"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," Grace remarked to her brother in a tone of some triumph. "My dear, they're all lovely. George Dallow's judgement was so sure, he was incapable of making a mistake," Nicholas Dormer returned. "I don't see how you can talk of him, he was dreadful," said Lady Agnes. "My dear, if he was good enough for Julia to marry he's good enough for us to talk of." "She did him a very great honour." "I daresay, but he was not unworthy of it. No such enlightened collection of beautiful objects has been made in England in our time." "You think too much of beautiful objects!" Lady Agnes sighed. "I thought you were just now lamenting that I think too little." "It's very nice--his having left Julia so well off," Biddy interposed soothingly, as if she foresaw a tangle. "He treated her _en grand seigneur_, absolutely," Nick went on. "He used to look greasy, all the same"--Grace bore on it with a dull weight. "His name ought to have been Tallow." "You're not saying what Julia would like, if that's what you are trying to say," her brother observed. "Don't be vulgar, Grace," said Lady Agnes. "I know Peter Sherringham's birthday!" Biddy broke out innocently, as a pacific diversion. She had passed her hand into Nick's arm, to signify her readiness to go with him, while she scanned the remoter reaches of the garden as if it had occurred to her that to direct their steps in some such sense might after all be the shorter way to get at Peter. "He's too much older than you, my dear," Grace answered without encouragement. "That's why I've noticed it--he's thirty-four. Do you call that too old? I don't care for slobbering infants!" Biddy cried. "Don't be vulgar," Lady Agnes enjoined again. "Come, Bid, we'll go and be vulgar together; for that's what we are, I'm afraid," her brother said to her. "We'll go and look at all these low works of art." "Do you really think it's necessary to the child's development?" Lady Agnes demanded as the pair turned away. And then while her son, struck as by a challenge, paused, lingering a moment with his little sister on his arm: "What we've been through this morning in this place, and what you've paraded before our eyes--the murders, the tortures, all kinds of disease and indecency!" Nick looked at his mother as if this sudden protest surprised him, but as if also there were lurking explanations of it which he quickly guessed. Her resentment had the effect not so much of animating her cold face as of making it colder, less expressive, though visibly prouder. "Ah dear mother, don't do the British matron!" he replied good-humouredly. "British matron's soon said! I don't know what they're coming to."