dder still and
led to her smiling more, to her laughing with a confusion of shyness and
gladness that charmed him. She rubbed her hands on her apron, she pulled
it off, she looked delightfully awkward, not meeting Peter's eye, and
she said: "I'm just scraping here a little--you mustn't mind me. What I
do is awful, you know. _Please_, Peter, don't look, I've been coming
here lately to make my little mess, because mamma doesn't particularly
like it at home. I've had a lesson or two from a lady who exhibits, but
you wouldn't suppose it to see what I do. Nick's so kind; he lets me
come here; he uses the studio so little; I do what I want, or rather
what I can. What a pity he's gone--he'd have been so glad. I'm really
alone--I hope you don't mind. Peter, _please_ don't look."

Peter was not bent on looking; his eyes had occupation enough in Biddy's
own agreeable aspect, which was full of a rare element of domestication
and responsibility. Though she had, stretching her bravery, taken
possession of her brother's quarters, she struck her visitor as more at
home and more herself than he had ever seen her. It was the first time
she had been, to his notice, so separate from her mother and sister. She
seemed to know this herself and to be a little frightened by it--just
enough to make him wish to be reassuring. At the same time Peter also,
on this occasion, found himself touched with diffidence, especially
after he had gone back and closed the door and settled down to a regular
call; for he became acutely conscious of what Julia had said to him in
Paris and was unable to rid himself of the suspicion that it had been
said with Biddy's knowledge. It wasn't that he supposed his sister had
told the girl she meant to do what she could to make him propose to her:
that would have been cruel to her--if she liked him enough to
consent--in Julia's perfect uncertainty. But Biddy participated by
imagination, by divination, by a clever girl's secret, tremulous
instincts, in her good friend's views about her, and this probability
constituted for Sherringham a sort of embarrassing publicity. He had
impressions, possibly gross and unjust, in regard to the way women move
constantly together amid such considerations and subtly
intercommunicate, when they don't still more subtly dissemble, the hopes
or fears of which persons of the opposite sex form the subject.
Therefore poor Biddy would know that if she failed to strike him in the
right light it w