had remained so--they wouldn't come up to
town till after Easter. The trick was played, and Biddy, as I have
mentioned, was now very content. Her brother presently learned, however,
that the reason of this was not wholly the success of the trick; unless
indeed her further ground were only a continuation of it. She was not in
London as a forerunner of her mother; she was not even as yet in
Calcutta Gardens. She had come to spend a week with Florry Tressilian,
who had lately taken the dearest little flat in a charming new place,
just put up, on the other side of the Park, with all kinds of lifts and
tubes and electricities. Florry had been awfully nice to her--had been
with them ever so long at Broadwood while the flat was being painted and
prepared--and mamma had then let her, let Biddy, promise to come to her,
when everything was ready, so that they might have a happy old maids'
(for they _were_, old maids now!) house-warming together. If Florry
could by this time do without a chaperon--she had two latchkeys and went
alone on the top of omnibuses, and her name was in the Red Book--she was
enough of a duenna for another girl. Biddy referred with sweet cynical
eyes to the fine happy stride she had thus taken in the direction of
enlightened spinsterhood; and Nick hung his head, immensely abashed and
humiliated, for, modern as he had fatuously supposed himself, there were
evidently currents more modern yet.

It so happened that on this particular morning he had drawn out of a
corner his interrupted study of Gabriel Nash; on no further
curiosity--he had only been looking round the room in a rummaging
spirit--than to see how much or how little of it remained. It had become
to his view so dim an adumbration--he was sure of this, and it pressed
some spring of melancholy mirth--that it didn't seem worth putting away,
and he left it leaning against a table as if it had been a blank canvas
or a "preparation" to be painted over. In this posture it attracted
Biddy's attention, for on a second glance it showed distinguishable
features. She had not seen it before and now asked whom it might
represent, remarking also that she could almost guess, yet not quite:
she had known the original but couldn't name him.

"Six months ago, for a few days, it represented Gabriel Nash," Nick
replied. "But it isn't anybody or anything now."

"Six months ago? What's the matter with it and why don't you go on?"

"What's the matter with it is more th