Page:The Tragic Muse (London & New York, Macmillan & Co., 1890), Volume 1.djvu/59

Rh "Do you mean to say you have to pay to get into that place—that it's not you that are paid?"

"Into that place?" Lady Agnes repeated, blankly.

"Into the House of Commons. That you don't get a high salary?"

"My dear Nash, you're delightful: don't leave me—don't leave me!" Nick cried; while his mother looked at him with an eye that demanded: "Who is this extraordinary person?"

"What then did you think pocket-boroughs were?" Peter Sherringham asked.

Mr. Nush's facial radiance rested on him. "Why, boroughs that filled your pocket. To do that sort of thing without a bribe—c'est trop fort!"

"He lives at Samarcand," Nick Dormer explained to his mother, who coloured perceptibly. "What do you advise me? I'll do whatever you say," he went on to his old acquaintance.

"My dear—my dear!" Lady Agnes pleaded.

"See Julia first, with all respect to Mr. Nash. She's of excellent counsel," said Peter Sherringham.

Gabriel Nash smiled across the table at Dormer. "The lady first—the lady first! I have not a word to suggest as against any idea of hers."

"We must not sit here too long, there will be so much to do," said Lady Agnes, anxiously, perceiving a certain slowness in the service of the bœuf braisé.

Biddy had been up to this moment mainly occupied in looking, covertly and at intervals, at Peter Sherringham; as was perfectly lawful in a young lady with a handsome cousin whom she had not seen for more than a year. But her sweet