n
address.

"Where's Grace going in such a hurry?" he asked of Lady Agnes; to which
she replied that she hadn't the least idea--her children, at the pass
they had all come to, knocked about as they liked.

Well, he sat down again; he stayed a quarter of an hour and then he
stayed longer, and during this time his appreciation of what she had in
her mind gathered force. She showed him that precious quantity clearly
enough, though she showed it by no clumsy, no voluntary arts. It looked
out of her sombre, conscious eyes and quavered in her preoccupied,
perfunctory tones. She took an extravagant interest in his future
proceedings, the probable succession of events in his career, the
different honours he would be likely to come in for, the salary attached
to his actual appointment, the salary attached to the appointments that
would follow--they would be sure to, wouldn't they?--and what he might
reasonably expect to save. Oh he must save--Lady Agnes was an advocate
of saving; and he must take tremendous pains and get on and be clever
and fiercely ambitious: he must make himself indispensable and rise to
the top. She was urgent and suggestive and sympathetic; she threw
herself into the vision of his achievements and emoluments as if to
appease a little the sore hunger with which Nick's treachery had left
her. This was touching to her nephew, who didn't remain unmoved even at
those more importunate moments when, as she fell into silence, fidgeting
feverishly with a morsel of fancy-work she had plucked from a table, her
whole presence became an intense, repressed appeal to him. What that
appeal would have been had it been uttered was: "Oh Peter, take little
Biddy; oh my dear young friend, understand your interests at the same
time that you understand mine; be kind and reasonable and clever; save
me all further anxiety and tribulation and accept my lovely, faultless
child from my hands."

That was what Lady Agnes had always meant, more or less, that was what
Grace had meant, and they meant it with singular lucidity on the present
occasion, Lady Agnes meant it so much that from one moment to another
he scarce knew what she might do; and Grace meant it so much that she
had rushed away in a hansom to fetch her sister from the studio. Grace,
however, was a fool, for Biddy certainly wouldn't come. The news of his
promotion had started them off, adding point to their idea of his being
an excellent match; bringing home to them sharp