XI.
"Arrive, arrive, my child," said Nick. "Peter's weary of waiting for you."
"Ah, he's come to say he won't dine with us to-night!" Biddy stood with her hand on the latch.
"I leave town to-morrow; I've everything to do; I'm broken-hearted; it's impossible," Peter pleaded. "Please make my peace with your mother; I'm ashamed of not having written to her last night."
Biddy closed the door and came in, while her brother said to her: "How in the world did you guess it?"
"I saw it in the Morning Post," Biddy answered, looking at Peter.
"In the Morning Post?" her cousin repeated.
"I saw there's to be a first night at that theatre, the one you took us to. So I said: 'Oh, he'll go there.'"
"Yes, I've got to do that too," Peter admitted.
"She's going to sit to me again this morning, the wonderful actress of that theatre—she has made an appointment: so you see I'm getting on," Nick announced to Biddy.
"Oh, I'm so glad—she's so splendid!" The girl looked away from Peter now, but not, though it seemed to fill the place, at the triumphant portrait of Miriam Rooth.
