Page:The Tragic Muse (London & New York, Macmillan & Co., 1890), Volume 3.djvu/246

238 the words than she perceptibly blushed. Hereupon, to attenuate the foolishness of her blush (only it had the opposite effect), she added: "She thinks he has been a bad element in your life."

Nick shook his head, smiling. "She thinks, perhaps, but she doesn't think enough; otherwise, she would arrive at this thought—that she knows nothing whatever about my life."

"Ah, Nick," the girl pleaded, with solemn eyes, "you don't imagine what an interest she takes in it. She has told me, many times—she has talked lots to me about it." Biddy paused and then went on, with an anxious little smile shining through her gravity, as if she were trying cautiously how much her brother would take: "She has a conviction that it was Mr. Nash who made trouble between you."

"My dear Biddy," Nick rejoined, "those are thoroughly second-rate ideas, the result of a perfectly superficial view. Excuse my possibly priggish tone, but they really attribute to Nash a part he's quite incapable of playing. He can neither make trouble nor take trouble; no trouble could ever either have come out of him or have gone into him. Moreover," our young man continued, "if Julia has talked to you so much about the matter, there's no harm in my talking to you a little. When she threw me over in an hour, it was on a perfectly definite occasion. That occasion was the presence in my studio of a dishevelled actress."

"Oh Nick, she has not thrown you over!" Biddy protested. "She has not I have the proof."

Nick felt, at this direct denial, a certain stir of indignation,