"Oh, Grannie," cried Vera, and walked out of the room in a sad silence, which made Grannie rather sorry for herself--as a poor old woman who was being trampled upon by everybody. The long hot journey had tired her limbs and her nerves, and this damp, grey London, this shabby lodging-house had been too irritating for placid endurance. Somebody must suffer; and Lidcott, that sturdy child of the West Riding, was apt to retaliate. Vera was perfectly sincere in her indifference to that grand event of "coming out," which had always been held before her by Grannie as the crown of girlhood, the crisis upon which all a young person's future depended, the opening of a gate into the paradise of youth, the paradise of dances and dinners, treats of every kind, where beauty was to be surrounded with a circle of admirers, among whom there would be at least one--the eligible, the rich, the inexpressive he--who could lift her at once to the _summum bonum_, whether in Carlton House Terrace, or Park Lane, whether titled or untitled---but rich--rich--_ricconaccio_. No, Vera had no eager desire for crowds of well-dressed people--for music and lights and dancing, and those things that she had heard the young cousins, still in the school-room, talk about with rapture and longing. The joys she longed for, while the slow spring and the fierce hot summer went by in the dull side street and the lodging-house drawing-room, were woods and streams, and rural joys of all kinds, such as she had known in that one happy summer of her childhood, for slow rides in leafy glades, in and out of sunshine and shadow, for the sound of a waterfall on moonlit nights, for young companions like the cousin who was once so kind--for many more books, and spacious rooms, and portraits of historic people--beautiful women--valiant soldiers--looking at her from a panelled wall. These were the things she wanted, and the want of which made life dreary. In that long summer and autumn she often thought of the girl who was lying between the olive woods and the tideless sea; and, meditating on that short life, she could but compare it with her own, and wonder at the difference. Is was not the difference that wealth made--but the difference that love made, that filled her with wonder as she recalled all that Giulia had told her of her childhood and girlhood.