"Yes," answered Sophia: "but it is of a very dowdy, dry-looking man."
"But then his curricle!" I interrupted.
"Yes, to be sure, I should like to drive out in his curricle, of all things."
"It is very odious of the fright to beset my door as he does," Julia said.
"So it is, quite abominable; and, for my part, I hate him, and his curricle too," good-natured Sophia replied.
"But answer me," said Baron Tuille, addressing himself to me, "does the Duke of Leinster go to the continent this year?"
"What is that to you?" I asked.
"Only to satisfy poor Worcester, who is so miserable about him. For my part, I asked him why he did not run away with you by force. But he said, that force was good for nothing; and that while you permitted Leinster to visit you he was perfectly wretched. Suspense was the devil, and he could not think why Leinster bothered at all about going to Spain unless he really had some such intention."
"I believe you are all laughing at me," said I, "and I don't deserve it; for no one can say I am vain: but if I were, no vanity, not even that of the Honourable John William Ward, could construe Lord Worcester's prim conversation into love for me. True, he blushes and trembles, which, in a lad of such mature worldly manners, who has already been so much in society, does look a little like love; but this is the only sign I have witnessed."