"Where shall we find you, then, if Peter comes?" asked the other Miss Dormer, making no movement at all.
"I daresay Peter won't come. He'll leave us here to cool our heels."
"Oh Nick dear!" Biddy exclaimed in a small sweet voice of protest. It was plainly her theory that Peter would come, and even a little her fond fear that she might miss him should she quit that spot.
"We shall come back in a quarter of an hour. Really I must look at these things," Nick declared, turning his face to a marble group which stood near them on the right—a man with the skin of a beast round his loins, tussling with a naked woman in some primitive effort of courtship or capture.
Lady Agnes followed the direction of her son's eyes and then observed: "Everything seems very dreadful. I should think Biddy had better sit still. Hasn't she seen enough horrors up above?"
"I daresay that if Peter comes Julia'll be with him," the elder girl remarked irrelevantly.
"Well then he can take Julia about. That will be more proper," said Lady Agnes.
"Mother dear, she doesn't care a rap about art. It's a fearful bore looking at fine things with Julia," Nick returned.
"Won't you go with him, Grace?"—and Biddy appealed to her sister.
"I think she has awfully good taste!" Grace exclaimed, not answering this inquiry.