Page:The Tragic Muse (London & New York, Macmillan & Co., 1890), Volume 3.djvu/75

Rh and I never saw such a horrid lot of things—not at all clever or pretty."

"You know nothing whatever about the matter!" Lady Agnes exclaimed, with unexpected asperity. Then she added, to Peter, that, as it happened, her children did have a good deal of artistic taste: Grace was the only one who was totally deficient in it. Biddy was very clever—Biddy really might learn to do pretty things. And anything the poor child could learn was now no more than her duty—there was so little knowing what the future had in store for them all.

"You think too much of the future—you take terribly gloomy views," said Peter, looking for his hat.

"What other views can one take, when one's son has deliberately thrown away a fortune?"

"Thrown one away? Do you mean through not marrying—?"

"I mean through killing by his perversity the best friend he ever had."

Sherringham stared a moment; then with laughter: "Ah, but Julia isn't dead of it?"

"I'm not talking of Julia," said Lady Agnes, with a good deal of majesty. "Nick isn't mercenary, and I'm not complaining of that."

"She means Mr. Carteret," Grace explained. "He would have done anything if Nick had stayed in the House."

"But he's not dead?"

"Charles Carteret is dying," said Lady Agnes—"his end is very, very near. He has been a sort of providence to us—he was Sir Nicholas's second self. But he won't stand such nonsense, and that chapter's closed."