would give them. Peter stabbed him indignantly with a long roll, and Lady Agnes, who seemed to be waiting for some manifestation on Mrs. Dallow's part which didn't come, concluded, with a certain coldness, that they quite sufficed to themselves for privacy as well as for society. Nick called attention to this fine phrase of his mother's and said it was awfully neat, while Grace and Biddy looked harmoniously at Julia's clothes. Nick felt nervous and joked a good deal to carry it off—a levity that didn't prevent Julia's saying to him after a moment: "You might have come to see me to-day, you know. Didn't you get my message from Peter?"
"Scold him, Julia—scold him well. I begged him to go," said Lady Agnes; and to this Grace added her voice with an "Oh Julia, do give it to him!" These words, however, had not the effect they suggested, since Mrs. Dallow only threw off for answer, in her quick curt way, that that would be making far too much of him. It was one of the things in her that Nick mentally pronounced ungraceful, the perversity of pride or of shyness that always made her disappoint you a little if she saw you expected a thing. She snubbed effusiveness in a way that yet gave no interesting hint of any wish to keep it herself in reserve. Effusiveness, however, certainly, was the last thing of which Lady Agnes would have consented to be accused; and Nick, while he replied to Julia that he was sure he shouldn't have found her, was not unable to perceive the operation on his mother of that shade of manner. "He ought to have gone; he owed you that," she went on; "but it's very true he would have had the same luck as we. I went with the girls directly after luncheon. I suppose you got our card."
"He might have come after I came in," said Mrs. Dallow.
"Dear Julia, I'm going to see you to-night. I've been waiting for that," Nick returned.
"Of course we had no idea when you'd come in," said Lady Agnes.
"I'm so sorry. You must come to-morrow. I hate calls at night," Julia serenely added.
"Well then, will you roam with me? Will you wander through Paris on my arm?" Nick asked, smiling. "Will you take a drive with me?"
"Oh that would be perfection!" cried Grace.
"I thought we were all going somewhere—to the Hippodrome, Peter," Biddy said.
"Oh not all; just you and me!" laughed Peter.
"I'm going home to my bed. I've earned my rest," Lady Agnes sighed.
"Can't Peter take us?" demanded Grace. "Nick can take you home, mamma, if Julia won't receive him, and I can look perfectly after Peter and Biddy."
"Take them to something amusing; please take them," Mrs. Dallow said to her brother. Her voice was kind, but had the expectation of assent in it, and Nick observed both the good nature and the pressure. "You're tired, poor dear," she continued to Lady Agnes. "Fancy your being dragged about so! What did you come over for?"
"My mother came because I brought her," Nick said. "It's I who have dragged her about. I brought her for a little change. I thought it would do her good. I wanted to see the Salon."
"It isn't a bad time. I've a carriage and you must use it; you must use nothing else. It shall take you everywhere. I'll drive you about to-morrow." Julia dropped these words with all her air of being able rather than of wanting; but Nick had already noted, and he noted now afresh and with pleasure, that her lack of unction interfered not a bit with her always acting. It was quite sufficiently manifest to him that for the rest of the time she might be near his mother she would do for her numberless good turns. She would give things to the girls—he had a private adumbration of that; expensive Parisian, perhaps not perfectly useful, things.
Lady Agnes was a woman who measured outlays and returns, but she was both too acute and too just not to recognise the scantest offer from which an advantage could proceed. "Dear Julia!" she exclaimed responsively; and her tone made this brevity of acknowledgment adequate. Julia's own few words were all she wanted. "It's so interesting about Harsh," she added. "We're immensely excited."
"Yes, Nick looks it. Merci, pas de vin. It's just the thing for you, you know," Julia said to him.
"To be sure he knows it. He's immensely grateful. It's really very kind of you."
"You do me a very great honour, Julia," Nick hastened to add.
"Don't be tiresome, please," that lady returned.
"We'll talk about it later. Of course there are lots of points," Nick pursued. "At present let's be purely convivial. Somehow Harsh is such a false note here. Nous causerons de ça."
"My dear fellow, you've caught exactly the tone of Mr. Gabriel Nash," Peter Sherringham declared on this.
"Who's Mr. Gabriel Nash?" Mrs. Dallow asked.
"Nick, is he a gentleman? Biddy says so," Grace Dormer interposed before this inquiry was answered.
"It's to be supposed that any one Nick brings to lunch with us—!" Lady Agnes rather coldly sighed.
"Ah Grace, with your tremendous standard!" her son said; while Peter Sherringham explained to his sister that Mr. Nash was Nick's new Mentor or oracle—whom, moreover, she should see if she would come and have tea with him.
"I haven't the least desire to see him," Julia made answer, "any more than I have to talk about Harsh and bore poor Peter."
"Oh certainly, dear, you'd bore me," her brother rang out.
"One thing at a time then. Let us by all means be convivial. Only you must show me how," Mrs. Dallow went on to Nick. "What does he mean, Cousin Agnes? Does he want us to drain the wine-cup, to flash with repartee?"
"You'll do very well," said Nick. "You're thoroughly charming to-night."
"Do go to Peter's, Julia, if you want something exciting. You'll see a wonderful girl," Biddy broke in with her smile on Peter.
"Wonderful for what?"
"For thinking she can act when she can't," said the roguish Biddy.
"Dear me, what people you all know! I hate Peter's theatrical people."
"And aren't you going home, Julia?" Lady Agnes inquired.
"Home to the hotel?"
"Dear, no, to Harsh—to see about everything."
"I'm in the midst of telegrams. I don't know yet."
"I suppose there's no doubt they'll have him," Lady Agnes decided to pursue.
"Who'll have whom?"
"Why, the local people and the party managers. I'm speaking of the question of my son's standing."
"They'll have the person I want them to have, I daresay. There are so many people in it, in one way or another—it's dreadful. I like the way you sit there," Julia went on to Nick.
"So do I," he smiled back at her; and he thought she was charming now, because she was gay and easy and willing really, though she might plead incompetence, to understand how jocose a dinner in a pothouse in a foreign town might be. She was in good humour or was going to be, and not grand nor stiff nor indifferent nor haughty nor any of the things people who disliked her usually found her and sometimes even a little made him believe her. The spirit of mirth in some cold natures manifests itself not altogether happily, their effort of recreation resembles
