brother; she only
referred to the portrait, with inscrutable amenity, as a direct
consequence of this gentleman's fortunate suggestion that first day at
Madame Carre's. Nash showed, however, such a disposition to dwell
sociably and luminously on the peculiarly interesting character of what
he called Dormer's predicament and on the fine suspense it was fitted to
kindle in the breast of the truly discerning, that Peter wondered, as I
have already hinted, if this insistence were not a subtle perversity, a
devilish little invention to torment a man whose jealousy was
presumable. Yet his fellow-pilgrim struck him as on the whole but
scantly devilish and as still less occupied with the prefigurement of so
plain a man's emotions. Indeed he threw a glamour of romance over Nick;
tossed off toward him such illuminating yet mystifying references that
they operated quite as a bait to curiosity, invested with amusement the
view of the possible, any wish to follow out the chain of events. He
learned from Gabriel that Nick was still away, and he then felt he could
almost submit to instruction, to initiation. The loose charm of these
days was troubled, however--it ceased to be idyllic--when late on the
evening of the second Sunday he walked away with Nash southward from
Saint John's Wood. For then something came out.

BOOK SIX

XXXII

It mattered not so much what the doctors thought--and Sir Matthew Hope,
the greatest of them all, had been down twice in one week--as that Mr.
Chayter, the omniscient butler, declared with all the authority of his
position and his experience that Mr. Carteret was very bad indeed. Nick
Dormer had a long talk with him--it lasted six minutes--the day he
hurried to Beauclere in response to a telegram. It was Mr. Chayter who
had taken upon himself to telegraph in spite of the presence in the
house of Mr. Carteret's nearest relation and only surviving sister, Mrs.
Lendon. This lady, a large, mild, healthy woman with a heavy tread, a
person who preferred early breakfasts, uncomfortable chairs and the
advertisement-sheet of the _Times_, had arrived the week before and was
awaiting the turn of events. She was a widow and occupied in Cornwall a
house nine miles from a station, which had, to make up for this
inconvenience as she had once told Nick, a fine old herbaceous garden.
She was extremely fond of an herbaceous garden--her main consciousness
was of herbaceous possibilities. Nick had often see