your name when my screeching is happily over. Only you do seem to me, I confess, rather high and dry here—I speak from the point of view of your comfort and of my personal interest in you. You strike me as kind of lonely, as the Americans say—rather cut off and isolated in your grandeur. Haven't you any confrères—fellow-artists and people of that sort? Don't they come near you?"
"I don't know them much, I've always been afraid of them, and how can they take me seriously?"
"Well, I've got confrères, and sometimes I wish I hadn't! But does your sister never come near you any more, or is it only the fear of meeting me?"
Nick was aware that his mother had a theory that Biddy was constantly bundled home from Rosedale Road at the approach of improper persons: she was as angry at this as if she wouldn't have been more so if the child had been suffered to stay; but the explanation he gave his present visitor was nearer the truth. He reminded Miriam that he had already told her (he had been careful to do this, so as not to let it appear she was avoided) that her sister was now most of the time in the country, staying with an hospitable relation.
"Oh yes," the girl rejoined to this, "with Mr. Sherringham's sister, Mrs.———what's her name? I always forget it." And when Nick had pronounced the word with a reluctance he doubtless failed sufficiently to conceal (he hated to talk about Mrs. Dallow; he didn't know what business Miriam had with her), she exclaimed: "That's the one—the beauty, the wonderful beauty. I shall never forget how handsome she looked the day she found me here. I don't in the least resemble
