Laura, however, was the first to arrive.
"Who is this man of Nina's?" said she.
"I don't know, my dear. I never heard of him till the other day."
She showed her Nina's letter.
Laura's face was sullen. It indicated that things were going very badly indeed; that Laura was at the end of her tether.
"But why God?" was her profane comment.
"Because, I imagine, he believes in him."
Laura declared that it was more than she did. She preferred not to believe in him, after the things that had been done to Papa. Her arraignment of the cosmic order was cut short by the arrival of George Tanqueray.
Nina appeared next. She was followed by Hugh Brodrick and by Caro Bickersteth. Nicky came last of all.
He greeted Jane a little mournfully. It was impossible for Nicky to banish altogether from his manner the delicate reproach he felt, impossible not to be alive to the atrocious irony that brought him here to be, as Jane said, an angel, to sit and listen to this fellow Prothero. He understood that they were all there to do something for Prothero. Brodrick had been brought solely for that purpose. Tanqueray, too, and Miss Bickersteth and Miss Gunning, and he. Jane Holland was always asking him to do things, and she had never done anything for him. There was Brodrick's magazine that he had never got into. Jane Holland had only got to speak to Brodrick, only got to say to him that Arnott Nicholson was a rather fine poet and the thing was done. It was a small thing and an easy thing for her to do.