rnible to Nick, who, however, perceived
his mother genuinely to consider that his action had disconnected them
all, still more than she held they were already disconnected, from the
good things of life. Julia was money, Mr. Carteret was money--everything
else was the absence of it. If these precious people had been primarily
money for Nick it after all flattered the distributive impulse in him to
have taken for granted that for the rest of the family too the
difference would have been so great. For days, for weeks and months to
come, the little room on the right of the hall was to vibrate for our
young man, as if the very walls and window-panes still suffered, with
the odious trial of his true temper.

XXXV

That evening--the evening of his return from Beauclere--he was conscious
of a keen desire to get away, to go abroad, to leave behind him the
little chatter his resignation would be sure to produce in an age of
publicity which never discriminated as to the quality of events. Then he
felt it decidedly better to stay, to see the business through on the
spot. Besides, he would have to meet his constituents--would a parcel of
cheese-eating burgesses ever have been "met" on so queer an
occasion?--and when that was over the incident would practically be
closed. Nick had an idea he knew in advance how it would affect him to
be pointed at as a person who had given up a considerable chance of
eventual "office" to take likenesses at so much a head. He wouldn't
attempt down at Harsh to touch on the question of motive; for, given the
nature of the public mind of Harsh, that would be a strain on his
faculty of exposition. But as regards the chaff of the political world
and of society he had a hope he should find chaff enough for retorts. It
was true that when his mother twitted him in her own effective way he
had felt rather flattened out; but then one's mother might have a
heavier hand than any one else. He had not thrown up the House of
Commons to amuse himself; he had thrown it up to work, to sit quietly
down and bend over his task. If he should go abroad his parent might
think he had some weak-minded view of joining Julia and trying, with
however little hope, to win her back--an illusion it would be singularly
pernicious to encourage. His desire for Julia's society had succumbed
for the present at any rate to a dire interruption--he had become more
and more aware of their speaking a different language. Nick felt like