Page:The Tragic Muse (London & New York, Macmillan & Co., 1890), Volume 1.djvu/235

Rh "How will that do, when she's alone?"

"She won't be alone, with Mrs. Gresham."

"Mrs. Gresham doesn't count."

"That's precisely why I want you to stop. And her cousin, almost her brother: what an idea that it won't do! Haven't you stayed here before, when there has been no one?"

"I have never stayed much, and there have always been people. At any rate, now it's different."

"It's just because it is different. Besides, it isn't different, and it never was," said Lady Agnes, more incoherent, in her earnestness, than it often happened to her to be. "She always liked you, and she likes you now more than ever, if you call that different!" Nick got up at this and, without meeting her eyes, walked to one of the windows, where he stood with his back turned, looking out on the great greenness. She watched him a moment and she might well have been wishing, while he remained gazing there, as it appeared, that it would come to him with the same force as it had come to herself (very often before, but during these last days more than ever), that the level lands of Harsh, stretching away before the window, the French garden, with its symmetry, its screens and its statues, and a great many more things, of which these were the superficial token, were Julia's very own, to do with exactly as she liked. No word of appreciation or envy, however, dropped from the young man's lips, and his mother presently went on: "What could be more natural than that after your triumphant contest you and she should have lots to settle and to talk about—no end of practical questions, no end of