Yours affectionately, J. MONOGRAM.
Georgiana condescended to borrow the carriage and reached her friend's house a little after noon. The two ladies kissed each other when they met--of course, and then Miss Longestaffe at once began. 'Julia, I did think that you would at any rate have asked me to your second ball.'
'Of course you would have been asked if you had been up in Bruton Street. You know that as well as I do. It would have been a matter of course.'
'What difference does a house make?'
'But the people in a house make a great deal of difference, my dear. I don't want to quarrel with you, my dear; but I can't know the Melmottes.'
'Who asks you?'
'You are with them.'
'Do you mean to say that you can't ask anybody to your house without asking everybody that lives with that person? It's done every day.'
'Somebody must have brought you.'
'I would have come with the Primeros, Julia.'
'I couldn't do it. I asked Damask and he wouldn't have it. When that great affair was going on in February, we didn't know much about the people. I was told that everybody was going and therefore I got Sir Damask to let me go. He says now that he won't let me know them; and after having been at their house I can't ask you out of it, without asking them too.'
'I don't see it at all, Julia.'
'I'm very sorry, my dear, but I can't go against my husband.'
'Everybody goes to their house,' said Georgiana, pleading her cause to the best of her ability. 'The Duchess of Stevenage has dined in Grosvenor Square since I have been there.'
'We all know what that means,' replied Lady Monogram.
'And people are giving their eyes to be asked to the dinner party which he is to give to the Emperor in July;--and even to the reception afterwards.'
'To hear you talk, Georgiana, one would think that you didn't understand anything,' said Lady Monogram. 'People are going to see the Emperor, not to see the Melmottes. I dare say we might have gone only I suppose we shan't now,--because of this row.'
'I don't know what you mean by a row, Julia.'
'Well;--it is a row, and I hate rows. Going there when the Emperor of China is there, or anything of that kind, is no more than going to the play. Somebody chooses to get all London into his house, and all London chooses to go. But it isn't understood that that means acquaintance. I should meet Madame Melmotte in the park afterwards and not think of bowing to her.'