another cigarette. It
struck him as a great pity such a pile should be touched: so much of the
past was buried there that it was like desecrating, like digging up a
grave. Since the years were letting it down so gently why jostle the
elbow of slow-fingering time? The fading afternoon was exquisitely pure;
the place was empty; he heard nothing but the cries of several children,
which sounded sweet, who were playing on the flatness of the very old
tombs. He knew this would inevitably be one of the topics at dinner, the
restoration of the abbey; it would give rise to a considerable deal of
orderly debate. Lord Bottomley, oddly enough, would probably oppose the
expensive project, but on grounds that would be characteristic of him
even if the attitude were not. Nick's nerves always knew on this spot
what it was to be soothed; but he shifted his position with a slight
impatience as the vision came over him of Lord Bottomley's treating a
question of esthetics. It was enough to make one want to take the other
side, the idea of having the same taste as his lordship: one would have
it for such different reasons.

Dear Mr. Carteret would be deliberate and fair all round and would, like
his noble friend, exhibit much more architectural knowledge than he,
Nick, possessed: which would not make it a whit less droll to our young
man that an artistic idea, so little really assimilated, should be
broached at that table and in that air. It would remain so outside of
their minds and their minds would remain so outside of it. It would be
dropped at last, however, after half an hour's gentle worrying, and the
conversation would incline itself to public affairs. Mr. Carteret would
find his natural level--the production of anecdote in regard to the
formation of early ministries. He knew more than any one else about the
personages of whom certain cabinets would have consisted if they had not
consisted of others. His favourite exercise was to illustrate how
different everything might have been from what it was, and how the
reason of the difference had always been somebody's inability to "see
his way" to accept the view of somebody else--a view usually at the time
discussed in strict confidence with Mr. Carteret, who surrounded his
actual violation of that confidence thirty years later with many
precautions against scandal. In this retrospective vein, at the head of
his table, the old gentleman enjoyed a hearing, or at any rate commanded
a silenc