LITMIR.BIZ

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her; not the wish to get used to it in time, but what was more characteristic of him, the wish to interpose a temporary illusion. Illusions and realities and hopes and fears, however, fell into confusion whenever he met her after a separation. The separation, so far as seeing her alone or as continuous talk was concerned, had now been tolerably long; had lasted really ever since his failure to regain his seat. An impression had come to him that she judged that failure rather stiffly, had thought, and had somewhat sharply said, that he ought to have done better. This was a part of her imperious way, and a part not all to be overlooked on a mere present basis. If he were to marry her he should come to an understanding with her: he should give her his own measure as well as take hers. But the understanding might in the actual case suggest too much that he was to marry her. You could quarrel with your wife because there were compensations — for her; but you mightn’t be prepared to offer these compensations as prepayment for the luxury of quarrelling.

      It was not that such a luxury wouldn’t be considerable, our young man none the less thought as Julia Dallow’s fine head poised itself before him again; a high spirit was of course better than a mawkish to be mismated with, any day in the year. She had much the same colour as her brother, but as nothing else in her face was the same the resemblance was not striking. Her hair was of so dark a brown that it was commonly regarded as black, and so abundant that a plain arrangement was required to keep it in natural relation to the rest of her person. Her eyes were of a grey sometimes pronounced too light, and were not sunken in her face, but placed well on the surface. Her nose was perfect, but her mouth was too small; and Nick Dormer, and doubtless other persons as well, had sometimes wondered how with such a mouth her face could have expressed decision. Her figure helped it, for she appeared tall — being extremely slender — yet was not; and her head took turns and positions which, though a matter of but half an inch out of the common this way or that, somehow contributed to the air of resolution and temper. If it had not been for her extreme delicacy of line and surface she might have been called bold; but as it was she looked refined and quiet — refined by tradition and quiet for a purpose. And altogether she was beautiful, with the gravity of her elegant head, her hair like the depths of darkness, her eyes like its earlier clearing, her mouth like a rare pink flower.

      Peter said he had not taken a private room because he knew Biddy’s tastes; she liked to see the world — she had told him so — the curious people, the coming and going of Paris. “Oh anything for Biddy!” Julia replied, smiling at the girl and taking her place. Lady Agnes and her elder daughter exchanged one of their looks, and Nick exclaimed jocosely that he didn’t see why the whole party should be sacrificed to a presumptuous child. The presumptuous child blushingly protested she had never expressed any such wish to Peter, upon which Nick, with broader humour, revealed that Peter had served them so out of stinginess: he had pitchforked them together in the public room because he wouldn’t go to the expense of a cabinet. He had brought no guest, no foreigner of distinction nor diplomatic swell, to honour them, and now they would see what a paltry dinner he 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 today, 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 tomorrow. 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 tomorrow.” 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

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