of."

"Yes, but didn't Uncle Percy help him?"

"His wife helped him," said Lady Agnes.

"Dear mamma!"--the girl was prompt. "There's one thing," she added:
"that Mr. Carteret will always help Nick."

"What do you mean by 'always'?"

"Why whether he marries Julia or not."

"Things aren't so easy," Lady Agnes judged. "It will all depend on
Nick's behaviour. He can stop it to-morrow."

Grace Dormer stared; she evidently thought Mr. Carteret's beneficence a
part of the scheme of nature. "How could he stop it?"

"By not being serious. It isn't so hard to prevent people giving you
money."

"Serious?" Grace repeated. "Does he want him to be a prig like Lord
Egbert?"

"Yes--that's exactly what he wants. And what he'll do for him he'll do
for him only if he marries Julia."

"Has he told you?" Grace inquired. And then, before her mother could
answer, "I'm delighted at that!" she cried.

"He hasn't told me, but that's the way things happen." Lady Agnes was
less optimistic than her daughter, and such optimism as she cultivated
was a thin tissue with the sense of things as they are showing through.
"If Nick becomes rich Charles Carteret will make him more so. If he
doesn't he won't give him a shilling."

"Oh mamma!" Grace demurred.

"It's all very well to say that in public life money isn't as necessary
as it used to be," her ladyship went on broodingly. "Those who say so
don't know anything about it. It's always intensely necessary."

Her daughter, visibly affected by the gloom of her manner, felt impelled
to evoke as a corrective a more cheerful idea. "I daresay; but there's
the fact--isn't there?--that poor papa had so little."

"Yes, and there's the fact that it killed him!"

These words came out with a strange, quick, little flare of passion.
They startled Grace Dormer, who jumped in her place and gasped, "Oh
mother!" The next instant, however, she added in a different voice, "Oh
Peter!" for, with an air of eagerness, a gentleman was walking up to
them.

"How d'ye do, Cousin Agnes? How d'ye do, little Grace?" Peter
Sherringham laughed and shook hands with them, and three minutes later
was settled in his chair at their table, on which the first elements of
the meal had been placed. Explanations, on one side and the other, were
demanded and produced; from which it appeared that the two parties had
been in some degree at cross-purposes. The day before Lady Agnes and her
companions travelled to Paris Sherri