Page:The Tragic Muse (London & New York, Macmillan & Co., 1890), Volume 1.djvu/64

56 "Oh, I wish you'd take me, Peter," Biddy broke out, wistfully, to her cousin.

"To spend an hour with an old French actress? Do you want to go upon the stage?" the young man inquired.

"No, but I want to see something, to know something."

"Madame Carré is wonderful in her way, but she is hardly company for a little English girl."

"I'm not little, I'm only too big; and she goes, the person you speak of."

"For a professional purpose, and with her good mother," smiled Gabriel Nash. "I think Lady Agnes would hardly venture—"

"Oh, I've seen her good mother!" said Biddy, as if she had an impression of what the worth of that protection might be.

"Yes, but you haven't heard her. It's then that you measure her."

Biddy was wistful still. "Is it the famous Honorine Carré, the great celebrity?"

"Honorine in person: the incomparable, the perfect!" said Peter Sherringham. "The first artist of our time, taking her altogether. She and I are old pals; she has been so good as to come and 'say' things, as she does sometimes still dans le monde as no one else does, in my rooms."

"Make her come, then; we can go there!"

"One of these days!"

"And the young lady—Miriam, Edith, Gladys—make her come too."

Sherringham looked at Nash, and the latter exclaimed: "Oh, you'll have no difficulty; she'll jump at it!"