“And that excursion, that ramble, or whatever be the name for it, you were to take together?”
“It is a bliss, I am afraid, I must deny myself.”
“You are wrong, my Lord,—very wrong. My brothers at least assure me that Julia is charming en tête-à-tête. Indeed, Augustus says one does not know her at all till you have passed an hour or two in such confidential intimacy. He says 'she comes out'—whatever that may be—wonderfully.”
“Oh, she comes out, does she?” said he, caressing his whiskers.
“That was his phrase for it. I take it to mean that she ventures to talk with a freedom more common on the Continent than in these islands. Is that coming out, my Lord?”
“Well, I half suspect it is,” said he, smiling faintly.
“And I suppose men like that?”
“I 'm afraid, my dear Miss Bramleigh,” said he, with a mock air of deploring—“I 'm afraid that in these degenerate days men are very prone to like whatever gives them least trouble in everything, and if a woman will condescend to talk to us on our own topics, and treat them pretty much in our own way, we like it, simply because it diminishes the distance between us, and saves us that uphill clamber we are obliged to take when you insist upon our scrambling up to the high level you live in.”
“It is somewhat of an ignoble confession you have made there,” said she, haughtily.
“I know it—I feel it—I deplore it,” said he, affectedly.