n being girls--of an
immensely rich industrial and political baronet in the north, was
literally waiting for the faintest sign. This reason she promptly
imparted to her younger daughter, whose intelligence had to take it in
but who had shown it no other consideration. Biddy had set her charming
face as a stone; she would have nothing to do with signs, and she,
practically speaking, wilfully, wickedly refused a magnificent offer, so
that the young man carried his high expectations elsewhere. How much in
earnest he had been was proved by the fact that before Goodwood had come
and gone he was captured by Lady Muriel Macpherson. It was superfluous
to insist on the frantic determination to get married written on such an
accident as that. Nick knew of this episode only through Grace, and he
deplored its having occurred in the midst of other disasters.

He knew or he suspected something more as well--something about his
brother Percival which, should it come to light, no phase of their
common history would be genial enough to gloss over. It had usually been
supposed that Percy's store of comfort against the ills of life was
confined to the infallibility of his rifle. He was not sensitive, and
his use of that weapon represented a resource against which common
visitations might have spent themselves. It had suddenly come to Nick's
ears, however, that he cultivated a concurrent support in the person of
a robust countrywoman, housed in an ivied corner of Warwickshire, in
whom he had long been interested and whom, without any flourish of
magnanimity, he had ended by making his wife. The situation of the
latest born of the pledges of this affection, a blooming boy--there had
been two or three previously--was therefore perfectly regular and of a
nature to make a difference in the worldly position, as the phrase ran,
of his moneyless uncle. If there be degrees in the absolute and Percy
had an heir--others, moreover, supposedly following--Nick would have to
regard himself as still more moneyless than before. His brother's last
step was doubtless, given the case, to be commended; but such
discoveries were enlivening only when made in other families, and Lady
Agnes would scarcely enjoy learning to what tune she had become a
grandmother.

Nick forbore from delicacy to intimate to Biddy that he thought it a
pity she couldn't care for Mr. Grindon; but he had a private sense that
if she had been capable of such a feat it would have lightene