and also before all the female guests of the castle.  But what she had said was received simply with an incredulous smile.  “Dear me!  Lady Julia,” the countess had replied at last, “I shall begin to think you are in love with Mr Crosbie yourself; you harp so constantly on this affair of his.  One would think that young ladies in your part of the world must find it very difficult to get husbands, seeing that the success of one young lady is trumpeted so loudly.”  For the moment, Lady Julia was silenced; but it was not easy to silence her altogether when she had a subject for speech near her heart.

Almost all the Courcy world were assembled in the drawing-room as she now walked into the room with Crosbie at her heels.  When she found herself near the crowd she turned round, and addressed him in a voice more audible than that generally required for purposes of drawing-room conversation.  “Mr Crosbie,” she said, “have you heard lately from our dear friend, Lily Dale?” And she looked him full in the face, in a manner more significant, probably, than even she had intended it to be.  There was, at once, a general hush in the room, and all eyes were turned upon her and upon him.

Crosbie instantly made an effort to bear the attack gallantly, but he felt that he could not quite command his colour, or prevent a sudden drop of perspiration from showing itself upon his brow.  “I had a letter from Allington yesterday,” he said.  “I suppose you have heard of your brother’s encounter with the bull?”

“The bull!” said Lady Julia.  And it was instantly manifest to all that her attack had been foiled and her flank turned.

“Good gracious!  Lady Julia, how very odd you are!” said the countess.

“But what about the bull?” asked the Honourable George.

“It seems that the earl was knocked down in the middle of one of his own fields.”

“Oh, dear!” exclaimed Alexandrina.  And sundry other exclamations were made by all the assembled ladies.

“But he wasn’t hurt,” said Crosbie.  “A young man named Eames seems to have fallen from the sky and carried off the earl on his back.”

“Ha, ha, ha, ha!” growled the other earl, as he heard of the discomfiture of his brother peer.

Lady Julia, who had received her own letters that day from Guestwick, knew that nothing of importance had happened to her brother; but she felt that she was foiled for that time.

“I hope that there has not really been any accident,” said Mr Gazebee, with a voice of great solicitude.

“My brother was quite well last night, thank you,” said she.  And then the little groups again formed themselves, and Lady Julia was left alone on the corner of a sofa.

“Was that all an invention of yours, sir?” said Alexandrina to Crosbie.

“Not quite.  I did get a letter this morning from my friend Bernard Dale,—­that old harridan’s nephew; and Lord De Guest has been worried by some of his animals.  I wish I had told her that his stupid old neck had been broken.”