“Yes, I suppose we are to take you with us,” Maude answered, with cruel carelessness. “Papa said that if he were not home at three, we were to go without him, and he would meet us at the château,--and it’s past three now, I declare, Julia, and we’re not dressed,” added Miss Hillary, looking at her watch; “and papa is always so particular about punctuality. Wasn’t it Lord Nelson who won the battle of Trafalgar through always being a quarter of an hour beforehand? I almost wish the French had beaten him, for then people couldn’t have quoted him against one perpetually. Will you order the carriage, Julia, dear?--or will you tell them about it, Mr. Somerset? The landau, with the bays; papa said the bays were to be used to-day.--Now Julia, dear.” The two girls ran away to dress, and reappeared in about twenty minutes; Julia very splendid in a golden-brown silk dress, and a pale pink bonnet; Miss Hillary in cloud-like garments of lace, or tulle, or areophane, that were especially becoming to her tall slender figure and the fragile style of her beauty. Maude Hillary was a very extravagant young lady, and had _carte blanche_ at Messrs. Howell and James’s, on whose account her father was wont to write heavy cheques at long intervals, without any investigation of the items; but Miss Hillary very seldom wore silk dresses, which are, after all, about the most economical thing a lady can wear. She affected gauzy fabrics, all festoons, and puffings and flounces, which were thrown aside for the profit of her maid after the third time of wearing, and ultimately figured in second-hand wardrobe repositories in the dreariest outskirts of Pimliconia. Indeed, one devoted admirer of Miss Hillary, penetrating Vauxhall bridgewards from Eccleston Square, had been startled by the apparition of his lovely partner at a recent ball dangling limply, rosebuds and all, from a peg in a dingy shop-window.