"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 gentleman," Nick made answer--insufficiently, she thought, and even with a shade of hesitation. He spoke as if she might have supposed he was not one, and if he was really one why didn't he introduce him? But Biddy wouldn't for the world have put this question, and he now moved to the nearest bench and dropped upon it as to await the other's return. No sooner, however, had his sister seated herself than he said: "See here, my dear, do you think you had better stay?" "Do you want me to go back to mother?" the girl asked with a lengthening visage. "Well, what do you think?" He asked it indeed gaily enough. "Is your conversation to be about--about private affairs?" "No, I can't say that. But I doubt if mother would think it the sort of thing that's 'necessary to your development.'" This assertion appeared to inspire her with the eagerness with which she again broke out: "But who are they--who are they?" "I know nothing of the ladies. I never saw them before. The man's a fellow I knew very well at Oxford. He was thought immense fun there. We've diverged, as he says, and I had almost lost sight of him, but not so much as he thinks, because I've read him--read him with interest. He has written a very clever book." "What kind of a book?" "A sort of novel." "What sort of novel?" "Well, I don't know--with a lot of good writing." Biddy listened to this so receptively that she thought it perverse her brother should add: "I daresay Peter will have come if you return to mother." "I don't care if he has. Peter's nothing to me. But I'll go if you wish it." Nick smiled upon her again and then said: "It doesn't signify. We'll all go." "All?" she echoed. "He won't hurt us. On the contrary he'll do us good."