Page:The Tragic Muse (London & New York, Macmillan & Co., 1890), Volume 2.djvu/254

246 Cornish respect for young abilities and distinguished connections, inasmuch as she asked him a great deal about Lady Agnes and about Lady Flora and Lady Elizabeth. He knew she was kind and ungrudging, and his principal chagrin was the sense of meagre information and of responding poorly in regard to his uninteresting aunts. He sat in the garden with newspapers and looked at the lowered blinds in Mr. Carteret's windows; he wandered around the abbey with cigarettes and lightened his tread and felt grave, wishing that everything were over. He would have liked much to see Mr. Carteret again, but he had no desire that Mr. Carteret should see him. In the evening he dined with Mrs. Lendon, and she talked to him, at his request and as much as she could, about her brother's early years, his beginnings of life. She was so much younger that they appeared to have been rather a tradition of her own youth; but her talk made Nick feel how tremendously different Mr. Carteret had been at that period from what he, Nick, was to-day. He had published at the age of thirty a little volume (it was thought wonderfully clever) called "The Incidence of Rates"; but Nick had not yet collected the material for any such treatise. After dinner Mrs. Lendon, who was in full dress, retired to the drawing-room, where at the end of ten minutes she was followed by Nick, who had remained behind only because he thought Chayter would expect it. Mrs. Lendon almost shook hands with him again, and then Chayter brought in coffee. Almost in no time afterwards he brought in tea, and the occupants of the drawing-room sat for a slow half-hour, during which the lady looked round at the apartment with a sigh