Until her later years, Julia was as impetuous in beginning friendships as she was in ending them. Within months of the break with Browning, she was launched on the most satisfying relationship of her life, her friendship with Emily Gurney. This time she had the full approval of her family. Nor did the conventional restrictions and expectations that had undermined her intimacy with Browning apply. With Emily, Julia could behave entirely as she wished: she reveled in morbid self-disclosure, showed off her brilliance and generally took the lead knowing she could always rely on unquestioning love. Their friendship had a special grace because Thomas Erskine, a man they both revered, had initiated it at Linlathen, the place where Julia was always happiest.

However bravely she had assured Browning that in stopping his calls she was not giving up more than she could bear, the breach between them revived the depression she had felt after Mack's death and her doubts about the afterlife. A guilty Aunt Rich steered her towards Erskine for reassurance.

Rich was distantly related to Erskine through the marriage of her sister, Maitland, to William Erskine. She first met him in Edinburgh in 1828 when both she and Thomas Erskine were devotees of Edward Irving. When Alexander Scott broke with Irving, she followed Erskine's advice to stick with Scott. In 1838 she introduced Hensleigh to Erskine, who found him ‘a delightful man, full of truth of heart to God and man and well endowed intellectually’. Fanny was never as impressed with Erskine as her stepsister. Behind his back she called him ‘St Thomas’ and never challenged Marianne Thornton's brusque complaint that he was ‘affected and dictatorial’. As Julia's friendship with Erskine became increasingly central to her life, her parents tolerated rather than encouraged it. Rich, by contrast, shared her niece's devotion to him as did Maurice, who first met Erskine at the Hensleigh Wedgwoods.

Julia had been 17 when Rich first took her to Linlathen. After that she saw Erskine on his occasional visits to London, cheered by his continuing interest in her. Erskine was delighted by An Old Debt and read it aloud to his sisters.