he remembered
how long the girl had stayed the last time she had been at Harsh--going
for an acceptable week and dragging out her visit to a month. She took a
private heroic vow that Grace shouldn't go near the place again for a
year; not, that is, unless Nick and Julia were married within the time.
If that were to happen she shouldn't care. She recognised that it wasn't
absolutely everything Julia should be in love with Nick; it was also
better she should dislike his mother and sisters after a probable
pursuit of him than before. Lady Agnes did justice to the natural rule
in virtue of which it usually comes to pass that a woman doesn't get on
with her husband's female belongings, and was even willing to be
sacrificed to it in her disciplined degree. But she desired not to be
sacrificed for nothing: if she was to be objected to as a mother-in-law
she wished to be the mother-in-law first.

At the hotel in the Rue de Rivoli she had the disappointment of finding
that Mrs. Dallow had not called, and also that no telegrams had come.
She went in with the girls for half an hour and then straggled out with
them again. She was undetermined and dissatisfied and the afternoon was
rather a problem; of the kind, moreover, that she disliked most and was
least accustomed to: not a choice between different things to do--her
life had been full of that--but a want of anything to do at all. Nick
had said to her before they separated: "You can knock about with the
girls, you know; everything's amusing here." That was easily said while
he sauntered and gossiped with Peter Sherringham and perhaps went to
see more pictures like those in the Salon. He was usually, on such
occasions, very good-natured about spending his time with them; but this
episode had taken altogether a perverse, profane form. She had no desire
whatever to knock about and was far from finding everything in Paris
amusing. She had no aptitude for aimlessness, and moreover thought it
vulgar. If she had found Julia's card at the hotel--the sign of a hope
of catching them just as they came back from the Salon--she would have
made a second attempt to see her before the evening; but now certainly
they would leave her alone. Lady Agnes wandered joylessly with the girls
in the Palais Royal and the Rue de Richelieu, and emerged upon the
Boulevard, where they continued their frugal prowl, as Biddy rather
irritatingly called it. They went into five shops to buy a hat for
Biddy, and he