ct of the high good looks of his cousin, a
gentleman, to one's taste and for one's faith, in a different enough
degree from the stiff-collared, conversible Dashwood. Peter didn't hate
Nick for being of so fine an English grain; he knew rather the brush of
a new wave of annoyance at Julia's stupid failure to get on with him
under that good omen.

It was his first encounter with the late member for Harsh since his
arrival in London: they had been on one side and the other so much taken
up with their affairs. Since their last meeting Nick had, as we know, to
his kinsman's perception, really put on a new character: he had done the
finest stroke of business in the quietest way. This had made him a
presence to be counted with, and in just the sense in which poor Peter
desired least to count. Poor Peter, after his somersault in the blue,
had just lately been much troubled; he was ravaged by contending
passions; he paid every hour in a torment of unrest for what was false
in his position, the impossibility of keeping the presentable parts of
his character together, the opposition of interest and desire. Nick, his
junior and a lighter weight, had settled _his_ problem and showed no
wounds; there was something impertinent and mystifying in it. Yet he
looked, into the bargain, too innocently young and happy, and too
careless and modest and amateurish, to figure as a rival or even as the
genius he was apparently going to try to be--the genius that the other
day, in the studio there with Biddy, Peter had got a startled glimpse of
his power to become. Julia's brother would have liked to be aware of
grounds of resentment, to be able to hold she had been badly treated or
that Nick was basely fatuous, for in that case he might have had the
resource of taking offence. But where was the outrage of his merely
being liked by a woman in respect to whom one had definitely denied
one's self the luxury of pretensions, especially if, as the wrong-doer,
he had taken no action in the matter? It could scarcely be called
wrong-doing to call, casually, on an afternoon when the lady didn't seem
to be there. Peter could at any rate rejoice that Miriam didn't; and he
proposed to himself suggesting to Nick after a little that they should
adjourn together--they had such interesting things to talk about.
Meanwhile Nick greeted him with a friendly freedom in which he could
read neither confusion nor defiance. Peter was reassured against a
danger he believed