"Our ridiculous play. That's the name of the impossible woman. She has put bread into our mouths and she's a loaf on the shelf for the future. The rights are mine."
"You're lucky to have them," said Nick a little vaguely, troubled about his sitter's nose, which was somehow Jewish without the convex arch.
"Indeed I am. He gave them to me. Wasn't it charming?"
"'He' gave them—Mr. Dashwood?"
"Dear me, no—where should poor Dashwood have got them? He hasn't a penny in the world. Besides, if he had got them he'd have kept them. I mean your blessed cousin."
"I see—they're a present from Peter."
"Like many other things. Isn't he a dear? If it hadn't been for him the shelf would have remained bare. He bought the play for this country and America for four hundred pounds, and on the chance: fancy! There was no rush for it, and how could he tell? And then he gracefully pressed it on me. So I've my little capital. Isn't he a duck? You've nice cousins."
Nick assented to the proposition, only inserting an amendment to the effect that surely Peter had nice cousins too, and making, as he went on with his work, a tacit, preoccupied reflexion or two; such as that it must be pleasant to render little services like that to youth, beauty and genius—he rather wondered how Peter could afford them—and that, "duck" as he was, Miss Rooth's benefactor was rather taken for granted. Sic vos non vobis softly sounded in his brain. This community of interests, or at least of relations, quickened the flight of time, so that he was still fresh when the sitting came to an end. It was settled Miriam should come back on the morrow, to enable her artist to make the most of the few days of the parliamentary recess; and just before she left him she asked:
"Then you will come to-night?"
"Without fail. I hate to lose an hour of you."