"I have heard a fairy tale," she said, "and it is true----"
"I suppose you mean about me," said Walter. "Yes, I am afraid it is true. I don't exactly know who I am at present."
"Afraid!" cried July. "Ah, you know you don't mean that. At all events, you are no longer just the old Walter whom we have known all our lives."
There was another girl with her whom Walter knew but slightly, but who justified the plural pronoun.
"On the contrary, I was going to say, when you interrupted me----"
"That though I did not know who I was in the face of the world, I was always the old Walter, &c. A man, I believe, can never lose his Christian name."
"Nor a woman either," said July. "That is the only thing that cannot be taken from us. We are supposed, you know, rather to like the loss of the other one."
"I have heard so," said Walter, who was not unaccustomed to this sort of fencing. "But I suppose it is not true."
"Oh," said July, "if it were for the same reason that makes you change your name, I should not mind. But there is no peerage in our family that I know of, and I should not have any chance if there were, alas! Good-bye, Lord Erradeen. It is a lovely name! And may I always speak to you when I meet you, though you are such a grand personage? We do not hope to see you at the Cottage now, but mamma will like to know that you still recognise an old friend."
"I shall come and ask Mrs. Herbert what she thinks of it all," Walter said.
July's brown eyes flashed out with triumph as she laughed and waved her hand to him. She said--
"It will be too great an honour," and curtseyed; then laughed again as she went on, casting a glance at him over her shoulder.
He laughed too; he was young, and he was gratified even by this undisguised provocation, though he could not help saying to himself, with a slight beat of his heart, how near he was to falling in love with that girl! What a good thing it was that he did not--_now_!
As for July, she looked at him with a certain ferocity, as if she would have devoured him. To think of all that boy had it in his power to give if he pleased, and to think how little a poor girl could do!