oking at moments into the dull street
and wondering what on earth had taken place. She had no one to express
her wonder to, for Florence Tressilian had departed and Biddy after
breakfast betaken herself, in accordance with a custom now inveterate,
to Rosedale Road. Her mother was unmistakably and passionately crying--a
fact tremendous in its significance, for Lady Agnes had not often been
brought so low. Nick had seen her cry, but this almost awful spectacle
had seldom been offered to Grace, and it now convinced her that some
dreadful thing had happened.

That was of course in order, after Nick's mysterious quarrel with Julia,
which had made his mother so ill and was at present followed up with new
horrors. The row, as Grace mentally phrased it, had had something to do
with the rupture of the lovers--some deeper depth of disappointment had
begun to yawn. Grace asked herself if they were talking about Broadwood;
if Nick had demanded that in the conditions so unpleasantly altered Lady
Agnes should restore that awfully nice house to its owner. This was
very possible, but why should he so suddenly have broken out about
it? And, moreover, their mother, though sore to bleeding about
the whole business--for Broadwood, in its fresh comfort, was too
delightful--wouldn't have met this pretension with tears: hadn't she
already so perversely declared that they couldn't decently continue to
make use of the place? Julia had said that of course they must go on,
but Lady Agnes was prepared with an effective rejoinder to that. It
didn't consist of words--it was to be austerely practical, was to
consist of letting Julia see, at the moment she should least expect it,
that they quite wouldn't go on. Lady Agnes was ostensibly waiting for
this moment--the moment when her renunciation would be most impressive.

Grace was conscious of how she had for many days been moving with her
mother in darkness, deeply stricken by Nick's culpable--oh he was
culpable!--loss of his prize, but feeling an obscure element in the
matter they didn't grasp, an undiscovered explanation that would perhaps
make it still worse, though it might make _them_, poor things, a little
better. He had explained nothing, he had simply said, "Dear mother, we
don't hit it off, after all; it's an awful bore, but we don't"--as if
that were in the dire conditions an adequate balm for two aching hearts.
From Julia naturally no flood of light was to be looked for--Julia
_never_ humo