tic; she wondered what was the good of mere
snippets and snatches, the chances that any one might have, when large,
still days _a deux_ were open to you--chances of which half the sanctity
was in what they excluded. However, there were more unsettled matters
between Mrs. Dallow and her queer kinsman than even Mrs. Gresham's fine
insight could embrace. She was not on the Sunday evening before Easter
among the guests in Great Stanhope Street; but if she had been Julia's
singular indifference to observation would have stopped short of
encouraging her to remain in the drawing-room, along with Nick, after
the others had gone. I may add that Mrs. Gresham's extreme curiosity
would have emboldened her as little to do so. She would have taken for
granted that the pair wished to be alone together, though she would have
regarded this only as a snippet. The company had at all events stayed
late, and it was nearly twelve o'clock when the last of them, standing
before the fire in the room they had quitted, broke out to his
companion:

"See here, Julia, how long do you really expect me to endure this kind
of thing?" Julia made him no answer; she only leaned back in her chair
with her eyes upon his. He met her gaze a moment; then he turned round
to the fire and for another moment looked into it. After this he faced
his hostess again with the exclamation: "It's so foolish--it's so
damnably foolish!"

She still said nothing, but at the end of a minute she spoke without
answering him. "I shall expect you on Tuesday, and I hope you'll come by
a decent train."

"What do you mean by a decent train?"

"I mean I hope you'll not leave it till the last thing before dinner, so
that we can have a little walk or something."

"What's a little walk or something? Why, if you make such a point of my
coming to Griffin, do you want me to come at all?"

She hesitated an instant; then she returned; "I knew you hated it!"

"You provoke me so," said Nick. "You try to, I think."

"And Severals is still worse. You'll get out of that if you can," Mrs.
Dallow went on.

"If I can? What's to prevent me?"

"You promised Lady Whiteroy. But of course that's nothing."

"I don't care a straw for Lady Whiteroy."

"And you promised me. But that's less still."

"It _is_ foolish--it's quite idiotic," said Nick with his hands in his
pockets and his eyes on the ceiling.

There was another silence, at the end of which Julia remarked: "You
might have answered