"You speak," said Walter, "as if they changed hands every year."
"Oh, not that exactly; but I remember two; and I might have remembered others, for we have only been at Loch Houran since papa got so rich."
"What a pleasant way of remembering dates!"
"Do you think so, Lord Erradeen? Now I should think that to have been rich always, and your father before you, and never to have known any difference, would be so much more pleasant."
"There may perhaps be something to be said on both sides," said Walter; "but I am no judge—for the news of my elevation, such as it is, came to me very suddenly, too suddenly to be agreeable, without any warning."
Katie reconsidered her decision in the matter of Lord Erradeen; perhaps though he knew nobody, he might not be quite unworthy cultivation, and besides, she had finished her entrée. She said, "Didn't you know?" turning to him again her once-averted eyes.
"I had not the faintest idea; it came upon me like a thunderbolt," he said. "You perceive that you must treat me with a little indulgence in respect to dukes, &c.—even if I had any taste for society, which I haven't," he added, with a touch of bitterness in his tone.
"Oh," said Katie, looking at him much more kindly; then she bent towards him with quite unexpected familiarity, and said, lowering her voice, but in the most distinct whisper, "And where then did you pick up that odious man?"
Walter could not but laugh as he looked across the table at the unconscious object of this attack.
"I observe that ladies never like him," he said; "at home it is the same."