"Oh, I should think so," cried Katie, "everybody thought it was such a pity that Lord Erradeen took him up—and then to see him with you! Oona Forrester would be very sorry," Katie added after a pause.
"Miss Forrester!" Walter felt himself colour high with pleasure at the sound of this name, then feeling this a sort of self-betrayal, coloured yet more. "You know her?"
Katie turned round upon him with a mixture of amusement and disdain. "Know her! is there any one on the loch, or near it, that doesn't know her?" she said.
"I beg your pardon," cried Walter. "I forgot for the moment." Then he too retired within himself for so long a time that it was Katie's turn to be affronted. He devoted himself to his dinner too, but he did not eat. At last "Why should she be sorry?" he asked curtly as if there had been no pause.
"How can I tell you now while he sits there?" said Katie, lowering her voice; "some other time perhaps—most likely you will call in the day-time, in the morning, now that we have made your acquaintance."
"If you will permit me," Walter said.
"Oh yes, we will permit you. Papa has always wanted to know you, and so have I since—If you are allowed to come: but perhaps you will not be allowed to come, Lord Erradeen."
"Will not be allowed? What does that mean? and since when, may I ask, have you been so kind as to want to know me? I wish I had been aware."
"Since——well, of course, since you were Lord Erradeen," said the girl, "we did not know of you before: and people like us who have nothing but money are always very fond of knowing a lord—everybody says so at least. And it is true, in a way. Papa likes it very much indeed. He likes to say my friend, the Earl of ——, or my friend, the Duke of ----. He knows a great many lords, though perhaps you would not think it. He is very popular with fine people. They say he is not at all vulgar considering, and never takes anything upon him. Oh, yes, I know it all very well. I am a new person in the other way—I believe it is far more what you call snobbish—but I can't bear the fine people. Of course they are very nice to me; but I always remember that they think I am not vulgar considering, and that I never pretend to be better than I am."
There was something in this address spoken with a little heat, which touched Walter's sense of humour, a faculty which in his better moods made his own position, with all its incongruities, ruefully amusing to him. "I wonder," he said, "if I pretend to be better than I am? But then I should require in the first place to know what I am more distinctly than I do. Now you, on that important point, have, I presume, no doubt or difficulty?——"