can't order lunch," Lady Agnes replied with a cold
impatience which seemed to intimate that she had problems far more
important than those of victualling to contend with.

"Then perhaps Peter will if he comes. I'm sure he's up in everything of
that sort."

"Oh hang Peter!" Nick exclaimed. "Leave him out of account, and _do_
order lunch, mother; but not cold beef and pickles."

"I must say--about _him_--you're not nice," Biddy ventured to remark to
her brother, hesitating and even blushing a little.

"You make up for it, my dear," the young man answered, giving her
chin--a very charming, rotund, little chin--a friendly whisk with his
forefinger.

"I can't imagine what you've got against him," her ladyship said
gravely.

"Dear mother, it's disappointed fondness," Nick argued. "They won't
answer one's notes; they won't let one know where they are nor what to
expect. 'Hell has no fury like a woman scorned'; nor like a man
either."

"Peter has such a tremendous lot to do--it's a very busy time at the
embassy; there are sure to be reasons," Biddy explained with her pretty
eyes.

"Reasons enough, no doubt!" said Lady Agnes--who accompanied these words
with an ambiguous sigh, however, as if in Paris even the best reasons
would naturally be bad ones.

"Doesn't Julia write to you, doesn't she answer you the very day?" Grace
asked, looking at Nick as if she were the bold one.

He waited, returning her glance with a certain severity. "What do you
know about my correspondence? No doubt I ask too much," he went on; "I'm
so attached to them. Dear old Peter, dear old Julia!"

"She's younger than you, my dear!" cried the elder girl, still resolute.

"Yes, nineteen days."

"I'm glad you know her birthday."

"She knows yours; she always gives you something," Lady Agnes reminded
her son.

"Her taste is good _then_, isn't it, Nick?" Grace Dormer continued.

"She makes charming presents; but, dear mother, it isn't _her_ taste.
It's her husband's."

"How her husband's?"

"The beautiful objects of which she disposes so freely are the things he
collected for years laboriously, devotedly, poor man!"

"She disposes of them to you, but not to others," said Lady Agnes. "But
that's all right," she added, as if this might have been taken for a
complaint of the limitations of Julia's bounty. "She has to select among
so many, and that's a proof of taste," her ladyship pursued.

"You can't say she doesn't choose lovely ones,"