“I do when I can. The evening, however, to one who—who—”
“—Has an eye on posterity! Of course! It is gold and diamonds! How silly all our pursuits must appear in your eyes! But I hope you will make an exception in my favor!”
“I shall be most happy,” responded Walter, cordially.
“I will not ask you to come and be absorbed in a crowd—not the first time at least! Gould you not manage to come and see me in the morning?”
“I am at your ladyship’s service,” replied Walter.
“Then come—let me see!—the day after to-morrow—about five o’clock. 17, Goodrich Square.”
Walter could not but be flattered that Lady Tremaine was so evidently pleased with him. She called his profession an aristocracy too! therefore she was not patronizing him, but receiving him on the same social level! We can not blame him for the inexperience which allowed him to hold his head a little higher as he walked home.
There was little danger of his forgetting the appointment. Lady Tremaine received him in what she called her growlery, with cordiality. By and by she led the way toward literature, and after they had talked of several new books—
“We are not in this house altogether strange,” she said, “to your profession. My daughter Lufa is an authoress in her way. You, of course, never heard of her, but it is twelve months since her volume of verse came out.”
Surely Walter had, somewhere about that time, when helping his friend Sullivan, seen a small ornate volume of verses, with a strange name like that on the title-page! Whether he had written a notice of it he could not remember.