Georgiana condescended to borrow the carriage and reached her friend's house a little after noon. The two ladies kissed each other when they met—of course, and then Miss Longestaffe at once began. "Julia, I did think that you would at any rate have asked me to your second ball."
"Of course you would have been asked if you had been up in Bruton Street. You know that as well as I do. It would have been a matter of course."
"What difference does a house make?"
"But the people in a house make a great deal of difference, my dear. I don't want to quarrel with you, my dear; but I can't know the Melmottes."
"Who asks you?"
"You are with them."
"Do you mean to say that you can't ask anybody to your house without asking everybody that lives with that person? It's done every day."
"Somebody must have brought you."
"I would have come with the Primeros, Julia."
"I couldn't do it. I asked Damask and he wouldn't have it. When that great affair was going on in February, we didn't know much about the people. I was told that everybody was going and therefore I got Sir Damask to let me go. He says now that he won't let me know them; and after having been at their house I can't ask you out of it, without asking them too."