ar dismal occasion. All that was over, everything
that belonged to it was over. He learned on his arrival--he saw Mrs.
Lendon immediately--that his old friend had continued to pick up. He had
expressed a strong and a perfectly rational desire to talk with his
expected visitor, and the doctor had said that if it was about anything
important they should forbear to oppose him. "He says it's about
something very important," Mrs. Lendon remarked, resting shy eyes on him
while she added that she herself was now sitting with her dear brother.
She had sent those wonderful young ladies out to see the abbey. Nick
paused with her outside Mr. Carteret's door. He wanted to say something
rather intimate and all soothing to her in return for her homely
charity--give her a hint, for which she was far from looking, that
practically he had now no interest in her brother's estate. This was of
course impossible; her lack of irony, of play of mind, gave him no
pretext, and such a reference would be an insult to her simple
discretion. She was either not thinking of his interest at all, or was
thinking of it with the tolerance of a nature trained to a hundred
decent submissions. Nick looked a little into her mild, uninvestigating
eyes, and it came over him supremely that the goodness of these people
was singularly pure: they were a part of what was cleanest and sanest
and dullest in humanity. There had been just a little mocking inflexion
in Mrs. Lendon's pleasant voice; but it was dedicated to the young
ladies in the black uniforms--she could perhaps be humorous about
_them_--and not to the theory of the "importance" of Nick's interview
with her brother. His arrested desire to let her know he was not greedy
translated itself into a vague friendliness and into the abrupt, rather
bewildering words: "I can't tell you half the good I think of you." As
he passed into Mr. Carteret's room it occurred to him that she would
perhaps interpret this speech as an acknowledgment of obligation--of her
good nature in not keeping him away from the rich old man.

XXXIII

The rich old man was propped up on pillows, and in this attitude,
beneath the high, spare canopy of his bed, presented himself to Nick's
picture-seeking vision as a figure in a clever composition or a "story."
He had gathered strength, though this strength was not much in his
voice; it was mainly in his brighter eyes and his air of being pleased
with himself. He put out his hand and