order of the place was that there were sometimes oats on the
pavements. A crooked lane, with postern doors and cobble-stones, opened
near Mr. Carteret's house and wandered toward the old abbey; for the
abbey was the secondary fact of Beauclere--it came after Mr. Carteret.
Mr. Carteret sometimes went away and the abbey never did; yet somehow
what was most of the essence of the place was that it could boast of the
resident in the squarest of the square red houses, the one with the
finest of the arched hall-windows, in three divisions, over the widest
of the last-century doorways. You saw the great church from the
doorstep, beyond gardens of course, and in the stillness you could hear
the flutter of the birds that circled round its huge short towers. The
towers had been finished only as time finishes things, by lending
assurances to their lapses. There is something right in old monuments
that have been wrong for centuries: some such moral as that was usually
in Nick's mind as an emanation of Beauclere when he saw the grand line
of the roof ride the sky and draw out its length.

When the door with the brass plate was opened and Mr. Chayter appeared
in the middle distance--he always advanced just to the same spot, as a
prime minister receives an ambassador--Nick felt anew that he would be
wonderfully like Mr. Carteret if he had had an expression. He denied
himself this freedom, never giving a sign of recognition, often as the
young man had been at the house. He was most attentive to the visitor's
wants, but apparently feared that if he allowed a familiarity it might
go too far. There was always the same question to be asked--had Mr.
Carteret finished his nap? He usually had not finished it, and this left
Nick what he liked--time to smoke a cigarette in the garden or even to
take before dinner a turn about the place. He observed now, every time
he came, that Mr. Carteret's nap lasted a little longer. There was each
year a little more strength to be gathered for the ceremony of dinner:
this was the principal symptom--almost the only one--that the
clear-cheeked old gentleman gave of not being so fresh as of yore. He
was still wonderful for his age. To-day he was particularly careful:
Chayter went so far as to mention to Nick that four gentlemen were
expected to dinner--an exuberance perhaps partly explained by the
circumstance that Lord Bottomley was one of them.

The prospect of Lord Bottomley was somehow not stirring; it only