Page:The Tragic Muse (London & New York, Macmillan & Co., 1890), Volume 3.djvu/108

100 but this inference was instantly followed by the reflection that Peter might after all only wish to make up by present zeal for not having been near him before. He forgot that, as as he had subsequently learned from Biddy, their foreign or all but foreign cousin had spent an hour in Rosedale Road, missing him there but pulling out Miriam's portrait, the day of his own hurried visit to Beauclere. These young men were not on a ceremonious footing and it was not in Nick's nature to keep a record of civilities rendered or omitted; nevertheless he had been vaguely conscious that during a stay in London, on Peter's part, which apparently was stretching itself out, he and his kinsman had foregathered less than of yore. It was indeed an absorbing moment in the career of each, but at the same time that he recognized this truth Nick remembered that it was not impossible Peter might have taken upon himself to resent some supposititious failure of consideration for Julia; though this would have been stupid, and the newly-appointed minister (to he had forgotten where) cultivated a finer habit. Nick held that as he had treated Julia with studious generosity she had nothing whatever to reproach him with; so her brother had therefore still less. It was at any rate none of her brother's business. There were only two things that would have made Nick lukewarm about disposing in a few frank words of all this: one of them his general hatred of talking of his private affairs (a reluctance in which he and Peter were well matched); and the other a particular sentiment which would have involved more of a confession and which could not be otherwise described than as a perception that the most definite and even most pleasant consequence of