house on the beach after the dinner-hour, to see Mr. Van Diemen Smith, when there was literally a duel between him and Tinman; for Van Diemen’s contribution to the table was champagne, and that had been drunk, but Tinman’s sherry remained.  Tinman would insist on Fellingham’s taking a glass.  Fellingham parried him with a sedate gravity of irony that was painfully perceptible to Anisette.  Van Diemen at last backed Tinman’s hospitable intent, and, to Fellingham’s astonishment, he found that he had been supposed by these two men to be bashfully retreating from a seductive offer all the time that his tricks of fence and transpiercings of one of them had been marvels of skill.