tempted to cry out that she had no wish whatever to
appropriate the gentleman. Then she made the discovery that the young
lady too had a manner, almost as much as her clever guide, and the rapid
induction that it perhaps meant no more than his. She only looked at
Biddy from beneath her eyebrows, which were wonderfully arched, but
there was ever so much of a manner in the way she did it. Biddy had a
momentary sense of being a figure in a ballet, a dramatic ballet--a
subordinate motionless figure, to be dashed at to music or strangely
capered up to. It would be a very dramatic ballet indeed if this young
person were the heroine. She had magnificent hair, the girl reflected;
and at the same moment heard Nick say to his interlocutor: "You're not
in London--one can't meet you there?"

"I rove, drift, float," was the answer; "my feelings direct me--if such
a life as mine may be said to have a direction. Where there's anything
to feel I try to be there!" the young man continued with his confiding
laugh.

"I should like to get hold of you," Nick returned.

"Well, in that case there would be no doubt the intellectual adventure.
Those are the currents--any sort of personal relation--that govern my
career."

"I don't want to lose you this time," Nick continued in a tone that
excited Biddy's surprise. A moment before, when his friend had said that
he tried to be where there was anything to feel, she had wondered how he
could endure him.

"Don't lose me, don't lose me!" cried the stranger after a fashion which
affected the girl as the highest expression of irresponsibility she had
ever seen. "After all why should you? Let us remain together unless I
interfere"--and he looked, smiling and interrogative, at Biddy, who
still remained blank, only noting again that Nick forbore to make them
acquainted. This was an anomaly, since he prized the gentleman so.
Still, there could be no anomaly of Nick's that wouldn't impose itself
on his younger sister.

"Certainly, I keep you," he said, "unless on my side I deprive those
ladies--!"

"Charming women, but it's not an indissoluble union. We meet, we
communicate, we part! They're going--I'm seeing them to the door. I
shall come back." With this Nick's friend rejoined his companions, who
moved away with him, the strange fine eyes of the girl lingering on
Biddy's brother as well as on Biddy herself as they receded.

"Who _is_ he--who _are_ they?" Biddy instantly asked.

"He's a gentle