"Oh I want her."
He walked to the window, where the curtains had not been drawn, and saw
in the dusk a cab at the door. When he turned back he went on: "Why
won't you trust me to make you like me, as you call it, better? If I
make you like me as well as I like you it will be about enough, I
think."
"Oh I like you enough for _your_ happiness. And I don't throw away a
devotion," Mrs. Dallow continued. "I shall be constantly kind to you. I
shall be beautiful to you."
"You'll make me lose a fortune," Nick after a moment said.
It brought a slight convulsion, instantly repressed, into her face. "Ah
you may have all the money you want!"
"I don't mean yours," he answered with plenty of expression of his own.
He had determined on the instant, since it might serve, to tell her what
he had never breathed to her before. "Mr. Carteret last year promised me
a pot of money on the day we should be man and wife. He has thoroughly
set his heart on it."
"I'm sorry to disappoint Mr. Carteret," said Julia. "I'll go and see
him. I'll make it all right," she went on. "Then your work, you know,
will bring you an income. The great men get a thousand just for a head."
"I'm only joking," Nick returned with sombre eyes that contradicted this
profession. "But what things you deserve I should do!"
"Do you mean striking likenesses?"
He watched her a moment. "You do hate it! Pushed to that point, it's
curious," he audibly mused.
"Do you mean you're joking about Mr. Carteret's promise?"
"No--the promise is real, but I don't seriously offer it as a reason."
"I shall go to Beauclere," Julia said. "You're an hour late," she added
in a different tone; for at that moment the door of the room was thrown
open and Mrs. Gresham, the butler pronouncing her name, ushered in.
"Ah don't impugn my punctuality--it's my character!" the useful lady
protested, putting a sixpence from the cabman into her purse. Nick went
off at this with a simplified farewell--went off foreseeing exactly what
he found the next day, that the useful lady would have received orders
not to budge from her hostess's side. He called on the morrow, late in
the afternoon, and Julia saw him liberally, in the spirit of her
assurance that she would be "beautiful" to him, that she had not thrown
away his devotion; but Mrs. Gresham remained, with whatever delicacies
of deprecation, a spectator of her liberality. Julia looked at him
kindly, but her companion was more benignant still; so that what Nick
did with his own eyes was not to appeal to her to see him a moment
alone, but to solicit, in the name of this luxury, the second occupant
of the drawing-room. Mrs. Gresham seemed to say, while Julia said so
little, "I understand, my poor friend, I know everything--she has told
me only _her_ side, but I'm so competent that I know yours too--and I
enter into the whole thing deeply. But it would be as much as my place
is worth to accommodate you." Still, she didn't go so far as to give him
an inkling of what he learned on the third day and what he had not gone
so far as to suspect--that the two ladies had made rapid arrangements
for a scheme of foreign travel. These arrangements had already been
carried out when, at the door of the house in Great Stanhope Street, the
announcement was made him that the subtle creatures had started that
morning for Paris.