"I don't think she has been very happy or very pleased of late," the girl said. "I think she has had some disappointments, poor dear mamma; and Grace has made her go out of town for three or four days in the hope of a little change. They've gone down to see an old lady, Lady St. Dunstans, who never comes to London now and who, you know--she's tremendously old--was papa's godmother. It's not very lively for Grace, but Grace is such a dear she'll do anything for mamma. Mamma will go anywhere, no matter at what risk of discomfort, to see people she can talk with about papa." Biddy added in reply to a further question that what her mother was disappointed about was--well, themselves, her children and all their affairs; and she explained that Lady Agnes wanted all kinds of things for them that didn't come, that they didn't get or seem likely to get, so that their life appeared altogether a failure. She wanted a great deal, Biddy admitted; she really wanted everything, for she had thought in her happier days that everything was to be hers. She loved them all so much and was so proud too: she couldn't get over the thought of their not being successful. Peter was unwilling to press at this point, for he suspected one of the things Lady Agnes wanted; but Biddy relieved him a little by describing her as eager above all that Grace should get married. "That's too unselfish of her," he pronounced, not caring at all for Grace. "Cousin Agnes ought to keep her near her always, if Grace is so obliging and devoted." "Oh mamma would give up anything of that sort for our good; she wouldn't sacrifice us that way!" Biddy protested. "Besides, I'm the one to stay with mamma; not that I can manage and look after her and do everything so well as Grace. But, you know, I _want_ to," said Biddy with a liquid note in her voice--and giving her lump of clay a little stab for mendacious emphasis. "But doesn't your mother want the rest of you to get married--Percival and Nick and you?" Peter asked. "Oh she has given up Percy. I don't suppose she thinks it would do. Dear Nick of course--that's just what she does want." He had a pause. "And you, Biddy?" "Oh I daresay. But that doesn't signify--I never shall." Peter got up at this; the tone of it set him in motion and he took a turn round the room. He threw off something cheap about her being too proud; to which she replied that that was the only thing for a girl to be to get on. "What do you mean by getting on?"--and he stopped with his hands in his pockets on the other side of the studio. "I mean crying one's eyes out!" Biddy unexpectedly exclaimed; but she drowned the effect of this pathetic paradox in a laugh of clear irrelevance and in the quick declaration: "Of course it's about Nick that she's really broken-hearted." "What's the matter with Nick?" he went on with all his diplomacy.