"Oh, no, not half. There have been moments!--And then the romance of you, Lord Erradeen! It is delightful to touch upon the borders of romance. And your rank! I feel a great many inches higher, and ever so much elevated in my own estimation, by being privileged to walk by your lordship's side. When are you going to take your seat and help to rule your country? They say the House of Commons is to be preferred for that. But there is nothing so delightful as a peer." "How lucky for me that you should think so. I may walk with you, then, to the----" "Corner," said Julia, "not too far; oh, certainly, not too far: or we shall have all the old ladies, male and female, making comments." "I don't care for the old ladies--or their comments," said Walter: the fun was languid, perhaps, but yet it afforded a little occupation when one had nothing else to do. "You? Oh, of course not, as you will escape presently, and know all my wiles by heart already, it cannot make much difference to you. It is I who have to be considered, if you please, my lord. They will say there is _that_ Julia Herbert at her old tricks, trying to take in poor Lord Erradeen--a poor, innocent young man in the snares of that designing baggage! They will probably add that the police should put a stop to it," Miss Herbert said. "The deluded old ladies! Without knowing that it is exactly the other way----" "Now that is the prettiest speech you ever made," said Julia. "I never heard you say anything so nice before. You must have been in very good society since you went away. Tell me, who was it?" she asked with her most insinuating look. They were old practitioners both. They understood each other: they had flirted since they had been in long clothes, and no harm had ever come of it. This is, no doubt, what Miss Herbert would have said had any feminine critic interposed; but there was something more serious, as the feminine critic would have divined, at once, in Julia's eye. She meant more, not less, than she said; and she was anxious to know, having her eyes upon all contingencies like a wise general, what rivals might have come in the way. "I have met scarcely any one," said Walter. "You cannot conceive what a lonely place it is. Oh, of course there are people about. I was promised a great many visitors had I stayed. On the other hand, even in winter, it is wonderfully beautiful. Coming back to this perfectly flat country, one discovers for the first time how beautiful it is." "Yes," said Julia, indifferently; the beauty of the country did not excite her. "I have seen a photograph of your old castle. You can only get to it by water, Captain Underwood says. Oh, he has been a great authority on the subject since you went away. One of your castles is on Loch Houran; but the others----" "If you like to call them castles," said Walter, gently flattered by these queries, "there are two of them on Loch Houran. One I call a ruin, and the other a shooting-box----"