"Don't call her Peter's; call her rather mine," Nash said, with good-humoured dissuasiveness. "I invented her, I introduced her, I revealed her."
"I thought on the contrary you ridiculed and repudiated her."
"As an individual, surely not; I seem to myself to have been all the while rendering her services. I said I disliked tea-party ranters, and so I do; but if my estimate of her powers was below the mark she has more than punished me."
"What has she done?" asked Nick.
"She has become interesting, as I suppose you know."
"How should I know?"
"You must see her, you must paint her," said Nash.
"She tells me that something was said about it that day at Madame Carré's."
"Oh, I remember—said by Peter."
"Then it will please Mr. Sherringham—you'll be glad to do that. I suppose you know all he has done for Miriam?"
"Not a bit. I know nothing about Peter's affairs, unless it be in general that he goes in for mountebanks and mimes and that it occurs to me I have heard one of my sisters mention—the rumour had come to her—that he has been backing Miss Rooth."
"Miss Rooth delights to talk of his kindness: she's charming when she speaks of it. It's to his good offices that she owes her appearance here."
"Here? Is she in London?" Nick inquired.
"D'où tombez-vous? I thought you people read the papers."
"What should I read, when I sit (sometimes!) through the stuff they put into them?"
