"You mean you've been keeping it from her because she wouldn't like it?"
"We're afraid she may think papa wouldn't have liked it."
This was said with an absence of humour at which Peter could but show amusement, though he quickly recovered himself, repenting of any apparent failure of respect to the high memory of his late celebrated relative. He threw off rather vaguely: "Ah yes, I remember that great man's ideas," and then went on: "May I ask if you know it, the fact we're talking of, through Julia or through Nick?"
"I know it from both of them."
"Then if you're in their confidence may I further ask if this undertaking of Nick's is the reason why things seem to be at an end between them?"
"Oh I don't think she likes it," Biddy had to say.
"Isn't it good?"
"Oh I don't mean the picture—she hasn't seen it. But his having done it."
"Does she dislike it so much that that's why she won't marry him?"
Biddy gave up her work, moving away from it to look at it. She came and sat down on the long bench on which Sherringham had placed himself. Then she broke out: "Oh Peter, it's a great trouble—it's a very great trouble; and I can't tell you, for I don't understand it."