If Julia would only have taken some personal interest in the baby, she might have succeeded, but she was much too clever and artistic to try any course so obvious as that. Besides, she abominated babies. 'Damp, sticky little abominations, which always squalled when you did anything to them! and scrabbled their little wet fingers over your face, which was always unpleasant, and sometimes inconvenient.' If she would have talked about bringing up young children, infant health and disease, baths, powders, pap and teething, she might have kept the Major at her side by the hour; for the new responsibilities of a parent weighed heavily upon him, and he had no one to advise with, Lady Caroline having forgotten all she ever knew on such matters, if she ever knew anything. He rode over to Eppie every day and had long talks with her on the engrossing subject; but when he returned, the billiard room or smoking room were his usual haunts. It was not long too before Julia had other matters of her own to attend to. Since the awakening of her fantastical interest in Major Steele, Augustus Wallowby's daily offerings of amorous rubbish had grown wearisome, and reply to them a positive bore. Her letters had grown intermittent, and dwindled down to the shortest billets. Augustus remonstrated--waxed plaintive--drivelled--Julia lost patience and ceased to write altogether. Had Augustus followed suit, it is likely the correspondence would not have remained long in abeyance, and that it would have been the lady who would have revived it; but Augustus dared not venture on that experiment, indeed he had become too deeply in earnest to think of it. He had thought over her pretty speeches spoken, and written in her earlier letters, and the delight of having a lord for a cousin and visitor, till from merely supposing that she must admire him very much, he had worked himself up to an almost crazy eagerness about _her_, believed himself to be cherishing a most ardent attachment, and began to feel deeply touched at his own sensibility. Likewise he had cut the ground from under his own feet; or perhaps 'burned his ships' is the more usual metaphor. On returning home from the North, his good fortune with the ladies and this new conquest were much in his thoughts, weighty hints and dark sayings babbled from his lips before he was aware, and then, to mend matters, he would explain and confide till they were made much worse. All his acquaintance knew that he was going to be married, and the younger men reverenced him in advance on account of the noble family he was about to enter, 'related to half the peerage.'