se it's different. Besides, it isn't different and it
never was," said Lady Agnes, more incoherent in her earnestness than it
often happened to her to be. "She always liked you and she likes you now
more than ever--if you call _that_ different!" Nick got up at this and,
without meeting her eyes, walked to one of the windows, where he stood
with his back turned and looked out on the great greenness. She watched
him a moment and she might well have been wishing, while he appeared to
gaze with intentness, that it would come to him with the same force as
it had come to herself--very often before, but during these last days
more than ever--that the level lands of Harsh, stretching away before
the window, the French garden with its symmetry, its screens and its
statues, and a great many more things of which these were the
superficial token, were Julia's very own to do with exactly as she
liked. No word of appreciation or envy, however, dropped from the young
man's lips, and his mother presently went on: "What could be more
natural than that after your triumphant contest you and she should have
lots to settle and to talk about--no end of practical questions, no end
of urgent business? Aren't you her member, and can't her member pass a
day with her, and she a great proprietor?"

Nick turned round at this with an odd expression. "_Her_ member--am I
hers?"

Lady Agnes had a pause--she had need of all her tact. "Well, if the
place is hers and you represent the place--!" she began. But she went no
further, for Nick had interrupted her with a laugh.

"What a droll thing to 'represent,' when one thinks of it! And what does
_it_ represent, poor stupid little borough with its strong, though I
admit clean, smell of meal and its curiously fat-faced inhabitants? Did
you ever see such a collection of fat faces turned up at the hustings?
They looked like an enormous sofa, with the cheeks for the gathers and
the eyes for the buttons."

"Oh well, the next time you shall have a great town," Lady Agnes
returned, smiling and feeling that she _was_ tactful.

"It will only be a bigger sofa! I'm joking, of course?" Nick pursued,
"and I ought to be ashamed of myself. They've done me the honour to
elect me and I shall never say a word that's not civil about them, poor
dears. But even a new member may blaspheme to his mother."

"I wish you'd be serious to your mother"--and she went nearer him.

"The difficulty is that I'm two men; it's the stra