ngham had gone to London for
forty-eight hours on private business of the ambassador's, arriving, on
his return by the night-train, only early that morning. There had
accordingly been a delay in his receiving Nick Dormer's two notes. If
Nick had come to the embassy in person--he might have done him the
honour to call--he would have learned that the second secretary was
absent. Lady Agnes was not altogether successful in assigning a motive
to her son's neglect of this courteous form; she could but say: "I
expected him, I wanted him to go; and indeed, not hearing from you, he
would have gone immediately--an hour or two hence, on leaving this
place. But we're here so quietly--not to go out, not to seem to appeal
to the ambassador. Nick put it so--'Oh mother, we'll keep out of it; a
friendly note will do.' I don't know definitely what he wanted to keep
out of, unless anything like gaiety. The embassy isn't gay, I know. But
I'm sure his note was friendly, wasn't it? I daresay you'll see for
yourself. He's different directly he gets abroad; he doesn't seem to
care." Lady Agnes paused a moment, not carrying out this particular
elucidation; then she resumed: "He said you'd have seen Julia and that
you'd understand everything from her. And when I asked how she'd know he
said, 'Oh she knows everything!'"

"He never said a word to me about Julia," Peter Sherringham returned.
Lady Agnes and her daughter exchanged a glance at this: the latter had
already asked three times where Julia was, and her ladyship dropped that
they had been hoping she would be able to come with Peter. The young man
set forth that she was at the moment at an hotel in the Rue de la Paix,
but had only been there since that morning; he had seen her before
proceeding to the Champs Elysees. She had come up to Paris by an early
train--- she had been staying at Versailles, of all places in the world.
She had been a week in Paris on her return from Cannes--her stay there
had been of nearly a month: fancy!--and then had gone out to Versailles
to see Mrs. Billinghurst. Perhaps they'd remember her, poor Dallow's
sister. She was staying there to teach her daughters French--she had a
dozen or two!--and Julia had spent three days with her. She was to
return to England about the twenty-fifth. It would make seven weeks she
must have been away from town--a rare thing for her; she usually stuck
to it so in summer.

"Three days with Mrs. Billinghurst--how very good-natured of