Page:The Tragic Muse (London & New York, Macmillan & Co., 1890), Volume 2.djvu/205

Rh about her being too proud; to which she replied that that was the only thing for a girl to be, to get on.

"What do you mean by getting on?" Peter demanded, stopping, with his hands in his pockets, on the other side of the studio.

"I mean crying one's eyes out!" Biddy unexpectedly exclaimed; but she drowned the effect of this pathetic paradox in a foolish laugh and in the quick declaration: "Of course it's about Nick that poor mother's really broken-hearted."

"What's the matter with Nick?" Sherringham asked, diplomatically.

"Oh, Peter, what's the matter with Julia?" Biddy quavered softly, back to him, with eyes suddenly frank and mournful. "I dare say you know what we all hoped—what we all supposed, from what they told us. And now they won't!" said Biddy.

"Yes, Biddy, I know. I had the brightest prospect of becoming your brother-in-law: wouldn't that have been it—or something like that? But it is indeed visibly clouded. What's the matter with them? May I have another cigarette?" Peter came back to the wide, cushioned bench where he had been lounging: this was the way they took up the subject he wanted most to look into. "Don't they know how to love?" he went on, as he seated himself again.

"It seems a kind of fatality!" sighed Biddy.

Peter said nothing for some moments, at the end of which he inquired whether his companion were to be quite alone during her mother's absence. She replied that her mother was very droll about that—she would never leave her alone: she thought something dreadful would happen to her. She