en a question of her marrying
Nick was the funny thing rather than that the question should have been
dropped. He liked his clever cousin very well as he was--enough for a
vague sense that he might be spoiled by alteration to a brother-in-law.
Moreover, though not perhaps distinctly conscious of this, Peter pressed
lightly on Julia's doings from a tacit understanding that in this case
she would let him off as easily. He couldn't have said exactly what it
was he judged it pertinent to be let off from: perhaps from irritating
inquiry as to whether he had given any more tea-parties for gross young
women connected with the theatre.

Peter's forbearance, however, brought him not quite all the security he
prefigured. After an interval he indeed went so far as to ask Julia if
Nick had been wanting in respect to her; but this was an appeal intended
for sympathy, not for other intervention. She answered: "Dear no--though
he's very provoking." Thus Peter guessed that they had had a quarrel in
which it didn't concern him to meddle: he added her epithet and her
flight from England together, and they made up to his perception one of
the little magnified embroilments which do duty for the real in
superficial lives. It was worse to provoke Julia than not, and Peter
thought Nick's doing so not particularly characteristic of his
versatility for good. He might wonder why she didn't marry the member
for Harsh if the subject had pressingly come up between them; but he
wondered still more why Nick didn't marry that gentleman's great backer.
Julia said nothing again, as if to give him a chance to address her some
challenge that would save her from gushing; but as his impulse appeared
to be to change the subject, and as he changed it only by silence, she
was reduced to resuming presently:

"I should have thought you'd have come over to see your friend the
actress."

"Which of my friends? I know so many actresses," Peter pleaded.

"The woman you inflicted on us in this place a year ago--the one who's
in London now."

"Oh Miriam Rooth? I should have liked to come over, but I've been tied
fast. Have you seen her there?"

"Yes, I've seen her."

"Do you like her?"

"Not at all."

"She has a lovely voice," Peter hazarded after a moment.

"I don't know anything about her voice--I haven't heard it."

"But she doesn't act in pantomime, does she?"

"I don't know anything about her acting. I saw her in private--at Nick
Dormer's studio."