ALICE LAUDER.
CHAPTER I.
THEY all said it would never do; and, as a matter of fact, it didn’t.There was some comfort in that—to the other people. Whether it was at all consoling to Alice Lauder to know that the inevitable result had been foreseen, prophesied, deplored, and commiserated by the whole of her acquaintances on board ship, is another matter; yet, as often as she went over the whole affair in her thoughts, she declared to herself that she could not have acted differently, even from the very beginning.
The beginning of it all was not a very cheerful day for a beginning. The mail steamer “Suez” had put into this forlorn Australian port for a few hours, to pick up the mails and to take in any incidental passengers who might easily be anxious to get away from St. Paul’s Bay. The
