ol had told
in more ways than one. Even now it was powerless to prevent her
suggesting that before doing anything else Nick should at least repair
to the inn and see if there weren't some telegrams.

He freely consented to do as much as this, and, having called a cab that
she might go her way with the girls, kissed her again as he had done at
the exhibition. This was an attention that could never displease her,
but somehow when he kissed her she was really the more worried: she had
come to recognise it as a sign that he was slipping away from her, and
she wished she might frankly take it as his clutch at her to save him.
She drove off with a vague sense that at any rate she and the girls
might do something toward keeping the place warm for him. She had been a
little vexed that Peter had not administered more of a push toward the
Hotel de Hollande, clear as it had become to her now that there was a
foreignness in Peter which was not to be counted on and which made him
speak of English affairs and even of English domestic politics as local
and even "funny." They were very grandly local, and if one recalled, in
public life, an occasional droll incident wasn't that, liberally viewed,
just the warm human comfort of them? As she left the two young men
standing together in the middle of the Place de la Concorde, the grand
composition of which Nick, as she looked back, appeared to have paused
to admire--as if he hadn't seen it a thousand times!--she wished she
might have thought of Peter's influence with her son as exerted a little
more in favour of localism. She had a fear he wouldn't abbreviate the
boy's ill-timed _flanerie_. However, he had been very nice: he had
invited them all to dine with him that evening at a convenient cafe,
promising to bring Julia and one of his colleagues. So much as this he
had been willing to do to make sure Nick and his sister should meet. His
want of localism, moreover, was not so great as that if it should turn
out that there _was_ anything beneath his manner toward Biddy--! The
upshot of this reflexion might have been represented by the circumstance
of her ladyship's remarking after a minute to her younger daughter, who
sat opposite her in the _voiture de place_, that it would do no harm if
she should get a new hat and that the search might be instituted that
afternoon.

"A French hat, mamma?" said Grace. "Oh do wait till she gets home!"

"I think they're really prettier here, you know," Bid