Page:The Tragic Muse (London & New York, Macmillan & Co., 1890), Volume 1.djvu/15

Rh "Awfully, awfully," her brother repeated, standing in front of her and smiling down at her.

"You are nasty, Nick. You know you are," said the young lady, but more in sorrow than in anger.

Biddy got up at this, as if the accusatory tone prompted her to place herself generously at his side. "Mightn't you go and order lunch, in that place, you know?" she asked of her mother. "Then we would come back when it was ready."

"My dear child, I can't order lunch," Lady Agnes replied, with a cold impatience which seemed to intimate that she had problems far more important than those of victualling to contend with.

"I mean Peter, if he comes. I am sure he's up in everything of that sort."

"Oh, hang Peter!" Nick exclaimed. "Leave him out of account, and do order lunch, mother; but not cold beef and pickles."

"I must say—about him—you're not nice," Biddy ventured to remark to her brother, hesitating, and even blushing, a little.

"You make up for it, my dear," the young man answered, giving her chin—a very charming, rotund little chin—a friendly whisk with his forefinger.

"I can't imagine what you've got against him," her ladyship murmured, gravely.

"Dear mother, it's a disappointed fondness," Nick argued. "They won't answer one's notes; they won't let one know where they are nor what to expect. 'Hell has no fury like a woman scorned;' nor like a man either."