Page:The Tragic Muse (London & New York, Macmillan & Co., 1890), Volume 3.djvu/26

18 of course they must go on, but Lady Agnes was prepared with an effective rejoinder to this. It didn't consist of words—it was to be austerely practical, was to consist of letting Julia see, at the moment she should least expect it, that they quite wouldn't go on. Lady Agnes was ostensibly waiting for that moment—the moment when her renunciation would be most impressive.

Grace was conscious of how, for many days, her mother and she had been moving in darkness, deeply stricken by Nick's culpable (oh, he was culpable!) loss of his prize, but feeling there was an element in the matter they didn't grasp, an undiscovered explanation which would perhaps make it still worse, though it might make them a little better. Nick had explained nothing; he had simply said: "Dear mother, we don't hit it off, after all; it's an awful bore, but we don't," as if that were, under the circumstances, an adequate balm for two aching hearts. From Julia, naturally, satisfying attenuations were not to be looked for; and though Julia very often did the thing you wouldn't suppose she was not unexpectedly apologetic in this case. Grace recognized that in such a position it would savour of apology for her to impart to Lady Agnes her grounds for letting Nick off; and she would not have liked to be the person to suggest to Julia that any one looked for anything from her. Neither of the disunited pair blamed the other or cast an aspersion, and it was all very magnanimous and superior and impenetrable and exasperating. With all this Grace had a suspicion that Biddy knew something more, that for Biddy the tormenting curtain had been lifted.

Biddy came and went in these days with a perceptible air