Page:The Tragic Muse (London & New York, Macmillan & Co., 1890), Volume 1.djvu/19

Rh "British matron is soon said! I don't know what they are coming to."

"How odd that you should have been struck only with the disagreeable things, when, for myself, I have felt it to be the most interesting, the most suggestive morning I have passed for ever so many months!"

"Oh, Nick, Nick!" Lady Agnes murmured, with a strange depth of feeling.

"I like them better in London—they are much less unpleasant," said Grace Dormer.

"They are things you can look at," her ladyship went on. "We certainly make the better show."

"The subject doesn't matter; it's the treatment, the treatment!" Biddy announced, in a voice like the tinkle of a silver bell.

"Poor little Bid!" her brother cried, breaking into a laugh.

"How can I learn to model, mamma dear, if I don't look at things and if I don't study them?" the girl continued.

This inquiry passed unheeded, and Nicholas Dormer said to his mother, more seriously, but with a certain kind explicitness, as if he could make a particular allowance: "This place is an immense stimulus to me; it refreshes me, excites me, it's such an exhibition of artistic life. It's full of ideas, full of refinements; it gives one such an impression of artistic experience. They try everything, they feel everything. While you were looking at the murders, apparently, I observed an immense deal of curious and interesting work. There are too many of them, poor devils; so many who must make their way, who must attract attention. Some of them can only