tantly bundled
home from Rosedale Road at the approach of improper persons: she was as
angry at this as if she wouldn't have been more so had her child
suffered exposure; but the explanation he gave his present visitor was
nearer the truth. He reminded her that he had already told her--he had
been careful to do this, so as not to let it appear she was
avoided--that his sister was now most of the time in the country,
staying with an hospitable relation.

"Oh yes," the girl rejoined to this, "with Mr. Sherringham's sister,
Mrs.--what's her name? I always forget." And when he had pronounced the
word with a reluctance he doubtless failed sufficiently to conceal--he
hated to talk of Julia by any name and didn't know what business Miriam
had with her--she went on: "That's the one--the beauty, the wonderful
beauty. I shall never forget how handsome she looked the day she found
me here. I don't in the least resemble her, but I should like to have a
try at that type some day in a comedy of manners. But who the devil will
write me a comedy of manners? There it is! The danger would be, no
doubt, that I should push her _a la charge_."

Nick listened to these remarks in silence, saying to himself that if she
should have the bad taste--which she seemed trembling on the brink
of--to make an allusion to what had passed between the lady in question
and himself he should dislike her beyond remedy. It would show him she
was a coarse creature after all. Her good genius interposed, however, as
against this hard penalty, and she quickly, for the moment at least,
whisked away from the topic, demanding, since they spoke of comrades and
visitors, what had become of Gabriel Nash, whom she hadn't heard of for
so many days.

"I think he's tired of me," said Nick; "he hasn't been near me either.
But after all it's natural--he has seen me through."

"Seen you through? Do you mean," she laughed, "seen through you? Why
you've only just begun."

"Precisely, and at bottom he doesn't like to see me begin. He's afraid I
shall do something."

She wondered--as with the interest of that. "Do you mean he's jealous?"

"Not in the least, for from the moment one does anything one ceases to
compete with him. It leaves him the field more clear. But that's just
the discomfort for him--he feels, as you said just now, kind of lonely:
he feels rather abandoned and even, I think, a little betrayed. So far
from being jealous he yearns for me and regrets me. The