"No, no--Miss Tressilian. She puts me up, she has got a flat. Did you
ever see a flat?" asked Biddy expansively. "My cousin's not in London."
Miriam replied that she might bring whom she liked and Biddy broke out
to her brother: "Fancy what kindness, Nick: we're to have a box to-night
and you're to take me!"
Nick turned to her a face of levity which struck her even at the time as
too cynically free, but which she understood when the finer sense of it
subsequently recurred to her. Mr. Dashwood interposed with the remark
that it was all very well to talk about boxes, but that he didn't see
how at that time of day the miracle was to be worked.
"You haven't kept one as I told you?" Miriam demanded.
"As you told me, my dear? Tell the lamb to keep its tenderest mutton
from the wolves!"
"You shall have one: we'll arrange it," Miriam went on to Biddy.
"Let me qualify that statement a little, Miss Dormer," said Basil
Dashwood. "We'll arrange it if it's humanly possible."
"We'll arrange it even if it's inhumanly _im_possible--that's just the
point," Miriam declared to the girl. "Don't talk about trouble--what's
he meant for but to take it? _Cela s'annonce bien_, you see," she
continued to Nick: "doesn't it look as if we should pull beautifully
together?" And as he answered that he heartily congratulated her--he was
immensely interested in what he had been told--she exclaimed after
resting her eyes on him a moment: "What will you have? It seemed
simpler! It was clear there had to be some one." She explained further
to Nick what had led her to come in at that moment, while Dashwood
approached Biddy with a civil assurance that they would see, they would
leave no stone unturned, though he would not have taken upon himself to
promise.
Miriam reminded Nick of the blessing he had been to her nearly a year
before, on her other first night, when she was all impatient and on
edge; how he had let her come and sit there for hours--helped her to
possess her soul till the evening and to keep out of harm's way. The
case was the same at present, with the aggravation indeed that he would
understand--Dashwood's nerves as well as her own: Dashwood's were a
great deal worse than hers. Everything was ready for Juliet; they had
been rehearsing for five months--it had kept her from going mad from the
treadmill of the other piece--and he, Nick, had occurred to her again,
in the last intolerable hours, as the friend in need, the salutary
stop-gap, no matter how much she worried him. She shouldn't be turned
out? Biddy broke away from Basil Dashwood: she must go, she must hurry
off to Miss Tressilian with her news. Florry might make some other
stupid engagement for the evening: she must be warned in time. The girl
took a flushed, excited leave after having received a renewal of
Miriam's pledge and even heard her say to Nick that he must now give
back the seat already sent him--they should be sure to have another use
for it.