ay either, and Ethelberta
began to look pale with fear.

'Why don't you go out?' said Picotee timidly.

'I can hardly tell: I have been expecting some one.'

'When she comes I must run up to mother at once, must I not?' said clever
Picotee.

'It is not a lady,' said Ethelberta blandly. She came then and stood by
Picotee, and looked musingly out of the window. 'I may as well tell you,
perhaps,' she continued. 'It is Mr. Julian. He is--I suppose--my lover,
in plain English.'

'Ah!' said Picotee.

'Whom I am not going to marry until he gets rich.'

'Ah--how strange! If I had him--such a lover, I mean--I would marry him
if he continued poor.'

'I don't doubt it, Picotee; just as you come to London without caring
about consequences, or would do any other crazy thing and not mind in the
least what came of it. But somebody in the family must take a practical
view of affairs, or we should all go to the dogs.'

Picotee recovered from the snubbing which she felt that she deserved, and
charged gallantly by saying, with delicate showings of indifference, 'Do
you love this Mr. What's-his-name of yours?'

'Mr. Julian? O, he's a very gentlemanly man. That is, except when he is
rude, and ill-uses me, and will not come and apologize!'

'If I had him--a lover, I would ask him to come if I wanted him to.'

Ethelberta did not give her mind to this remark; but, drawing a long
breath, said, with a pouting laugh, which presaged unreality, 'The idea
of his getting indifferent now! I have been intending to keep him on
until I got tired of his attentions, and then put an end to them by
marrying him; but here is he, before he has hardly declared himself,
forgetting my existence as much as if he had vowed to love and cherish me
for life. 'Tis an unnatural inversion of the manners of society.'

'When did you first get to care for him, dear Berta?'

'O--when I had seen him once or twice.'

'Goodness--how quick you were!'

'Yes--if I am in the mind for loving I am not to be hindered by shortness
of acquaintanceship.'

'Nor I neither!' sighed Picotee.

'Nor any other woman. We don't need to know a man well in order to love
him. That's only necessary when we want to leave off.'

'O Berta--you don't believe that!'

'If a woman did not invariably form an opinion of her choice before she
has half seen him, and love him before she has half formed an opinion,
there would be no tears and pining in the whole feminine world