“And you will be so rich, dear Julia,” Maude said, as she kissed her friend; “and if Harcourt and I are very poor--as we must be, unless papa gives his consent by-and-by--you’ll take us for a drive in the Park sometimes, won’t you? And if you give many parties in the season, I shan’t be able to come to them; for you wouldn’t like to see me always in the same dress--like those poor people at the Union--and I shall be obliged to get a set of black-lace flounces, like Reder--you never saw Reder, my last German governess but one--and put them on pink silk one day, and blue the next, and so on; it’s very troublesome, and the flounces don’t generally come straight; but then it looks as if one had so many dresses. Of course you’ll have boxes at _both_ houses, Julia, and on the grand tier? and you’ll buy a place in the country--and Oh, where do you mean to live in town?” Miss Desmond answered all these eager queries very demurely. Francis would make all arrangements for their future life, she said; he _had_ certainly promised her the two opera-boxes; he had made inquiries about the one house that was to be let in Park Lane; and he was anxious to discover her favourite county before taking any steps towards the purchase of an estate. “But you know he is such a dear good fellow, and has such a knack of guessing all my fancies, that really I never like to suggest anything,” Miss Desmond concluded, modestly. But, somehow or other, without making any very direct suggestions, Julia had so contrived matters, that in a few weeks her affianced husband had gratified many of the desires that had been smouldering in her breast ever since the earliest dawn of girlhood. Already the “family jools” of the Desmonds had been consigned to the oblivion of one of Julia’s shabbiest trunks, and diamonds now twinkled on Miss Desmond’s neck and arms, and gleamed here and there in her black hair, when she came down to dinner in her maize silk dress. Her toilette-table was all of a glitter with the rings she drew off her slim fingers when she disrobed at night, before the looking-glass which had so often reflected a gloomy, discontented face, but which now only gave back triumphant smiles.