"Ah! so are we country neighbours, _amis d'enfance_: but I don't go everywhere, Lord Erradeen. Yes, I called you Walter; that was for a purpose, to pique her curiosity, to make her ask who was that forward horrid girl. Did she? I hope she was piqued." "I heard nothing about any forward, horrid girl. She is not that sort of person. But I prefer to hear about yourself rather than to discuss Miss Williamson. When did you come? and where are you? What a pity," Walter said hypocritically, "that you come so late." "Ah, isn't it? but what then? We are too poor to think of the season. This is what one's fine friends always do. They ask us for the last week, when everything is stifled in dust--when all you revellers are dead tired and want nothing so much as to go away--then is the moment for poor relations. But mind that you come to Bruton Street," Julia said. "It gives me consequence. They are not very much in society, and a title always tells." "You do not leave any ground for my vanity. I am not to suppose that I am asked for any other reason." Julia pressed his arm a little with her fingers. She sighed and gave him a look full of meaning. "The Tom Herberts will think a great deal of you," she said; "they will instantly ask you to dinner. As for me--what am I that I should express any feeling? We are country neighbours, as you were saying. But enough of me. Let us return to our--lamb," cried Julia. "Tell me, have you seen a great deal of her? How little I thought when we used to laugh about Miss Williamson that it would come true."