Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/622

614 his handkerchief let it lie where it fell; and he must have been hit harder than his intimates would have supposed possible. Instead, however, of quietly withdrawing the honour which he had proposed to confer upon the family, he seemed to be piqued into a determination to subdue this wonderful girl who did not jump down his throat the moment he opened his mouth, for he got quite earnest and alert in his attentions to the pretty Alice. The very evening of our arrival saw him standing by her side while she sang a song; on the following morning he joined our riding party, though we started at the preposterously early hour of eleven; and shortly afterwards I found him in the hot-house—“picking a nothgay, by Jove!” And a remarkably fine nosegay it was, and a deal of mischief he did in culling it. The gardener took me into his confidence afterwards, and the language made use of by that shocking old man was awful.

It was in the afternoon of this same day that we all noticed an importance and excitement about my uncle which seemed to betoken the bottling up of important intelligence. At dinner-time he uncorked.

“Well,” he began, “I had a visitor to-day.”

“A visitor?”

“Yes; a ! A German gentleman, endowed with the power of corresponding with those spiritual beings whom with all our endeavours we have never been able to summon, is now staying in the neighbourhood, and it having been supernaturally intimated to him that I was desirous of communicating with the Unseen World, he has kindly offered to hold a séance here this evening at eight o’clock. What is the matter, Alice?”

“Nothing, papa.”

“Why you are as pale as the tablecloth!”

“Am I? Well, I do feel rather frightened at the idea of this—this mysterious man coming so soon.”

“Don’t be fwightened, Miss Mawion; I’ll thwash him if he twys to hurt you,” said Ormond.

“Thank you,” said Alice.

“Come, come, Alice, you must get over your alarm,” cried her father, “for Herr Fritzjok does not talk English very fluently, and as you are the only German scholar of the party we look to you as our interpreter.”

When we joined the ladies in the drawing-room Alice had recovered her colour, but was still, I thought, rather nervous and excited. She would be silent for a long time, and then begin to laugh and talk louder than anyone, and then relapse into silence, glancing at the door whenever she thought that no one observed her.

“Eight o’clock!” cried my aunt, as the time-piece struck the first stroke of that hour.

And as she spoke we heard a ring at the front-door. There was something awful in such Monte Christo punctuality.

“Herr Fritzjok!” cried the servant.

And there entered a tall, powerful man, with