as he seated himself again.

"It seems a kind of fatality!" Biddy sighed.

He said nothing for some moments, at the end of which he asked if his
companion were to be quite alone during her mother's absence. She
replied that this parent was very droll about that: would never leave
her alone and always thought something dreadful would happen to her. She
had therefore arranged that Florence Tressilian should come and stay in
Calcutta Gardens for the next few days--to look after her and see she
did no wrong. Peter inquired with fulness into Florence Tressilian's
identity: he greatly hoped that for the success of Lady Agnes's
precautions she wasn't a flighty young genius like Biddy. She was
described to him as tremendously nice and tremendously clever, but also
tremendously old and tremendously safe; with the addition that Biddy was
tremendously fond of her and that while she remained in Calcutta Gardens
they expected to enjoy themselves tremendously. She was to come that
afternoon before dinner.

"And are you to dine at home?" said Peter.

"Certainly; where else?"

"And just you two alone? Do you call that enjoying yourselves
tremendously?"

"It will do for me. No doubt I oughtn't in modesty to speak for poor
Florence."

"It isn't fair to her; you ought to invite some one to meet her."

"Do you mean you, Peter?" the girl asked, turning to him quickly and
with a look that vanished the instant he caught it.

"Try me. I'll come like a shot."

"That's kind," said Biddy, dropping her hands and now resting her eyes
on him gratefully. She remained in this position as if under a charm;
then she jerked herself back to her work with the remark: "Florence will
like that immensely."

"I'm delighted to please Florence--your description of her's so
attractive!" Sherringham laughed. And when his companion asked him if he
minded there not being a great feast, because when her mother went away
she allowed her a fixed amount for that sort of thing and, as he might
imagine, it wasn't millions--when Biddy, with the frankness of their
pleasant kinship, touched anxiously on this economic point
(illustrating, as Peter saw, the lucidity with which Lady Agnes had had
in her old age to learn to recognise the occasions when she could be
conveniently frugal) he answered that the shortest dinners were the
best, especially when one was going to the theatre. That was his case
to-night, and did Biddy think he might look to Miss Tressilian to