"Oh I daresay. But that doesn't signify--I never shall."
Peter got up at this; the tone of it set him in motion and he took a
turn round the room. He threw off something cheap about her being too
proud; to which she replied that that was the only thing for a girl to
be to get on.
"What do you mean by getting on?"--and he stopped with his hands in his
pockets on the other side of the studio.
"I mean crying one's eyes out!" Biddy unexpectedly exclaimed; but she
drowned the effect of this pathetic paradox in a laugh of clear
irrelevance and in the quick declaration: "Of course it's about Nick
that she's really broken-hearted."
"What's the matter with Nick?" he went on with all his diplomacy.
"Oh Peter, what's the matter with Julia?" Biddy quavered softly back to
him, her eyes suddenly frank and mournful. "I daresay you know what we
all hoped, what we all supposed from what they told us. And now they
won't!" said the girl.
"Yes, Biddy, I know. I had the brightest prospect of becoming your
brother-in-law: wouldn't that have been it--or something like that? But
it's indeed visibly clouded. What's the matter with them? May I have
another cigarette?" Peter came back to the wide, cushioned bench where
he had previously lounged: this was the way they took up the subject he
wanted most to look into. "Don't they know how to love?" he speculated
as he seated himself again.
"It seems a kind of fatality!" Biddy sighed.
He said nothing for some moments, at the end of which he asked if his
companion were to be quite alone during her mother's absence. She
replied that this parent was very droll about that: would never leave
her alone and always thought something dreadful would happen to her. She
had therefore arranged that Florence Tressilian should come and stay in
Calcutta Gardens for the next few days--to look after her and see she
did no wrong. Peter inquired with fulness into Florence Tressilian's
identity: he greatly hoped that for the success of Lady Agnes's
precautions she wasn't a flighty young genius like Biddy. She was
described to him as tremendously nice and tremendously clever, but also
tremendously old and tremendously safe; with the addition that Biddy was
tremendously fond of her and that while she remained in Calcutta Gardens
they expected to enjoy themselves tremendously. She was to come that
afternoon before dinner.
"And are you to dine at home?" said Peter.
"Certainly; where else?"
"And just you two alone? Do you call that enjoying yourselves
tremendously?"
"It will do for me. No doubt I oughtn't in modesty to speak for poor
Florence."
"It isn't fair to her; you ought to invite some one to meet her."
"Do you mean you, Peter?" the girl asked, turning to him quickly and
with a look that vanished the instant he caught it.
"Try me. I'll come like a shot."
"That's kind," said Biddy, dropping her hands and now resting her eyes
on him gratefully. She remained in this position as if under a charm;
then she jerked herself back to her work with the remark: "Florence will
like that immensely."
"I'm delighted to please Florence--your description of her's so
attractive!" Sherringham laughed. And when his companion asked him if he
minded there not being a great feast, because when her mother went away
she allowed her a fixed amount for that sort of thing and, as he might
imagine, it wasn't millions--when Biddy, with the frankness of their
pleasant kinship, touched anxiously on this economic point
(illustrating, as Peter saw, the lucidity with which Lady Agnes had had
in her old age to learn to recognise the occasions when she could be
conveniently frugal) he answered that the shortest dinners were the
best, especially when one was going to the theatre. That was his case
to-night, and did Biddy think he might look to Miss Tressilian to go
with them? They'd have to dine early--he wanted not to miss a moment.
"The theatre--Miss Tressilian?" she stared, interrupted and in suspense
again.
"Would it incommode you very much to dine say at 7.15 and accept a place
in my box? The finger of Providence was in it when I took a box an hour
ago. I particularly like your being free to go--if you are free."
She began almost to rave with pleasure. "Dear Peter, how good you are!
They'll have it at any hour. Florence will be so glad."
"And has Florence seen Miss Rooth?"
"Miss Rooth?" the girl repeated, redder than before. He felt on the spot
that she had heard of the expenditure of his time and attention on that
young lady. It was as if she were conscious of how conscious he would
himself be in speaking of her, and there was a sweetness in her
allowance for him on that score. But Biddy was more confused for him
than he was for himself. He guessed in a moment how much she had thought
over what she had heard; this was indicated by her saying vaguely, "No,
no, I've not seen her." Then she knew she was answering a question he
hadn't asked her, and she went on: "We shall be too delighted. I saw
her--perhaps you remember--in your rooms in Paris. I thought her so
wonderful then! Every one's talking of her here. But we don't go to the
theatre much, you know: we don't have boxes offered us except when _you_
come. Poor Nick's too much taken up in the evening. I've wanted awfully
to see her. They say she's magnificent."
"I don't know," Peter was glad to be able honestly to answer. "I haven't
seen her."
"You haven't seen her?"
"Never, Biddy. I mean on the stage. In private often--yes," he
conscientiously added.
"Oh!" Biddy exclaimed, bending her face on Nick's bust again. She asked
him no question about the new star, and he offered her no further
information. There were things in his mind pulling him different ways,
so that for some minutes silence was the result of the conflict. At last
he said, after an hesitation caused by the possibility that she was
ignorant of the fact he had lately elicited from Julia, though it was
more probable she might have learned it from the same source:
"Am I perhaps indiscreet in alluding to the circumstance that Nick has
been painting Miss Rooth's portrait?"
"You're not indiscreet in alluding to it to me, because I know it."
"Then there's no secret nor mystery about it?"