"Let me walk with you," said Julia Herbert, following. "I have sent Major Antrobus to look after the carriage. He is a friend of my cousin Sir Thomas, and supposed to be a great sportsman, but not so devoted to slaughter as was hoped. Instead of slaughtering, he is slaughtered, Lady Herbert says. I am sure I don't know by whom. Do let me walk with you a little way. It is so nice to be with you." Julia looked into Oona's face with something of the ingratiating air which she assumed to her victims of the other sex. "Dear Miss Forrester----" and then she stopped with a laugh. "I don't dare to call you by your Christian name." "It must be I then that am the dragon, though I did not know it," Oona said; but she did not ask to be called by her Christian name. "I see--you are angry with me for what I said of Mrs. Methven. It is quite true, however; that is the kind of woman she is. But I don't excuse Walter, for all that. He was very wicked to her. Ever since he was a boy at school he has been nasty to his mother. Everybody says it is her own fault, but still it was not nice of him, do you think? Oh, _I_ think him very nice, in many ways. I have known him so long. He has always been most agreeable to me--sometimes _too_ agreeable," said Julia with a smile, pausing, dwelling upon the recollection. "But his mother and he never got on. Sometimes those that are the very nicest out of doors are rather disagreeable at home. Haven't you seen that? Oh, I have, a hundred times. Of course the mother is sure to be to blame. She ought to have made a cheerful home for him, you know, and asked young people, and cheerful people, instead of a set of fogies. But she never would do that. She expected him to put up with her old-fashioned ways." Oona made no reply. She was disturbed in the ideal that had been rising within her--an ideal not all made up of sunshine and virtue, but where at least the darker shades were of a more elevated description than petty disobediences on one hand and exactions on the other. Life becomes mean and small when dragged down to this prosaic level, which was the natural level in Julia's mind, not pitiful and debasing, as it appeared to Oona. As there was no response to what she had said, Julia resumed, putting her hand with a great show of affection within Oona's arm. "I want you to let me be your friend," she said, "and I don't want you to be deceived. I fear you think too well of people; and when you hear anything against them, then you feel displeased. Oh, yes, I know. You are not pleased with me for telling the truth about the Methvens." "I wonder rather," said Oona, somewhat coldly, "that being so much a friend of Lord Erradeen you should--betray him; for we should never have known this without you."