he once
found that odd satellite, to her surprise, paying a visit to her
sister--he had come for Nick, who was absent; she remembered how they
had met in Paris and how little he had succeeded with them. When she had
asked Biddy afterwards how she could receive him that way Biddy had
replied that even she, Grace, would have some charity for him if she
could hear how fond he was of poor Nick. He had talked to her only of
Nick--of nothing else. Grace had observed how she spoke of Nick as
injured, and had noted the implication that some one else, ceasing to be
fond of him, was thereby condemned in Biddy's eyes. It seemed to Grace
that some one else had at least a right not to like some of his friends.
The studio struck her as mean and horrid; and so far from suggesting to
her that it could have played a part in making Nick and Julia fall out
she only felt how little its dusty want of consequence, could count, one
way or the other, for Julia. Grace, who had no opinions on art, saw no
merit whatever in those "impressions" on canvas from Nick's hand with
which the place was bestrewn. She didn't at all wish her brother to have
talent in that direction, yet it was secretly humiliating to her that he
hadn't more.

Nick meanwhile felt a pang of almost horrified penitence, in the little
room on the right of the hall, the moment after he had made his mother
really understand he had thrown up his scat and that it would probably
be in the evening papers. That she would take this very ill was an idea
that had pressed upon him hard enough, but she took it even worse than
he had feared. He measured, in the look she gave him when the full truth
loomed upon her, the mortal cruelty of her distress; her face was like
that of a passenger on a ship who sees the huge bows of another vessel
towering close out of the fog. There are visions of dismay before which
the best conscience recoils, and though Nick had made his choice on all
the grounds there were a few minutes in which he would gladly have
admitted that his wisdom was a dark mistake. His heart was in his
throat, he had gone too far; he had been ready to disappoint his
mother--he had not been ready to destroy her.

Lady Agnes, I hasten to add, was not destroyed; she made, after her
first drowning gasp, a tremendous scene of opposition, in the face of
which her son could only fall back on his intrenchments. She must know
the worst, he had thought: so he told her everything, including the