THE AWKWARD AGE

By Henry James

PREFACE

I recall with perfect ease the idea in which "The Awkward Age" had itsorigin, but re-perusal gives me pause in respect to naming it. Thiscomposition, as it stands, makes, to my vision--and will have madeperhaps still more to that of its readers--so considerable a massbeside the germ sunk in it and still possibly distinguishable, that Iam half-moved to leave my small secret undivulged. I shall encounter, Ithink, in the course of this copious commentary, no better example, andnone on behalf of which I shall venture to invite more interest, of thequite incalculable tendency of a mere grain of subject-matter to expandand develop and cover the ground when conditions happen to favour it. Isay all, surely, when I speak of the thing as planned, in perfect goodfaith, for brevity, for levity, for simplicity, for jocosity, in fine, and for an accommodating irony. I invoked, for my protection, the spiritof the lightest comedy, but "The Awkward Age" was to belong, in theevent, to a group of productions, here re-introduced, which have incommon, to their author's eyes, the endearing sign that they assertedin each case an unforeseen principle of growth. They were projectedas small things, yet had finally to be provided for as comparativemonsters. That is my own title for them, though I should perhaps resentit if applied by another critic--above all in the case of the piecebefore us, the careful measure of which I have just freshly taken. Theresult of this consideration has been in the first place to render sharpfor me again the interest of the whole process thus illustrated, and inthe second quite to place me on unexpectedly good terms with the workitself. As I scan my list I encounter none the "history" of whichembodies a greater number of curious truths--or of truths at least bywhich I find contemplation more enlivened. The thing done and dismissedhas ever, at the best, for the ambitious workman, a trick of lookingdead, if not buried, so that he almost throbs with ecstasy when, on ananxious review, the flush of life reappears. It is verily on recognisingthat flush on a whole side of "The Awkward Age" that I brand it all, but ever so tenderly, as monstrous--which is but my way of noting theQUANTITY of finish it stows away. Since I speak so undauntedly, whenneed is, of the value of composition, I shall not beat about the bush toclaim for these pages the maximum of that advantage. If such a featbe possible in this field as really taking a lesson from one'sown adventure I feel I have now not failed of it--to so much moredemonstration of my profit than I can hope to carry through do I findmyself urged. Thus it is that, still with a remnant of self-respect, or at least of sanity, one may turn to complacency, one may linger withpride. Let my pride provoke a frown till I justify it; which--thoughwith more matters to be noted here than I have room for I shallaccordingly proceed to do. 

Yet I must first make a brave face, no doubt, and present in its nativehumility my scant but quite ponderable germ. The seed sprouted in thatvast nursery of sharp appeals and concrete images which calls itself, for blest convenience, London; it fell even into the order of the minor"social phenomena" with which, as fruit for the observer, that mightiestof the trees of suggestion bristles. It was not, no doubt, a finepurple peach, but it might pass for a round ripe plum, the note one hadinevitably had to take of the difference made in certain friendly housesand for certain flourishing mothers by the sometimes dreaded, oftendelayed, but never fully arrested coming to the forefront of some vagueslip of a daughter. For such mild revolutions as these not, to one'simagination, to remain mild one had had, I dare say, to be infinitelyaddicted to "noticing"; under the rule of that secret vice or thatunfair advantage, at any rate, the "sitting downstairs, " from a givendate, of the merciless maiden previously perched aloft could easily befelt as a crisis. This crisis, and the sense for it in those whom itmost concerns, has to confess itself courageously the prime propulsiveforce of "The Awkward Age. " Such a matter might well make a scant showfor a "thick book, " and no thick book, but just a quite charmingly thinone, was in fact originally dreamt of. For its proposed scale thelittle idea seemed happy--happy, that is, above all in having come verystraight; but its proposed scale was the limit of a small square canvas. One had been present again and again at the exhibition I refer to--whichis what I mean by the "coming straight" of this particular Londonimpression; yet one was (and through fallibilities that after all hadtheir sweetness, so that one would on the whole rather have kept themthan parted with them) still capable of so false a measurement. When Ithink indeed of those of my many false measurements that have resulted, after much anguish, in decent symmetries, I find the whole case, Iprofess, a theme for the philosopher. The little ideas one wouldn'thave treated save for the design of keeping them small, the developedsituations that one would never with malice prepense have undertaken, the long stories that had thoroughly meant to be short, the shortsubjects that had underhandedly plotted to be long, the hypocrisy ofmodest beginnings, the audacity of misplaced middles, the triumph ofintentions never entertained--with these patches, as I look about, I seemy experience paved: an experience to which nothing is wanting save, Iconfess, some grasp of its final lesson. 

This lesson would, if operative, surely provide some law for therecognition, the determination in advance, of the just limits and thejust extent of the situation, ANY situation, that appeals, and that yet, by the presumable, the helpful law of situations, must have its reservesas well as its promises. The storyteller considers it because itpromises, and undertakes it, often, just because also making out, ashe believes, where the promise conveniently drops. The promise, forinstance, of the case I have just named, the case of the account tobe taken, in a circle of free talk, of a new and innocent, a whollyunacclimatised presence, as to which such accommodations have never hadto come up, might well have appeared as limited as it was lively; andif these pages were not before us to register my illusion I should neverhave made a braver claim for it. They themselves admonish me, however, in fifty interesting ways, and they especially emphasise that truth ofthe vanity of the a priori test of what an idee-mere may have to give. The truth is that what a happy thought has to give depends immenselyon the general turn of the mind capable of it, and on the fact thatits loyal entertainer, cultivating fondly its possible relations andextensions, the bright efflorescence latent in it, but having to takeother things in their order too, is terribly at the mercy of his mind. That organ has only to exhale, in its degree, a fostering tropic air inorder to produce complications almost beyond reckoning. The trap laidfor his superficial convenience resides in the fact that, though therelations of a human figure or a social occurrence are what make suchobjects interesting, they also make them, to the same tune, difficult toisolate, to surround with the sharp black line, to frame in the square, the circle, the charming oval, that helps any arrangement of objectsto become a picture. The storyteller has but to have been condemned bynature to a liberally amused and beguiled, a richly sophisticated, viewof relations and a fine inquisitive speculative sense for them, to findhimself at moments flounder in a deep warm jungle. These are the momentsat which he recalls ruefully that the great merit of such and such asmall case, the merit for his particular advised use, had been preciselyin the smallness. 

I may say at once that this had seemed to me, under the first flush ofrecognition, the good mark for the pretty notion of the "free circle"put about by having, of a sudden, an ingenuous mind and a pair of limpidsearching eyes to count with. Half the attraction was in the currentactuality of the thing: repeatedly, right and left, as I have said, onehad seen such a drama constituted, and always to the effect of proposingto the interested view one of those questions that are of the essenceof drama: what will happen, who suffer, who not suffer, what turn bedetermined, what crisis created, what issue found? There had of courseto be, as a basis, the free circle, but this was material of thatadmirable order with which the good London never leaves its true loverand believer long unprovided. One could count them on one's fingers(an abundant allowance), the liberal firesides beyond the wide glow ofwhich, in a comparative dimness, female adolescence hovered and waited. The wide glow was bright, was favourable to "real" talk, to play ofmind, to an explicit interest in life, a due demonstration of theinterest by persons I qualified to feel it: all of which meant franknessand ease, the perfection, almost, as it were, of intercourse, and atone as far as possible removed from that of the nursery and theschoolroom--as far as possible removed even, no doubt, in its appealing"modernity, " from that of supposedly privileged scenes of conversationtwenty years ago. The charm was, with a hundred other things, inthe freedom--the freedom menaced by the inevitable irruption of theingenuous mind; whereby, if the freedom should be sacrificed, what wouldtruly BECOME of the charm? The charm might be figured as dear to membersof the circle consciously contributing to it, but it was none the lesstrue that some sacrifice in some quarter would have to be made, and whatmeditator worth his salt could fail to hold his breath while waitingon the event? The ingenuous mind might, it was true, be suppressedaltogether, the general disconcertment averted either by somemaster-stroke of diplomacy or some rude simplification; yet thesewere ugly matters, and in the examples before one's eyes nothing ugly, nothing harsh or crude, had flourished. A girl might be married off theday after her irruption, or better still the day before it, to removeher from the sphere of the play of mind; but these were exactly notcrudities, and even then, at the worst, an interval had to be bridged. "The Awkward Age" is precisely a study of one of these curtailed orextended periods of tension and apprehension, an account of the mannerin which the resented interference with ancient liberties came to be ina particular instance dealt with. 

I note once again that I had not escaped seeing it actually andtraceably dealt with--(I admit) a good deal of friendly suspense; alsowith the nature and degree of the "sacrifice" left very much to one'sappreciation. In circles highly civilised the great things, the realthings, the hard, the cruel and even the tender things, the trueelements of any tension and true facts of any crisis, have ever, for theoutsider's, for the critic's use, to be translated into terms--termsin the distinguished name of which, terms for the right employment ofwhich, more than one situation of the type I glance at had struck me asall irresistibly appealing. There appeared in fact at moments no end tothe things they said, the suggestions into which they flowered; oneof these latter in especial arriving at the highest intensity. Puttingvividly before one the perfect system on which the awkward age ishandled in most other European societies, it threw again into reliefthe inveterate English trick of the so morally well-meant and sointellectually helpless compromise. We live notoriously, as I supposeevery age lives, in an "epoch of transition"; but it may still besaid of the French for instance, I assume, that their social schemeabsolutely provides against awkwardness. That is it would be, by thisscheme, so infinitely awkward, so awkward beyond any patching-up, forthe hovering female young to be conceived as present at "good" talk, that their presence is, theoretically at least, not permitted till theiryouth has been promptly corrected by marriage--in which case they haveceased to be merely young. The better the talk prevailing in any circle, accordingly, the more organised, the more complete, the element ofprecaution and exclusion. Talk--giving the term a wide application--isone thing, and a proper inexperience another; and it has never occurredto a logical people that the interest of the greater, the general, need be sacrificed to that of the less, the particular. Such sacrificesstrike them as gratuitous and barbarous, as cruel above all to thesocial intelligence; also as perfectly preventable by wise arrangement. Nothing comes home more, on the other hand, to the observer of Englishmanners than the very moderate degree in which wise arrangement, inthe French sense of a scientific economy, has ever been invoked; a factindeed largely explaining the great interest of their incoherence, theirheterogeneity, their wild abundance. The French, all analytically, haveconceived of fifty different proprieties, meeting fifty different cases, whereas the English mind, less intensely at work, has never conceivedbut of one--the grand propriety, for every case, it should in fairnessbe said, of just being English. As practice, however, has always to bea looser thing than theory, so no application of that rigour has beenpossible in the London world without a thousand departures from the grimideal. 

The American theory, if I may "drag it in, " would be, I think, that talkshould never become "better" than the female young, either actually orconstructively present, are minded to allow it. THAT system involves aslittle compromise as the French; it has been absolutely simple, and thebeauty of its success shines out in every record of our conditions ofintercourse--premising always our "basic" assumption that the femaleyoung read the newspapers. The English theory may be in itself almostas simple, but different and much more complex forces have ruled theapplication of it; so much does the goodness of talk depend on whatthere may be to talk about. There are more things in London, I think, than anywhere in the world; hence the charm of the dramatic strugglereflected in my book, the struggle somehow to fit propriety intoa smooth general case which is really all the while bristling andcrumbling into fierce particular ones. The circle surrounding Mrs. Brookenham, in my pages, is of course nothing if not a particular, even a "peculiar" one--and its rather vain effort (the vanity, the realinexpertness, being precisely part of my tale) is toward the courageof that condition. It has cropped up in a social order where individualappreciations of propriety have not been formally allowed for, in spiteof their having very often quite rudely and violently and insolently, rather of course than insidiously, flourished; so that as the matterstands, rightly or wrongly, Nanda's retarded, but eventually none theless real, incorporation means virtually Nanda's exposure. It meansthis, that is, and many things beside--means them for Nanda herself and, with a various intensity, for the other participants in the action;but what it particularly means, surely, is the failure of successfularrangement and the very moral, sharply pointed, of the fruits ofcompromise. It is compromise that has suffered her to be in questionat all, and that has condemned the freedom of the circle to beself-conscious, compunctious, on the whole much more timid thanbrave--the consequent muddle, if the term be not too gross, representingmeanwhile a great inconvenience for life, but, as I found myselffeeling, an immense promise, a much greater one than on the "foreign"showing, for the painted picture of life. Beyond which let me add thathere immediately is a prime specimen of the way in which the obscurer, the lurking relations of a motive apparently simple, always in wait fortheir spring, may by seizing their chance for it send simplicity flying. Poor Nanda's little case, and her mother's, and Mr. Longdon's andVanderbank's and Mitchy's, to say nothing of that of the others, hasonly to catch a reflected light from over the Channel in order to doubleat once its appeal to the imagination. (I am considering all thesematters, I need scarce say, only as they are concerned with thatfaculty. With a relation NOT imaginative to his material the storytellerhas nothing whatever to do. )

It exactly happened moreover that my own material here was to profit ina particular way by that extension of view. My idea was to be treatedwith light irony--it would be light and ironical or it would be nothing;so that I asked myself, naturally, what might be the least solemn formto give it, among recognised and familiar forms. The question thus atonce arose: What form so familiar, so recognised among alert readers, asthat in which the ingenious and inexhaustible, the charming philosophic"Gyp" casts most of her social studies? Gyp had long struck me asmistress, in her levity, of one of the happiest of forms--the onlyobjection to my use of which was a certain extraordinary benightednesson the part of the Anglo-Saxon reader. One had noted this readeras perverse and inconsequent in respect to the absorption of"dialogue"--observed the "public for fiction" consume it, in certainconnexions, on the scale and with the smack of lips that mark theconsumption of bread-and-jam by a children's school-feast, consume iteven at the theatre, so far as our theatre ever vouchsafes it, and yetas flagrantly reject it when served, so to speak, au naturel. One hadseen good solid slices of fiction, well endued, one might surely havethought, with this easiest of lubrications, deplored by editor andpublisher as positively not, for the general gullet as known to THEM, made adequately "slick. " "'Dialogue, ' always 'dialogue'!" I had seemedfrom far back to hear them mostly cry: "We can't have too much of it, wecan't have enough of it, and no excess of it, in the form of no matterwhat savourless dilution, or what boneless dispersion, ever began toinjure a book so much as even the very scantest claim put in for formand substance. " This wisdom had always been in one's ears; but it hadat the same time been equally in one's eyes that really constructivedialogue, dialogue organic and dramatic, speaking for itself, representing and embodying substance and form, is among us an uncannyand abhorrent thing, not to be dealt with on any terms. A comedy or atragedy may run for a thousand nights without prompting twenty personsin London or in New York to desire that view of its text which is sodesired in Paris, as soon as a play begins to loom at all large, thatthe number of copies of the printed piece in circulation far exceeds atlast the number of performances. But as with the printed piece ourown public, infatuated as it may be with the theatre, refuses allcommerce--though indeed this can't but be, without cynicism, very muchthrough the infirmity the piece, IF printed, would reveal--so thesame horror seems to attach to any typographic hint of the proscribedplaybook or any insidious plea for it. The immense oddity resides inthe almost exclusively typographic order of the offence. An English, anAmerican Gyp would typographically offend, and that would be the endof her. THERE gloomed at me my warning, as well as shone at me myprovocation, in respect to the example of this delightful writer. Imight emulate her, since I presumptuously would, but dishonour wouldawait me if, proposing to treat the different faces of my subject in themost completely instituted colloquial form, I should evoke the figureand affirm the presence of participants by the repeated and prefixedname rather than by the recurrent and affixed "said he" and "said she. "All I have space to go into here--much as the funny fact I refer tomight seem to invite us to dance hand in hand round it--is that I was atany rate duly admonished, that I took my measures accordingly, andthat the manner in which I took them has lived again for me ever soarrestingly, so amusingly, on re-examination of the book. 

But that I did, positively and seriously--ah so seriously!--emulatethe levity of Gyp and, by the same token, of that hardiest of flowersfostered in her school, M. Henri Lavedan, is a contribution to thehistory of "The Awkward Age" that I shall obviously have had to bracemyself in order to make. Vivid enough to me the expression of face ofany kindest of critics, even, moved to declare that he would never inthe least have suspected it. Let me say at once, in extenuation of thetoo respectful distance at which I may thus have appeared to follow mymodel, that my first care HAD to be the covering of my tracks--lest Itruly should be caught in the act of arranging, of organising dialogueto "speak for itself. " What I now see to have happened is that Iorganised and arranged but too well--too well, I mean, for any betrayalof the Gyp taint, however faded and feeble. The trouble appears to havebeen that while I on the one hand exorcised the baleful association, Isucceeded in rousing on nobody's part a sense of any other associationwhatever, or of my having cast myself into any conceivable or calculableform. My private inspiration had been in the Gyp plan (artfullydissimulated, for dear life, and applied with the very subtlestconsistency, but none the less kept in secret view); yet I was tofail to make out in the event that the book succeeded in producing theimpression of ANY plan on any person. No hint of that sort of success, or of any critical perception at all in relation to the business, hasever come my way; in spite of which when I speak, as just above, ofwhat was to "happen" under the law of my ingenious labour, I fairlylose myself in the vision of a hundred bright phenomena. Some of theseincidents I must treat myself to naming, for they are among the best Ishall have on any occasion to retail. But I must first give the measureof the degree in which they were mere matters of the study. Thiscomposition had originally appeared in "Harper's Weekly" during theautumn of 1898 and the first weeks of the winter, and the volumecontaining it was published that spring. I had meanwhile been absentfrom England, and it was not till my return, some time later, that I hadfrom my publisher any news of our venture. But the news then met at astroke all my curiosity: "I'm sorry to say the book has done nothingto speak of; I've never in all my experience seen one treated with moregeneral and complete disrespect. " There was thus to be nothing left mefor fond subsequent reference--of which I doubtless give even now soadequate an illustration--save the rich reward of the singular interestattaching to the very intimacies of the effort. 

It comes back to me, the whole "job, " as wonderfully amusing anddelightfully difficult from the first; since amusement deeply abides, I think, in any artistic attempt the basis and groundwork of which areconscious of a particular firmness. On that hard fine floor the elementof execution feels it may more or less confidently DANCE; in which casepuzzling questions, sharp obstacles, dangers of detail, may come up forit by the dozen without breaking its heart or shaking its nerve. It isthe difficulty produced by the loose foundation or the vague scheme thatbreaks the heart--when a luckless fatuity has over-persuaded an authorof the "saving" virtue of treatment. Being "treated" is never, in aworkable idea, a mere passive condition, and I hold no subject eversusceptible of help that isn't, like the embarrassed man of ourproverbial wisdom, first of all able to help itself. I was thus to havehere an envious glimpse, in carrying my design through, of that artisticrage and that artistic felicity which I have ever supposed to beintensest and highest, the confidence of the dramatist strong in thesense of his postulate. The dramatist has verily to BUILD, is committedto architecture, to construction at any cost; to driving in deep hisvertical supports and laying across and firmly fixing his horizontal, his resting pieces--at the risk of no matter what vibration from the tapof his master-hammer. This makes the active value of his basis immense, enabling him, with his flanks protected, to advance undistractedly, evenif not at all carelessly, into the comparative fairy-land of the mereminor anxiety. In other words his scheme HOLDS, and as he feels this inspite of noted strains and under repeated tests, so he keeps his faceto the day. I rejoiced, by that same token, to feel MY scheme hold, andeven a little ruefully watched it give me much more than I had venturedto hope. For I promptly found my conceived arrangement of my materialopen the door wide to ingenuity. I remember that in sketching my projectfor the conductors of the periodical I have named I drew on a sheet ofpaper--and possibly with an effect of the cabalistic, it now comes overme, that even anxious amplification may have but vainly attenuated--theneat figure of a circle consisting of a number of small rounds disposedat equal distance about a central object. The central object was mysituation, my subject in itself, to which the thing would owe its title, and the small rounds represented so many distinct lamps, as I liked tocall them, the function of each of which would be to light with all dueintensity one of its aspects. I had divided it, didn't they see? intoaspects--uncanny as the little term might sound (though not for a momentdid I suggest we should use it for the public), and by that sign wewould conquer. 

They "saw, " all genially and generously--for I must add that I had made, to the best of my recollection, no morbid scruple of not blabbing aboutGyp and her strange incitement. I the more boldly held my tongue overthis that the more I, by my intelligence, lived in my arrangement andmoved about in it, the more I sank into satisfaction. It was clearly towork to a charm and, during this process--by calling at every step foran exquisite management--"to haunt, to startle and waylay. " Each of my"lamps" would be the light of a single "social occasion" in the historyand intercourse of the characters concerned, and would bring out tothe full the latent colour of the scene in question and cause it toillustrate, to the last drop, its bearing on my theme. I revelled inthis notion of the Occasion as a thing by itself, really and completelya scenic thing, and could scarce name it, while crouching amid the thickarcana of my plan, with a large enough O. The beauty of the conceptionwas in this approximation of the respective divisions of my form to thesuccessive Acts of a Play--as to which it was more than ever a case forcharmed capitals. The divine distinction of the act of a play--anda greater than any other it easily succeeds in arriving at--was, Ireasoned, in its special, its guarded objectivity. This objectivity, inturn, when achieving its ideal, came from the imposed absence of that"going behind, " to compass explanations and amplifications, to drag outodds and ends from the "mere" storyteller's great property-shop of aidsto illusion: a resource under denial of which it was equally perplexingand delightful, for a change, to proceed. Everything, for that matter, becomes interesting from the moment it has closely to consider, for fulleffect positively to bestride, the law of its kind. "Kinds" are thevery life of literature, and truth and strength come from the completerecognition of them, from abounding to the utmost in their respectivesenses and sinking deep into their consistency. I myself have scarcelyto plead the cause of "going behind, " which is right and beautiful andfruitful in its place and order; but as the confusion of kinds is theinelegance of letters and the stultification of values, so to renouncethat line utterly and do something quite different instead may become inanother connexion the true course and the vehicle of effect. Somethingin the very nature, in the fine rigour, of this special sacrifice (whichis capable of affecting the form-lover, I think, as really more of aprojected form than any other) lends it moreover a coercive charm; acharm that grows in proportion as the appeal to it tests and stretchesand strains it, puts it powerfully to the touch. To make the presentedoccasion tell all its story itself, remain shut up in its own presenceand yet on that patch of staked-out ground become thoroughly interestingand remain thoroughly clear, is a process not remarkable, no doubt, so long as a very light weight is laid on it, but difficult enough tochallenge and inspire great adroitness so soon as the elements to bedealt with begin at all to "size up. "

The disdainers of the contemporary drama deny, obviously, with allpromptness, that the matter to be expressed by its means--richly andsuccessfully expressed that is--CAN loom with any largeness; since fromthe moment it does one of the conditions breaks down. The process simplycollapses under pressure, they contend, proves its weakness as quicklyas the office laid on it ceases to be simple. "Remember, " they say tothe dramatist, "that you have to be, supremely, three things: you haveto be true to your form, you have to be interesting, you have to beclear. You have in other words to prove yourself adequate to taking aheavy weight. But we defy you really to conform to your conditions withany but a light one. Make the thing you have to convey, make the pictureyou have to paint, at all rich and complex, and you cease to beclear. Remain clear--and with the clearness required by the infantineintelligence of any public consenting to see a play--and what becomesof the 'importance' of your subject? If it's important by any othercritical measure than the little foot-rule the 'produced' piece has toconform to, it is predestined to be a muddle. When it has escaped beinga muddle the note it has succeeded in striking at the furthest will berecognised as one of those that are called high but by the courtesy, bythe intellectual provinciality, of theatrical criticism, which, as wecan see for ourselves any morning, is--well, an abyss even deeper thanthe theatre itself. Don't attempt to crush us with Dumas and Ibsen, forsuch values are from any informed and enlightened point of view, that ismeasured by other high values, literary, critical, philosophic, of themost moderate order. Ibsen and Dumas are precisely cases of men, men intheir degree, in their poor theatrical straight-jacket, speculative, who have HAD to renounce the finer thing for the coarser, the thick, inshort, for the thin and the curious for the self-evident. What earthlyintellectual distinction, what 'prestige' of achievement, would haveattached to the substance of such things as 'Denise, ' as 'MonsieurAlphonse, ' as 'Francillon' (and we take the Dumas of the supposedlysubtler period) in any other form? What virtues of the same order wouldhave attached to 'The Pillars of Society, ' to 'An Enemy of the People, 'to 'Ghosts, ' to 'Rosmersholm' (or taking also Ibsen's 'subtler period')to 'John Gabriel Borkmann, ' to 'The Master-Builder'? Ibsen is in factwonderfully a case in point, since from the moment he's clear, from themoment he's 'amusing, ' it's on the footing of a thesis as simple andsuperficial as that of 'A Doll's House'--while from the moment he's byapparent intention comprehensive and searching it's on the footing of aneffect as confused and obscure as 'The Wild Duck. ' From which you easilysee ALL the conditions can't be met. The dramatist has to choose butthose he's most capable of, and by that choice he's known. "

So the objector concludes, and never surely without great profitfrom his having been "drawn. " His apparent triumph--if it be evenapparent--still leaves, it will be noted, convenient cover for retortin the riddled face of the opposite stronghold. The last word in thesecases is for nobody who can't pretend to an ABSOLUTE test. The termshere used, obviously, are matters of appreciation, and there is no shortcut to proof (luckily for us all round) either that "Monsieur Alphonse"develops itself on the highest plane of irony or that "Ghosts"simplifies almost to excruciation. If "John Gabriel Borkmann" is but apennyworth of effect as to a character we can imagine much more amplypresented, and if "Hedda Gabler" makes an appeal enfeebled by remarkablevagueness, there is by the nature of the case no catching the convinced, or call him the deluded, spectator or reader in the act of a mistake. He is to be caught at the worst in the act of attention, of the verygreatest attention, and that is all, as a precious preliminary at least, that the playwright asks of him, besides being all the very divinestpoet can get. I remember rejoicing as much to remark this, after gettinglaunched in "The Awkward Age, " as if I were in fact constructing aplay--just as I may doubtless appear now not less anxious to keep thephilosophy of the dramatist's course before me than if I belonged to hisorder. I felt, certainly, the support he feels, I participated in histechnical amusement, I tasted to the full the bitter-sweetness of hisdraught--the beauty and the difficulty (to harp again on that string) ofescaping poverty EVEN THOUGH the references in one's action can only be, with intensity, to each other, to things exactly on the same plane ofexhibition with themselves. Exhibition may mean in a "story" twentydifferent ways, fifty excursions, alternatives, excrescences, and thenovel, as largely practised in English, is the perfect paradise of theloose end. The play consents to the logic of but one way, mathematicallyright, and with the loose end as gross an impertinence on its surface, and as grave a dishonour, as the dangle of a snippet of silk or wool onthe right side of a tapestry. We are shut up wholly to cross-relations, relations all within the action itself; no part of which is relatedto anything but some other part--save of course by the relation of thetotal to life. And, after invoking the protection of Gyp, I saw thepoint of my game all in the problem of keeping these conditionedrelations crystalline at the same time that I should, in emulation oflife, consent to their being numerous and fine and characteristic ofthe London world (as the London world was in this quarter and that to bedeciphered). All of which was to make in the event for complications. 

I see now of course how far, with my complications, I got away from Gyp;but I see to-day so much else too that this particular deflexion fromsimplicity makes scarce a figure among the others after having onceserved its purpose, I mean, of lighting my original imitative innocence. For I recognise in especial, with a waking vibration of that interestin which, as I say, the plan of the book is embalmed for me, thatmy subject was probably condemned in advance to appreciable, or moreexactly perhaps to almost preposterously appreciative, over-treatment. It places itself for me thus in a group of small productions exhibitingthis perversity, representations of conceived cases in which my processhas been to pump the case gaspingly dry, dry not only of superfluousmoisture, but absolutely (for I have encountered the charge) ofbreathable air. I may note, in fine, that coming back to the pagesbefore us with a strong impression of their recording, to my shame, that disaster, even to the extent of its disqualifying them for decentreappearance, I have found the adventure taking, to my relief, quite another turn, and have lost myself in the wonder of what"over-treatment" may, in the detail of its desperate ingenuity, consistof. The revived interest I speak of has been therefore that of followingcritically, from page to page, even as the red Indian tracks in theforest the pale-face, the footsteps of the systematic loyalty I was ableto achieve. The amusement of this constatation is, as I have hinted, inthe detail of the matter, and the detail is so dense, the texture of thefigured and smoothed tapestry so loose, that the genius of Gyp herself, muse of general looseness, would certainly, once warned, have utteredthe first disavowal of my homage. But what has occurred meanwhile isthat this high consistency has itself, so to speak, constituted anexhibition, and that an important artistic truth has seemed to methereby lighted. We brushed against that truth just now in our glanceat the denial of expansibility to any idea the mould of the "stage-play"may hope to express without cracking and bursting--and we bear in mindat the same time that the picture of Nanda Brookenham's situation, though perhaps seeming to a careless eye so to wander and sprawl, yetpresents itself on absolutely scenic lines, and that each of thesescenes in itself, and each as related to each and to all of itscompanions, abides without a moment's deflexion by the principle of thestage-play. In doing this then it does more--it helps us ever so happilyto see the grave distinction between substance and form in a reallywrought work of art signally break down. I hold it impossible to say, before "The Awkward Age, " where one of these elements ends and the otherbegins: I have been unable at least myself, on re-examination, to markany such joint or seam, to see the two DISCHARGED offices as separate. They are separate before the fact, but the sacrament of executionindissolubly marries them, and the marriage, like any other marriage, has only to be a "true" one for the scandal of a breach not to show. The thing "done, " artistically, is a fusion, or it has not BEEN done--inwhich case of course the artist may be, and all deservedly, pelted withany fragment of his botch the critic shall choose to pick up. But hisground once conquered, in this particular field, he knows nothing offragments and may say in all security: "Detach one if you can. You cananalyse in YOUR way, oh yes--to relate, to report, to explain; but youcan't disintegrate my synthesis; you can't resolve the elements of mywhole into different responsible agents or find your way at all (foryour own fell purpose). My mixture has only to be perfect literallyto bewilder you--you are lost in the tangle of the forest. Prove thisvalue, this effect, in the air of the whole result, to be of my subject, and that other value, other effect, to be of my treatment, prove thatI haven't so shaken them together as the conjurer I profess to be MUSTconsummately shake, and I consent but to parade as before a booth at thefair. " The exemplary closeness of "The Awkward Age" even affects me, onre-perusal, I confess, as treasure quite instinctively and foreseeinglylaid up against my present opportunity for these remarks. I havebeen positively struck by the quantity of meaning and the number ofintentions, the extent of GROUND FOR INTEREST, as I may call it, thatI have succeeded in working scenically, yet without loss ofsharpness, clearness or "atmosphere, " into each of my illuminatingoccasions--where, at certain junctures, the due preservation of allthese values took, in the familiar phrase, a good deal of doing. 

I should have liked just here to re-examine with the reader some of thepositively most artful passages I have in mind--such as the hour of Mr. Longdon's beautiful and, as it were, mystic attempt at a compact withVanderbank, late at night, in the billiard-room of the country-house atwhich they are staying; such as the other nocturnal passage, under Mr. Longdon's roof, between Vanderbank and Mitchy, where the conduct of somuch fine meaning, so many flares of the exhibitory torch through thelabyrinth of mere immediate appearances, mere familiar allusions, issuccessfully and safely effected; such as the whole array of the termsof presentation that are made to serve, all systematically, yet withouta gap anywhere, for the presentation, throughout, of a Mitchy "subtle"no less than concrete and concrete no less than deprived of thatofficious explanation which we know as "going behind"; such as, briefly, the general service of co-ordination and vivification rendered, on linesof ferocious, of really quite heroic compression, by the picture of theassembled group at Mrs. Grendon's, where the "cross-references" of theaction are as thick as the green leaves of a garden, but none the less, as they have scenically to be, counted and disposed, weighted withresponsibility. Were I minded to use in this connexion a "loud"word--and the critic in general hates loud words as a man of taste mayhate loud colours--I should speak of the composition of the chaptersentitled "Tishy Grendon, " with all the pieces of the game on thetable together and each unconfusedly and contributively placed, astriumphantly scientific. I must properly remind myself, rather, thatthe better lesson of my retrospect would seem to be really a supremerevision of the question of what it may be for a subject to suffer, to call it suffering, by over-treatment. Bowed down so long by theinference that its product had in this case proved such a betrayal, myartistic conscience meets the relief of having to recognise truly hereno traces of suffering. The thing carries itself to my maturer andgratified sense as with every symptom of soundness, an insolence ofhealth and joy. And from this precisely I deduce my moral; which is tothe effect that, since our only way, in general, of knowing that we havehad too much of anything is by FEELING that too much: so, by the sametoken, when we don't feel the excess (and I am contending, mind, that in"The Awkward Age" the multiplicity yields to the order) how do we knowthat the measure not recorded, the notch not reached, does representadequacy or satiety? The mere feeling helps us for certain degrees ofcongestion, but for exact science, that is for the criticism of "fine"art, we want the notation. The notation, however, is what we lack, andthe verdict of the mere feeling is liable to fluctuate. In other wordsan imputed defect is never, at the worst, disengageable, or other thanmatter for appreciation--to come back to my claim for that felicity ofthe dramatist's case that his synthetic "whole" IS his form, the onlyone we have to do with. I like to profit in his company by the fact thatif our art has certainly, for the impression it produces, to defer tothe rise and fall, in the critical temperature, of the telltale mercury, it still hasn't to reckon with the engraved thermometer-face. 

HENRY JAMES. 

THE AWKWARD AGE

BOOK FIRST. LADY JULIA

I

Save when it happened to rain Vanderbank always walked home, buthe usually took a hansom when the rain was moderate and adopted thepreference of the philosopher when it was heavy. On this occasion hetherefore recognised as the servant opened the door a congruity betweenthe weather and the "four-wheeler" that, in the empty street, under theglazed radiance, waited and trickled and blackly glittered. The butlermentioned it as on such a wild night the only thing they could get, and Vanderbank, having replied that it was exactly what would do best, prepared in the doorway to put up his umbrella and dash down to it. At this moment he heard his name pronounced from behind and on turningfound himself joined by the elderly fellow guest with whom he hadtalked after dinner and about whom later on upstairs he had sounded hishostess. It was at present a clear question of how this amiable, thisapparently unassertive person should get home--of the possibility of theother cab for which even now one of the footmen, with a whistle to hislips, craned out his head and listened through the storm. Mr. Longdonwondered to Vanderbank if their course might by any chance be the same;which led our young friend immediately to express a readiness to see himsafely in any direction that should accommodate him. As the footman'swhistle spent itself in vain they got together into the four-wheeler, where at the end of a few moments more Vanderbank became conscious ofhaving proposed his own rooms as a wind-up to their drive. Wouldn't thatbe a better finish of the evening than just separating in the wet? Heliked his new acquaintance, who struck him as in a manner clinging tohim, who was staying at an hotel presumably at that hour dismal, andwho, confessing with easy humility to a connexion positively timid witha club at which one couldn't have a visitor, accepted his invitationunder pressure. Vanderbank, when they arrived, was amused at the airof added extravagance with which he said he would keep the cab: he soclearly enjoyed to that extent the sense of making a night of it. "Youyoung men, I believe, keep them for hours, eh? At least they did in mytime, " he laughed--"the wild ones! But I think of them as all wild then. I dare say that when one settles in town one learns how to manage; onlyI'm afraid, you know, that I've got completely out of it. I do feelreally quite mouldy. It's a matter of thirty years--!"

"Since you've been in London?"

"For more than a few days at a time, upon my honour. You won'tunderstand that--any more, I dare say, than I myself quite understandhow at the end of all I've accepted this queer view of the doom ofcoming back. But I don't doubt I shall ask you, if you'll be so goodas to let me, for the help of a hint or two: as to how to do, don't youknow? and not to--what do you fellows call it?--BE done. Now about oneof THESE things--!"

One of these things was the lift in which, at no great pace and withmuch rumbling and creaking, the porter conveyed the two gentlemen tothe alarming eminence, as Mr. Longdon measured their flight, at whichVanderbank perched. The impression made on him by this contrivanceshowed him as unsophisticated, yet when his companion, at the top, ushering him in, gave a touch to the quick light and, in the pleasantruddy room, all convenience and character, had before the fire anotherlook at him, it was not to catch in him any protrusive angle. Mr. Longdon was slight and neat, delicate of body and both keen and kind offace, with black brows finely marked and thick smooth hair in whichthe silver had deep shadows. He wore neither whisker nor moustache andseemed to carry in the flicker of his quick brown eyes and the positivesun-play of his smile even more than the equivalent of what might, superficially or stupidly, elsewhere be missed in him; which was mass, substance, presence--what is vulgarly called importance. He had indeedno presence but had somehow an effect. He might almost have been apriest if priests, as it occurred to Vanderbank, were ever such dandies. He had at all events conclusively doubled the Cape of the years--hewould never again see fifty-five: to the warning light of that bleakheadland he presented a back sufficiently conscious. Yet thoughto Vanderbank he couldn't look young he came near--strikingly andamusingly--looking new: this after a minute appeared mainly perhapsindeed in the perfection of his evening dress and the special smartnessof the sleeveless overcoat he had evidently had made to wear with itand might even actually be wearing for the first time. He had talked toVanderbank at Mrs. Brookenham's about Beccles and Suffolk; but it wasnot at Beccles nor anywhere in the county that these ornaments had beendesigned. His action had already been, with however little purpose, to present the region to his interlocutor in a favourable light. Vanderbank, for that matter, had the kind of imagination that likesto PLACE an object, even to the point of losing sight of it in theconditions; he already saw the nice old nook it must have taken to keepa man of intelligence so fresh while suffering him to remain so fine. The product of Beccles accepted at all events a cigarette--still muchas a joke and an adventure--and looked about him as if even more pleasedthan he expected. Then he broke, through his double eye-glass, into anexclamation that was like a passing pang of envy and regret. "You youngmen, you young men--!"

"Well, what about us?" Vanderbank's tone encouraged the courtesy of thereference. "I'm not so young moreover as that comes to. "

"How old are you then, pray?"

"Why I'm thirty-four. "

"What do you call that? I'm a hundred and three!" Mr. Longdon at allevents took out his watch. "It's only a quarter past eleven. " Then witha quick change of interest, "What did you say is your public office?" heenquired. 

"The General Audit. I'm Deputy Chairman. "

"Dear!" Mr. Longdon looked at him as if he had had fifty windows. "Whata head you must have!"

"Oh yes--our head's Sir Digby Dence. "

"And what do we do for you?"

"Well, you gild the pill--though not perhaps very thick. But it's adecent berth. "

"A thing a good many fellows would give a pound of their flesh for?"

Vanderbank's visitor appeared so to deprecate too faint a picture thathe dropped all scruples. "I'm the most envied man I know--so that if Iwere a shade less amiable I should be one of the most hated. "

Mr. Longdon laughed, yet not quite as if they were joking. "I see. Yourpleasant way carries it off. "

Vanderbank was, however, not serious. "Wouldn't it carry off anything?"

Again his friend, through the pince-nez, appeared to crown him with aWhitehall cornice. "I think I ought to let you know I'm studying you. It's really fair to tell you, " he continued with an earnestness notdiscomposed by the indulgence in Vanderbank's face. "It's all right--allright!" he reassuringly added, having meanwhile stopped before aphotograph suspended on the wall. "That's your mother!" he brought outwith something of the elation of a child making a discovery or guessinga riddle. "I don't make you out in her yet--in my recollection of her, which, as I told you, is perfect; but I dare say I soon shall. "

Vanderbank was more and more aware that the kind of amusement he excitedwould never in the least be a bar to affection. "Please take all yourtime. "

Mr. Longdon looked at his watch again. "Do you think I HAD better keepit?"

"The cab?" Vanderbank liked him so, found in him such a promise ofpleasant things, that he was almost tempted to say: "Dear and delightfulsir, don't weigh that question; I'll pay, myself, for the man's wholenight!" His approval at all events was complete. 

"Most certainly. That's the only way not to think of it. "

"Oh you young men, you young men!" his guest again murmured. Hehad passed on to the photograph--Vanderbank had many, too manyphotographs--of some other relation, and stood wiping the gold-mountedglasses through which he had been darting admirations and catchingside-lights for shocks. "Don't talk nonsense, " he continued as hisfriend attempted once more to throw in a protest; "I belong to adifferent period of history. There have been things this evening thathave made me feel as if I had been disinterred--literally dug up from along sleep. I assure you there have!"--he really pressed the point. 

Vanderbank wondered a moment what things in particular these might be;he found himself wanting to get at everything his visitor represented, to enter into his consciousness and feel, as it were, on his side. Heglanced with an intention freely sarcastic at an easy possibility. "Theextraordinary vitality of Brookenham?"

Mr. Longdon, with nippers in place again, fixed on him a gravitythat failed to prevent his discovering in the eyes behind them a shyreflexion of his irony. "Oh Brookenham! You must tell me all aboutBrookenham. "

"I see that's not what you mean. "

Mr. Longdon forbore to deny it. "I wonder if you'll understand what Imean. " Vanderbank bristled with the wish to be put to the test, but waschecked before he could say so. "And what's HIS place--Brookenham's?"

"Oh Rivers and Lakes--an awfully good thing. He got it last year. "

Mr. Longdon--but not too grossly--wondered. "How did he get it?"

Vanderbank laughed. "Well, SHE got it. "

His friend remained grave. "And about how much now--?"

"Oh twelve hundred--and lots of allowances and boats and things. To dothe work!" Vanderbank, still with a certain levity, added. 

"And what IS the work?"

The young man had a pause. "Ask HIM. He'll like to tell you. "

"Yet he seemed to have but little to say. " Mr. Longdon exactly measuredit again. 

"Ah not about that. Try him. "

He looked more sharply at his host, as if vaguely suspicious of a trap;then not less vaguely he sighed. "Well, it's what I came up for--to tryyou all. But do they live on that?" he continued. 

Vanderbank once more debated. "One doesn't quite know what they live on. But they've means--for it was just that fact, I remember, that showedBrookenham's getting the place wasn't a job. It was given, I mean, notto his mere domestic need, but to his notorious efficiency. He has aproperty--an ugly little place in Gloucestershire--which they sometimeslet. His elder brother has the better one, but they make up an income. "

Mr. Longdon for an instant lost himself. "Yes, I remember--one heard ofthose things at the time. And SHE must have had something. "

"Yes indeed, she had something--and she always has her intensecleverness. She knows thoroughly how. They do it tremendously well. "

"Tremendously well, " Mr. Longdon intelligently echoed. "But a house inBuckingham Crescent, with the way they seem to have built through to allsorts of other places--?"

"Oh they're all right, " Vanderbank soothingly dropped. 

"One likes to feel that of people with whom one has dined. There arefour children?" his friend went on. 

"The older boy, whom you saw and who in his way is a wonder, the oldergirl, whom you must see, and two youngsters, male and female, whom youmustn't. "

There might by this time, in the growing interest of their talk, havebeen almost nothing too uncanny for Mr. Longdon to fear it. "You meanthe youngsters are--unfortunate?"

"No--they're only, like all the modern young, I think, mysteries, terrible little baffling mysteries. " Vanderbank had found amusementagain--it flickered so from his friend's face that, really at moments tothe point of alarm, his explanations deepened darkness. Then with moreinterest he harked back. "I know the thing you just mentioned--the thingthat strikes you as odd. " He produced his knowledge quite with elation. "The talk. " Mr. Longdon on this only looked at him in silence andharder, but he went on with assurance: "Yes, the talk--for we do talk, Ithink. " Still his guest left him without relief, only fixing him and hissuggestion with a suspended judgement. Whatever the old man was on thepoint of saying, however, he disposed of in a curtailed murmur; he hadalready turned afresh to the series of portraits, and as he glanced atanother Vanderbank spoke afresh. 

"It was very interesting to me to hear from you there, when the ladieshad left us, how many old threads you were prepared to pick up. "

Mr. Longdon had paused. "I'm an old boy who remembers the mothers, " heat last replied. 

"Yes, you told me how well you remember Mrs. Brookenham's. "

"Oh, oh!"--and he arrived at a new subject. "This must be your sisterMary. "

"Yes; it's very bad, but as she's dead--"

"Dead? Dear, dear!"

"Oh long ago"--Vanderbank eased him off. "It's delightful of you, " thisinformant went on, "to have known also such a lot of MY people. "

Mr. Longdon turned from his contemplation with a visible effort. "Ifeel obliged to you for taking it so; it mightn't--one never knows--haveamused you. As I told you there, the first thing I did was to askFernanda about the company; and when she mentioned your name Iimmediately said: 'Would he like me to speak to him?'"

"And what did Fernanda say?"

Mr. Longdon stared. "Do YOU call her Fernanda?"

Vanderbank felt ever so much more guilty than he would have expected. "You think it too much in the manner we just mentioned?"

His friend hesitated; then with a smile a trifle strange: "Pardon me;_I_ didn't mention--"

"No, you didn't; and your scruple was magnificent. In point of fact, "Vanderbank pursued, "I DON'T call Mrs. Brookenham by her Christianname. "

Mr. Longdon's clear eyes were searching. "Unless in speaking of her toothers?" He seemed really to wish to know. 

Vanderbank was but too ready to satisfy him. "I dare say we seem toyou a vulgar lot of people. That's not the way, I can see, you speak ofladies at Beccles. "

"Oh if you laugh at me--!" And his visitor turned off. 

"Don't threaten me, " said Vanderbank, "or I WILL send away the cab. Ofcourse I know what you mean. It will be tremendously interesting to hearhow the sort of thing we've fallen into--oh we HAVE fallen in!--strikesyour fresh, your uncorrupted ear. Do have another cigarette. Sunk as Imust appear to you it sometimes strikes even mine. But I'm not sure asregards Mrs. Brookenham, whom I've known a long time. "

Mr. Longdon again took him up. "What do you people call a long time?"

Vanderbank considered. "Ah there you are! And now we're 'we people'!That's right--give it to us. I'm sure that in one way or another it'sall earned. Well, I've known her ten years. But awfully well. "

"What do you call awfully well?"

"We people?" Vanderbank's enquirer, with his continued restlessobservation, moving nearer, the young man had laid on his shoulder thelightest of friendly hands. "Don't you perhaps ask too much? But no, "he added quickly and gaily, "of course you don't: if I don't look outI shall have exactly the effect on you I don't want. I dare say I don'tknow HOW well I know Mrs. Brookenham. Mustn't that sort of thing beput in a manner to the proof? What I meant to say just now was that Iwouldn't--at least I hope I shouldn't--have named her as I did save toan old friend. "

Mr. Longdon looked promptly satisfied and reassured. "You probably heardme address her myself. "

"I did, but you've your rights, and that wouldn't excuse me. The onlything is that I go to see her every Sunday. "

Mr. Longdon pondered and then, a little to Vanderbank's surprise, at anyrate to his deeper amusement, candidly asked: "Only Fernanda? No otherlady?"

"Oh yes, several other ladies. "

Mr. Longdon appeared to hear this with pleasure. "You're quite right. Wedon't make enough of Sunday at Beccles. "

"Oh we make plenty of it in London!" Vanderbank said. "And I think it'srather in my interest I should mention that Mrs. Brookenham calls ME--"

His visitor covered him now with an attention that just operated as acheck. "By your Christian name?"

Before Vanderbank could in any degree attenuate "What IS your Christianname?" Mr. Longdon asked. 

Vanderbank felt of a sudden almost guilty--as if his answer could onlyimpute extravagance to the lady. "My Christian name"--he blushed itout--"is Gustavus. "

His friend took a droll conscious leap. "And she calls you Gussy?"

"No, not even Gussy. But I scarcely think I ought to tell you, "he pursued, "if she herself gave you no glimpse of the fact. Anyimplication that she consciously avoided it might make you see deeperdepths. "

He spoke with pointed levity, but his companion showed him after aninstant a face just covered--and a little painfully--with the vision ofthe possibility brushed away by the joke. "Oh I'm not so bad as that!"Mr. Longdon modestly ejaculated. 

"Well, she doesn't do it always, " Vanderbank laughed, "and it's nothingmoreover to what some people are called. Why, there was a fellowthere--" He pulled up, however, and, thinking better of it, selectedanother instance. "The Duchess--weren't you introduced to theDuchess?--never calls me anything but 'Vanderbank' unless she calls me'caro mio. ' It wouldn't have taken much to make her appeal to YOU withan 'I say, Longdon!' I can quite hear her. "

Mr. Longdon, focussing the effect of the sketch, pointed its moralwith an indulgent: "Oh well, a FOREIGN duchess!" He could make hisdistinctions. 

"Yes, she's invidiously, cruelly foreign, " Vanderbank agreed: "I'venever indeed seen a woman avail herself so cleverly, to make up for theobloquy of that state, of the benefits and immunities it brings with it. She has bloomed in the hot-house of her widowhood--she's a Neapolitanhatched by an incubator. "

"A Neapolitan?"--Mr. Longdon seemed all civilly to wish he had onlyknown it. 

"Her husband was one; but I believe that dukes at Naples are as thickas princes at Petersburg. He's dead, at any rate, poor man, and she hascome back here to live. "

"Gloomily, I should think--after Naples?" Mr. Longdon threw out. 

"Oh it would take more than even a Neapolitan past--! However"--and theyoung man caught himself up--"she lives not in what's behind her, but inwhat's before--she lives in her precious little Aggie. "

"Little Aggie?" Mr. Longdon risked a cautious interest. 

"I don't take a liberty there, " Vanderbank smiled: "I speak only of theyoung Agnesina, a little girl, the Duchess's niece, or rather I believeher husband's, whom she has adopted--in the place of a daughter earlylost--and has brought to England to marry. "

"Ah to some great man of course!"

Vanderbank thought. "I don't know. " He gave a vague but expressive sigh. "She's rather lovely, little Aggie. "

Mr. Longdon looked conspicuously subtle. "Then perhaps YOU'RE the man!"

"Do I look like a 'great' one?" Vanderbank broke in. 

His visitor, turning away from him, again embraced the room. "Oh dear, yes!"

"Well then, to show how right you are, there's the young lady. " Hepointed to an object on one of the tables, a small photograph with avery wide border of something that looked like crimson fur. 

Mr. Longdon took up the picture; he was serious now. "She's verybeautiful--but she's not a little girl. "

"At Naples they develop early. She's only seventeen or eighteen, Isuppose; but I never know how old--or at least how young--girls are, andI'm not sure. An aunt, at any rate, has of course nothing to conceal. She IS extremely pretty--with extraordinary red hair and a complexion tomatch; great rarities I believe, in that race and latitude. She gave methe portrait--frame and all. The frame is Neapolitan enough and littleAggie's charming. " Then Vanderbank subjoined: "But not so charming aslittle Nanda. "

"Little Nanda?--have you got HER?" The old man was all eagerness. 

"She's over there beside the lamp--also a present from the original. "

II

Mr. Longdon had gone to the place--little Nanda was in glazed whitewood. He took her up and held her out; for a moment he said nothing, but presently, over his glasses, rested on his host a look intensereven than his scrutiny of the faded image. "Do they give their portraitsnow?"

"Little girls--innocent lambs? Surely--to old friends. Didn't they inyour time?"

Mr. Longdon studied the portrait again; after which, with an exhalationof something between superiority and regret, "They never did to me, " hereturned. 

"Well, you can have all you want now!" Vanderbank laughed. 

His friend gave a slow droll headshake. "I don't want them 'now'!"

"You could do with them, my dear sir, still, " Vanderbank continued inthe same manner, "every bit _I_ do!"

"I'm sure you do nothing you oughtn't. " Mr. Longdon kept the photographand continued to look at it. "Her mother told me about her--promised meI should see her next time. "

"You must--she's a great friend of mine. "

Mr. Longdon was really deep in it. "Is she clever?"

Vanderbank turned it over. "Well, you'll tell me if you think so. "

"Ah with a child of seventeen--!" Mr. Longdon murmured it as if in dreadof having to pronounce. "This one too IS seventeen?"

Vanderbank again considered. "Eighteen. " He just hung fire oncemore, then brought out: "Well, call it nearly nineteen. I've kept herbirthdays, " he laughed. 

His companion caught at the idea. "Upon my honour _I_ should like to!When is the next?"

"You've plenty of time--the fifteenth of June. "

"I'm only too sorry to wait. " Laying down the object he had beenexamining Mr. Longdon took another turn about the room, and his mannerwas such an appeal to his host to accept his restlessness that as hecirculated the latter watched him with encouragement. "I said to youjust now that I knew the mothers, but it would have been more to thepoint to say the grandmothers. " He stopped before his young friend, then nodded at the image of Nanda. "I knew HERS. She put it at somethingless. "

Vanderbank rather failed to understand. "The old lady? Put what?"

Mr. Longdon's face showed him as for a moment feeling his way. "I'mspeaking of Mrs. Brookenham. She spoke of her daughter as only sixteen. "

Vanderbank's amusement at the tone of this broke out. "She usually does!She has done so, I think, for the last year or two. "

His visitor dropped upon his sofa as with the weight of something suddenand fresh; then from this place, with a sharp little movement, tossedinto the fire the end of a cigarette. Vanderbank offered him another, and as he accepted it and took a light he said: "I don't know whatyou're doing with me--I never at home smoke so much!" But he puffed awayand, seated near, laid his hand on Vanderbank's arm as to help himselfto utter something too delicate not to be guarded and yet too importantnot to be risked. "Now that's the sort of thing I did mean--as one ofmy impressions. " Vanderbank continued at a loss and he went on: "Irefer--if you don't mind my saying so--to what you said just now. "

Vanderbank was conscious of a deep desire to draw from him whatevermight come; so sensible was it somehow that whatever in him was good wasalso thoroughly personal. But our young friend had to think a minute. "Isee, I see. Nothing's more probable than that I've said something nasty;but which of my particular horrors?"

"Well then, your conveying that she makes her daughter out younger--!"

"To make herself out the same?" Vanderbank took him straight up. "It wasnasty my doing that? I see, I see. Yes, yes: I rather gave her away, andyou're struck by it--as is most delightful you SHOULD be--because you'rein every way of a better tradition and, knowing Mrs. Brookenham's myfriend, can't conceive of one's playing on a friend a trick so vulgarand odious. It strikes you also probably as the kind of thing we must beconstantly doing; it strikes you that right and left, probably, we keepgiving each other away. Well, I dare say we do. Yes, 'come to thinkof it, ' as they say in America, we do. But what shall I tell you?Practically we all know it and allow for it and it's as broad as it'slong. What's London life after all? It's tit for tat!"

"Ah but what becomes of friendship?" Mr. Longdon earnestly andpleadingly asked, while he still held Vanderbank's arm as if under thespell of the vivid explanation supplied him. 

The young man met his eyes only the more sociably. "Friendship?"

"Friendship. " Mr. Longdon maintained the full value of the word. 

"Well, " his companion risked, "I dare say it isn't in London by anymeans what it is at Beccles. I quite literally mean that, " Vanderbankreassuringly added; "I never really have believed in the existence offriendship in big societies--in great towns and great crowds. It's aplant that takes time and space and air; and London society is a huge'squash, ' as we elegantly call it--an elbowing pushing perspiringchattering mob. "

"Ah I don't say THAT of you!" the visitor murmured with a withdrawalof his hand and a visible scruple for the sweeping concession he hadevoked. 

"Do say it then--for God's sake; let some one say it, so that somethingor other, whatever it may be, may come of it! It's impossible to say toomuch--it's impossible to say enough. There isn't anything any one cansay that I won't agree to. "

"That shows you really don't care, " the old man returned with acuteness. 

"Oh we're past saving, if that's what you mean!" Vanderbank laughed. 

"You don't care, you don't care!" his guest repeated, "and--if I may befrank with you--I shouldn't wonder if it were rather a pity. "

"A pity I don't care?"

"You ought to, you ought to. " And Mr. Longdon paused. "May I say all Ithink?"

"I assure you _I_ shall! You're awfully interesting. "

"So are you, if you come to that. It's just what I've had in my head. There's something I seem to make out in you--!" He abruptly droppedthis, however, going on in another way. "I remember the rest of you, butwhy did I never see YOU?"

"I must have been at school--at college. Perhaps you did know mybrothers, elder and younger. "

"There was a boy with your mother at Malvern. I was near her there forthree months in--what WAS the year?"

"Yes, I know, " Vanderbank replied while his guest tried to fix the date. "It was my brother Miles. He was awfully clever, but had no health, poor chap, and we lost him at seventeen. She used to take houses at suchplaces with him--it was supposed to be for his benefit. "

Mr. Longdon listened with a visible recovery. "He used to talk to me--Iremember he asked me questions I couldn't answer and made me dreadfullyashamed. But I lent him books--partly, upon my honour, to make him thinkthat as I had them I did know something. He read everything and had alot to say about it. I used to tell your mother he had a great future. "

Vanderbank shook his head sadly and kindly. "So he had. And you rememberNancy, who was handsome and who was usually with them?" he went on. 

Mr. Longdon looked so uncertain that he explained he meant his othersister; on which his companion said: "Oh her? Yes, she was charming--sheevidently had a future too. "

"Well, she's in the midst of her future now. She's married. "

"And whom did she marry?"

"A fellow called Toovey. A man in the City. "

"Oh!" said Mr. Longdon a little blankly. Then as if to retrieve hisblankness: "But why do you call her Nancy? Wasn't her name Blanche?"

"Exactly--Blanche Bertha Vanderbank. "

Mr. Longdon looked half-mystified and half-distressed. "And now she'sNancy Toovey?"

Vanderbank broke into laughter at his dismay. "That's what every onecalls her. "

"But why?"

"Nobody knows. You see you were right about her future. "

Mr. Longdon gave another of his soft smothered sighs; he had turned backagain to the first photograph, which he looked at for a longer time. "Well, it wasn't HER way. "

"My mother's? No indeed. Oh my mother's way--!" Vanderbank waited, thenadded gravely: "She was taken in time. "

Mr. Longdon turned half-round as to reply to this, but instead ofreplying proceeded afresh to an examination of the expressive oval inthe red plush frame. He took up little Aggie, who appeared to interesthim, and abruptly observed: "Nanda isn't so pretty. "

"No, not nearly. There's a great question whether Nanda's pretty atall. "

Mr. Longdon continued to inspect her more favoured friend; which led himafter a moment to bring out: "She ought to be, you know. Her grandmotherwas. "

"Oh and her mother, " Vanderbank threw in. "Don't you think Mrs. Brookenham lovely?"

Mr. Longdon kept him waiting a little. "Not so lovely as Lady Julia. Lady Julia had--!" He faltered; then, as if there were too much to say, disposed of the question. "Lady Julia had everything. "

Vanderbank gathered hence an impression that determined him more andmore to diplomacy. "But isn't that just what Mrs. Brookenham has?"

This time the old man was prompt. "Yes, she's very brilliant, but it'sa totally different thing. " He laid little Aggie down and moved away aswithout a purpose; but his friend presently perceived his purpose tobe another glance at the other young lady. As if all accidentally andabsently he bent again over the portrait of Nanda. "Lady Julia wasexquisite and this child's exactly like her. "

Vanderbank, more and more conscious of something working in him, was more and more interested. "If Nanda's so like her, WAS she soexquisite?"

"Oh yes; every one was agreed about that. " Mr. Longdon kept his eyes onthe face, trying a little, Vanderbank even thought, to conceal his own. "She was one of the greatest beauties of her day. "

"Then IS Nanda so like her?" Vanderbank persisted, amused at hisfriend's transparency. 

"Extraordinarily. Her mother told me all about her. "

"Told you she's as beautiful as her grandmother?"

Mr. Longdon turned it over. "Well, that she has just Lady Julia'sexpression. She absolutely HAS it--I see it here. " He was delightfullypositive. "She's much more like the dead than like the living. "

Vanderbank saw in this too many deep things not to follow them up. One of these was, to begin with, that his guest had not more thanhalf-succumbed to Mrs. Brookenham's attraction, if indeed he had bya fine originality not resisted it altogether. That in itself, foran observer deeply versed in this lady, was attaching and beguiling. Another indication was that he found himself, in spite of such a breakin the chain, distinctly predisposed to Nanda. "If she reproduces thenso vividly Lady Julia, " the young man threw out, "why does she strikeyou as so much less pretty than her foreign friend there, who is afterall by no means a prodigy?"

The subject of this address, with one of the photographs in his hand, glanced, while he reflected, at the other. Then with a subtlety thatmatched itself for the moment with Vanderbank's: "You just told meyourself that the little foreign person--"

"Is ever so much the lovelier of the two? So I did. But you've promptlyrecognised it. It's the first time, " Vanderbank went on, to let himdown more gently, "that I've heard Mrs. Brookenham admit the girl's goodlooks. "

"Her own girl's? 'Admit' them?"

"I mean grant them to be even as good as they are. I myself, I musttell you, extremely like Nanda's appearance. I think Lady Julia'sgranddaughter has in her face, in spite of everything--!"

"What do you mean by everything?" Mr. Longdon broke in with such anapproach to resentment that his host's gaiety overflowed. 

"You'll see--when you do see. She has no features. No, not one, "Vanderbank inexorably pursued; "unless indeed you put it that she hastwo or three too many. What I was going to say was that she has inher expression all that's charming in her nature. But beauty, inLondon"--and feeling that he held his visitor's attention he gavehimself the pleasure of freely presenting his idea--"staring glaringobvious knock-down beauty, as plain as a poster on a wall, anadvertisement of soap or whiskey, something that speaks to the crowdand crosses the footlights, fetches such a price in the market thatthe absence of it, for a woman with a girl to marry, inspires endlessterrors and constitutes for the wretched pair (to speak of mother anddaughter alone) a sort of social bankruptcy. London doesn't love thelatent or the lurking, has neither time nor taste nor sense for anythingless discernible than the red flag in front of the steam-roller. Itwants cash over the counter and letters ten feet high. Therefore you seeit's all as yet rather a dark question for poor Nanda--a question thatin a way quite occupies the foreground of her mother's earnest littlelife. How WILL she look, what will be thought of her and what willshe be able to do for herself? She's at the age when the wholething--speaking of her 'attractions, ' her possible share of goodlooks--is still to a degree in a fog. But everything depends on it. "

Mr. Longdon had by this time come back to him. "Excuse my askingit again--for you take such jumps: what, once more, do you mean byeverything?"

"Why naturally her marrying. Above all her marrying early. "

Mr. Longdon stood before the sofa. "What do you mean by early?"

"Well, we do doubtless get up later than at Beccles; but that givesus, you see, shorter days. I mean in a couple of seasons. Soon enough, "Vanderbank developed, "to limit the strain--!" He was moved to highergaiety by his friend's expression. 

"What do you mean by the strain?"

"Well, the complication of her being there. "

"Being where?"

"You do put one through!" Vanderbank laughed. But he showed himselfperfectly prepared. "Out of the school-room and where she is now. In hermother's drawing-room. At her mother's fireside. "

Mr. Longdon stared. "But where else should she be?"

"At her husband's, don't you see?"

He looked as if he quite saw, yet was nevertheless not to be put offfrom his original challenge. "Ah certainly; but not as if she had beenpushed down the chimney. All in good time. "

"What do you call good time?"

"Why time to make herself loved. "

Vanderbank wondered. "By the men who come to the house?"

Mr. Longdon slightly attenuated this way of putting it. "Yes--and in thehome circle. Where's the 'strain' of her being suffered to be a memberof it?"

III

Vanderbank at this left his corner of the sofa and, with his handsin his pockets and a manner so amused that it might have passed forexcited, took several paces about the room while his interlocutor, watching him, waited for his response. That gentleman, as this responsefor a minute hung fire, took his turn at sitting down, and thenVanderbank stopped before him with a face in which something had beenstill more brightly kindled. "You ask me more things than I can tellyou. You ask me more than I think you suspect. You must come and see meagain--you must let me come and see you. You raise the most interestingquestions and we must sooner or later have them all out. "

Mr. Longdon looked happy in such a prospect, but once more took out hiswatch. "It wants five minutes to midnight. Which means that I must gonow. "

"Not in the least. There are satisfactions you too must give. " His host, with an irresistible hand, confirmed him in his position and pressedupon him another cigarette. His resistance rang hollow--it was clearly, he judged, such an occasion for sacrifices. Vanderbank's view of itmeanwhile was quite as marked. "You see there's ever so much more youmust in common kindness tell me. "

Mr. Longdon sat there like a shy singer invited to strike up. "I toldyou everything at Mrs. Brookenham's. It comes over me now how I droppedon you. "

"What you told me, " Vanderbank returned, "was excellent so far as itwent; but it was only after all that, having caught my name, you hadasked of our friend if I belonged to people you had known years before, and then, from what she had said, had--with what you were so good as tocall great pleasure--made out that I did. You came round to me on this, after dinner, and gave me a pleasure still greater. But that only takesus part of the way. " Mr. Longdon said nothing, but there was somethingappreciative in his conscious lapses; they were a tribute to his youngfriend's frequent felicity. This personage indeed appeared more and moreto take them for that--which was not without its effect on his spirits. At last, with a flight of some freedom, he brought their pause to aclose. "You loved Lady Julia. " Then as the attitude of his guest, whoserenely met his eyes, was practically a contribution to the subject, he went on with a feeling that he had positively pleased. "You losther--and you're unmarried. "

Mr. Longdon's smile was beautiful--it supplied so many meanings thatwhen presently he spoke he seemed already to have told half his story. "Well, my life took a form. It had to, or I don't know what would havebecome of me, and several things that all happened at once helped meout. My father died--I came into the little place in Suffolk. My sister, my only one, who had married and was older than I, lost within a year ortwo both her husband and her little boy. I offered her, in the country, a home, for her trouble was greater than any trouble of mine. She came, she stayed; it went on and on and we lived there together. We were sorryfor each other and it somehow suited us. But she died two years ago. "

Vanderbank took all this in, only wishing to show--wishing by this timequite tenderly--that he even read into it deeply enough all the unsaid. He filled out another of his friend's gaps. "And here you are. " Then heinvited Mr. Longdon himself to make the stride. "Well, you'll be a greatsuccess. "

"What do you mean by that?"

"Why, that we shall be so infatuated with you that we shall make yourlife a burden to you. You'll see soon enough what I mean by it. "

"Possibly, " the old man said; "to understand you I shall have to. Youspeak of something that as yet--with my race practically run--I knownothing about. I was no success as a young man. I mean of the sort thatwould have made most difference. People wouldn't look at me--"

"Well, WE shall look at you, " Vanderbank declared. Then he added: "Whatpeople do you mean?" And before his friend could reply: "Lady Julia?"

Mr. Longdon's assent was mute. "Ah she was not the worst! I mean thatwhat made it so bad, " he continued, "was that they all really likedme. Your mother, I think--as to THAT, the dreadful consolatory'liking'--even more than the others. "

"My mother?"--Vanderbank was surprised. "You mean there was aquestion--?"

"Oh for but half a minute! It didn't take her long. It was five yearsafter your father's death. "

This explanation was very delicately made. "She COULD marry again. "

"And I suppose you know she did, " Vanderbank returned. 

"I knew it soon enough!" With this, abruptly, Mr. Longdon pulled himselfforward. "Good-night, good-night. "

"Good-night, " said Vanderbank. "But wasn't that AFTER Lady Julia?"

On the edge of the sofa, his hands supporting him, Mr. Longdon lookedstraight. "There was nothing after Lady Julia. "

"I see. " His companion smiled. "My mother was earlier. "

"She was extremely good to me. I'm not speaking of that time atMalvern--that came later. "

"Precisely--I understand. You're speaking of the first years of herwidowhood. "

Mr. Longdon just faltered. "I should call them rather the last. Sixmonths later came her second marriage. "

Vanderbank's interest visibly improved. "Ah it was THEN? That was aboutmy seventh year. " He called things back and pieced them together. "Butshe must have been older than you. "

"Yes--a little. She was kindness itself to me at all events, then andafterwards. That was the charm of the weeks at Malvern. "

"I see, " the young man laughed. "The charm was that you had recovered. "

"Oh dear, no!" Mr. Longdon, rather to his mystification, exclaimed. "I'mafraid I hadn't recovered at all--hadn't, if that's what you mean, gotover my misery and my melancholy. She knew I hadn't--and that was whatwas nice of her. She was a person with whom I could talk about her. "

Vanderbank took a moment to clear up the ambiguity. "Oh you mean youcould talk about the OTHER. You hadn't got over Lady Julia. "

Mr. Longdon sadly smiled at him. "I haven't got over her yet!" Then, however, as if not to look morbid, he took pains to be clear. "The firstwound was bad--but from that one always comes round. Your mother, dear woman, had known how to help me. Lady Julia was at that time herintimate friend--it was she who introduced me there. She couldn't helpwhat happened--she did her best. What I meant just now was that in theaftertime, when opportunity occurred, she was the one person with whom Icould always talk and who always understood. " He lost himself an instantin the deep memories to attest which he had survived alone; then hesighed out as if the taste of it all came back to him with a faintsweetness: "I think they must both have been good to me. At the Malverntime, the particular time I just mentioned to you, Lady Julia wasalready married, and during those first years she had been whirled outof my ken. Then her own life took a quieter turn; we met again; I wentfor a good while often to her house. I think she rather liked the stateto which she had reduced me, though she didn't, you know, in the leastpresume on it. The better a woman is--it has often struck me--the moreshe enjoys in a quiet way some fellow's having been rather bad, ratherdark and desperate, about her--for her. I dare say, I mean, that thoughLady Julia insisted I ought to marry she wouldn't really have liked itmuch if I had. At any rate it was in those years I saw her daughter justcease to be a child--the little girl who was to be transformed by timeinto the so different person with whom we dined to-night. That comesback to me when I hear you speak of the growing up, in turn, of thatperson's own daughter. "

"I follow you with a sympathy--!" Vanderbank replied. "The situation'sreproduced. "

"Ah partly--not altogether. The things that are unlike--well, are soVERY unlike. " Mr. Longdon for a moment, on this, fixed his companionwith eyes that betrayed one of the restless little jumps of his mind. "Itold you just now that there's something I seem to make out in you. "

"Yes, that was meant for better things?"--Vanderbank frankly took himup. "There IS something, I really believe--meant for ever so much betterones. Those are just the sort I like to be supposed to have a realaffinity with. Help me to them, Mr. Longdon; help me to them, and Idon't know what I won't do for you!"

"Then after all"--and his friend made the point with innocentsharpness--"you're NOT past saving!"

"Well, I individually--how shall I put it to you? If I tell you, "Vanderbank went on, "that I've that sort of fulcrum for salvation whichconsists at least in a deep consciousness and the absence of a rag ofillusion, I shall appear to say I'm wholly different from the world Ilive in and to that extent present myself as superior and fatuous. Tryme at any rate. Let me try myself. Don't abandon me. See what can bedone with me. Perhaps I'm after all a case. I shall certainly cling toyou. "

"You're too clever--you're too clever: that's what's the matter with youall!" Mr. Longdon sighed. 

"With us ALL?" Vanderbank echoed. "Dear Mr. Longdon, it's the first timeI've heard it. If you should say the matter with ME in particular, whythere might be something in it. What you mean at any rate--I see whereyou come out--is that we're cold and sarcastic and cynical, without thesoft human spot. I think you flatter us even while you attempt to warn;but what's extremely interesting at all events is that, as I gather, we made on you this evening, in a particular way, a collectiveimpression--something in which our trifling varieties are merged. " Hisvisitor's face, at this, appeared to acknowledge his putting the casein perfection, so that he was encouraged to go on. "There was somethingparticular with which you weren't altogether pleasantly struck. "

Mr. Longdon, who decidedly changed colour easily, showed in his clearcheek the effect at once of feeling a finger on his fault and ofadmiring his companion's insight. But he accepted the situation. "Icouldn't help noticing your tone. "

"Do you mean its being so low?"

He had smiled at first but looked grave now. "Do you really want toknow?"

"Just how you were affected? I assure you there's at this moment nothingI desire nearly so much. "

"I'm no judge then, " Mr. Longdon began; "I'm no critic; I'm no talkermyself. I'm old-fashioned and narrow and ignorant. I've lived for yearsin a hole. I'm not a man of the world. "

Vanderbank considered him with a benevolence, a geniality of approval, that he literally had to hold in check for fear of seeming to patronise. "There's not one of us who can touch you. You're delightful, you'rewonderful, and I'm intensely curious to hear you, " the young manpursued. "Were we absolutely odious?" Before his guest's puzzled, finally almost pained face, such an air of appreciating so much candour, yet of looking askance at so much freedom, he could only try to smooththe way and light the subject. "You see we don't in the least know wherewe are. We're lost--and you find us. " Mr. Longdon, as he spoke, hadprepared at last really to go, reaching the door with a manner thatdenoted, however, by no means so much satiety as an attention that feltitself positively too agitated. Vanderbank had helped him on with theInverness cape and for an instant detained him by it. "Just tell me as akindness. DO we talk--"

"Too freely?" Mr. Longdon, with his clear eyes so untouched by time, speculatively murmured. 

"Too outrageously. I want the truth. "

The truth evidently for Mr. Longdon was difficult to tell. "Well--it wascertainly different. "

"From you and Lady Julia? I see. Well, of course with time SOME changeis natural, isn't it? But so different, " Vanderbank pressed, "that youwere really shocked?"

His visitor smiled at this, but the smile somehow made the face graver. "I think I was rather frightened. Good-night. "

BOOK SECOND. LITTLE AGGIE

Mrs. Brookenham stopped on the threshold with the sharp surprise of thesight of her son, and there was disappointment, though rather of theafflicted than of the irritated sort, in the question that, slowlyadvancing, she launched at him. "If you're still lolling about why didyou tell me two hours ago that you were leaving immediately?"

Deep in a large brocaded chair with his little legs stuck out to thefire, he was so much at his ease that he was almost flat on his back. She had evidently roused him from sleep, and it took him a coupleof minutes--during which, without again looking at him, she directlyapproached a beautiful old French secretary, a fine piece of the periodof Louis Seize--to justify his presence. "I changed my mind. I couldn'tget off. "

"Do you mean to say you're not going?"

"Well, I'm thinking it over. What's a fellow to do?" He sat up a little, staring with conscious solemnity at the fire, and if it had been--asit was not--one of the annoyances she in general expected from him, she might have received the impression that his flush was the heat ofliquor. 

"He's to keep out of the way, " she returned--"when he has led one sodeeply to hope it. " There had been a bunch of keys dangling fromthe secretary, of which as she said these words Mrs. Brookenham tookpossession. Her air on observing them had promptly become that of havingbeen in search of them, and a moment after she had passed across theroom they were in her pocket. "If you don't go what excuse will yougive?"

"Do you mean to YOU, mummy?"

She stood before him and now dismally looked at him. "What's the matterwith you? What an extraordinary time to take a nap!"

He had fallen back in the chair, from the depths of which he met hereyes. "Why it's just THE time, mummy. I did it on purpose. I can alwaysgo to sleep when I like. I assure you it sees one through things!"

She turned away with impatience and, glancing about the room, perceivedon a small table of the same type as the secretary a somewhat massivebook with the label of a circulating library, which she proceeded topick up as for refuge from the impression made on her by her boy. Hewatched her do this and watched her then slightly pause at the widewindow that, in Buckingham Crescent, commanded the prospect they hadramified rearward to enjoy; a medley of smoky brick and spotty stucco, of other undressed backs, of glass invidiously opaque, of roofs andchimney-pots and stables unnaturally near--one of the private picturesthat in London, in select situations, run up, as the phrase is, therent. There was no indication of value now, however, in the characterconferred on the scene by a cold spring rain. The place had moreovera confessed out-of-season vacancy. She appeared to have determined onsilence for the present mark of her relation with Harold, yet she soonfailed to resist a sufficiently poor reason for breaking it. "Be so goodas to get out of my chair. "

"What will you do for me, " he asked, "if I oblige you?"

He never moved--but as if only the more directly and intimately to meether--and she stood again before the fire and sounded his strange littleface. "I don't know what it is, but you give me sometimes a kind ofterror. "

"A terror, mamma?"

She found another place, sinking sadly down and opening her book, andthe next moment he got up and came over to kiss her, on which she drewher cheek wearily aside. "You bore me quite to death, " she coldly said, "and I give you up to your fate. "

"What do you call my fate?"

"Oh something dreadful--if only by its being publicly ridiculous. "She turned vaguely the pages of her book. "You're too selfish--toosickening. "

"Oh dear, dear!" he wonderingly whistled while he wandered back to thehearth-rug, on which, with his hands behind him, he lingered a while. He was small and had a slight stoop which somehow gave himcharacter--character of the insidious sort carried out in the acuteness, difficult to trace to a source, of his smooth fair face, where the lineswere all curves and the expression all needles. He had the voice of aman of forty and was dressed--as if markedly not for London--with anair of experience that seemed to match it. He pulled down his waistcoat, smoothing himself, feeling his neat hair and looking at his shoes. 

"I took your five pounds. Also two of the sovereigns, " he went on. "Ileft you two pound ten. " His mother jerked up her head at this, facing him in dismay, and, immediately on her feet, passed back to thesecretary. "It's quite as I say, " he insisted; "you should have lockedit BEFORE, don't you know? It grinned at me there with all its charmingbrasses, and what was I to do? Darling mummy, I COULDN'T start--that wasthe truth. I thought I should find something--I had noticed; and I dohope you'll let me keep it, because if you don't it's all up with me. Istopped over on purpose--on purpose, I mean, to tell you what I've done. Don't you call that a sense of honour? And now you only stand and glowerat me. "

Mrs. Brookenham was, in her forty-first year, still charmingly pretty, and the nearest approach she made at this moment to meeting her son'sdescription of her was by looking beautifully desperate. She had abouther the pure light of youth--would always have it; her head, her figure, her flexibility, her flickering colour, her lovely silly eyes, hernatural quavering tone, all played together toward this effect bysome trick that had never yet been exposed. It was at the same timeremarkable that--at least in the bosom of her family--she rarely worean appearance of gaiety less qualified than at the present juncture;she suggested for the most part the luxury, the novelty of woe, theexcitement of strange sorrows and the cultivation of fine indifferences. This was her special sign--an innocence dimly tragic. It gave immenseeffect to her other resources. She opened the secretary with the keyshe had quickly found, then with the aid of another rattled out a smalldrawer; after which she pushed the drawer back, closing the whole thing. "You terrify me--you terrify me, " she again said. 

"How can you say that when you showed me just now how well you know me?Wasn't it just on account of what you thought I might do that you tookout the keys as soon as you came in?" Harold's manner had a way ofclearing up whenever he could talk of himself. 

"You're too utterly disgusting--I shall speak to your father, " withwhich, going to the chair he had given up, his mother sank down againwith her heavy book. There was no anger, however, in her voice, andnot even a harsh plaint; only a detached accepted disenchantment. Mrs. Brookenham's supreme rebellion against fate was just to show with thelast frankness how much she was bored. 

"No, darling mummy, you won't speak to my father--you'll do anything inthe world rather than that, " Harold replied, quite as if he were kindlyexplaining her to herself. "I thank you immensely for the charming wayyou take what I've done; it was because I had a conviction of that thatI waited for you to know it. It was all very well to tell you I'd starton my visit--but how the deuce was I to start without a penny in theworld? Don't you see that if you want me to go about you must reallyenter into my needs?"

"I wish to heaven you'd leave me--I wish to heaven you'd get out of thehouse, " Mrs. Brookenham went on without looking up. 

Harold took out his watch. "Well, mamma, now I AM ready: I wasn't inthe least before. But it will be going forth, you know, quite to seekmy fortune. For do you really think--I must have from you what you dothink--that it will be all right for me?"

She fixed him at last with her pretty pathos. "You mean for you to go toBrander?"

"You know, " he answered with his manner as of letting her see her ownattitude, "you know you try to make me do things you wouldn't at all doyourself. At least I hope you wouldn't. And don't you see that if I sofar oblige you I must at least be paid for it?"

His mother leaned back in her chair, gazed for a moment at the ceilingand then closed her eyes. "You ARE frightful, " she said. "You'reappalling. "

"You're always wanting to get me out of the house, " he continued; "Ithink you want to get us ALL out, for you manage to keep Nanda fromshowing even more than you do me. Don't you think your children goodENOUGH, mummy dear? At any rate it's as plain as possible that if youdon't keep us at home you must keep us in other places. One can't liveanywhere for nothing--it's all bosh that a fellow saves by staying withpeople. I don't know how it is for a lady, but a man's practically letin--"

"Do you know you kill me, Harold?" Mrs. Brookenham woefully interposed. But it was with the same remote melancholy that she asked in the nextbreath: "It wasn't an INVITATION--to Brander?"

"It's as I told you. She said she'd write, fixing a time; but she neverdid write. "

"But if YOU wrote--"

"It comes to the same thing? DOES it?--that's the question. If on mynote she didn't write--that's what I mean. Should one simply take itthat one's wanted? I like to have these things FROM you, mother. I do, Ibelieve, everything you say; but to feel safe and right I must just HAVEthem. Any one WOULD want me, eh?"

Mrs. Brookenham had opened her eyes, but she still attached them to thecornice. "If she hadn't wanted you she'd have written to keep you off. In a great house like that there's always room. "

The young man watched her a moment. "How you DO like to tuck us in andthen sit up yourself! What do you want to do, anyway? What ARE you upto, mummy?"

She rose at this, turning her eyes about the room as if from theextremity of martyrdom or the wistfulness of some deep thought. Yet whenshe spoke it was with a different expression, an expression thatwould have served for an observer as a marked illustration of thatdisconnectedness of her parts which frequently was laughable even to thedegree of contributing to her social success. "You've spent then morethan four pounds in five days. It was on Friday I gave them to you. Whatin the world do you suppose is going to become of me?"

Harold continued to look at her as if the question demanded some answerreally helpful. "Do we live beyond our means?"

She now moved her gaze to the floor. "Will you PLEASE get away?"

"Anything to assist you. Only, if I SHOULD find I'm not wanted--?"

She met his look after an instant, and the wan loveliness and vaguenessof her own had never been greater. "BE wanted, and you won't find it. You're odious, but you're not a fool. "

He put his arms about her now for farewell, and she submitted as if itwas absolutely indifferent to her to whose bosom she was pressed. "Youdo, dearest, " he laughed, "say such sweet things!" And with that hereached the door, on opening which he pulled up at a sound from below. "The Duchess! She's coming up. "

Mrs. Brookenham looked quickly round the room, but she spoke with utterdetachment. "Well, let her come. "

"As I'd let her go. I take it as a happy sign SHE won't be at Brander. "He stood with his hand on the knob; he had another quick appeal. "Butafter Tuesday?"

Mrs. Brookenham had passed half round the room with the glide thatlooked languid but that was really a remarkable form of activity, andhad given a transforming touch, on sofa and chairs, to three or fourcrushed cushions. It was all with the hanging head of a broken lily. "You're to stay till the twelfth. "

"But if I AM kicked out?"

It was as a broken lily that she considered it. "Then go to theMangers. "

"Happy thought! And shall I write?"

His mother raised a little more a window-blind. "No--I will. "

"Delicious mummy!" And Harold blew her a kiss. 

"Yes, rather"--she corrected herself. "Do write--from Brander. It's thesort of thing for the Mangers. Or even wire. "

"Both?" the young man laughed. "Oh you duck!" he cried. "And from wherewill YOU let them have it?"

"From Pewbury, " she replied without wincing. "I'll write on Sunday. "

"Good. How d'ye do, Duchess?"--and Harold, before he disappeared, greeted with a rapid concentration of all the shades of familiarity alarge high lady, the visitor he had announced, who rose in the doorwaywith the manner of a person used to arriving on thresholds very much aspeople arrive at stations--with the expectation of being "met. "

II

"Good-bye. He's off, " Mrs. Brookenham, who had remained quite on her ownside of the room, explained to her friend. 

"Where's he off to?" this friend enquired with a casual advance and alook not so much at her hostess as at the cushions just rearranged. 

"Oh to some places. To Brander to-day. "

"How he does run about!" And the Duchess, still with a glance hitherand yon, sank upon the sofa to which she had made her way unaided. Mrs. Brookenham knew perfectly the meaning of this glance: she had but threeor four comparatively good pieces, whereas the Duchess, rich with thespoils of Italy, had but three or four comparatively bad. This wasthe relation, as between intimate friends, that the Duchess visiblypreferred, and it was quite groundless, in Buckingham Crescent, ever toenter the drawing-room with an expression suspicious of disloyalty. TheDuchess was a woman who so cultivated her passions that she would haveregarded it as disloyal to introduce there a new piece of furniture inan underhand way--that is without a full appeal to herself, the highestauthority, and the consequent bestowal of opportunity to nip the mistakein the bud. Mrs. Brookenham had repeatedly asked herself where in theworld she might have found the money to be disloyal. The Duchess'sstandard was of a height--! It matched for that matter her otherelements, which were wontedly conspicuous as usual as she sat theresuggestive of early tea. She always suggested tea before the hour, andher friend always, but with so different a wistfulness, rang for it. "Who's to be at Brander?" she asked. 

"I haven't the least idea--he didn't tell me. But they've always a lotof people. "

"Oh I know--extraordinary mixtures. Has he been there before?"

Mrs. Brookenham thought. "Oh yes--if I remember--more than once. Infact her note--which he showed me, but which only mentioned 'somefriends'--was a sort of appeal on the ground of something or other thathad happened the last time. "

The Duchess dealt with it. "She writes the most extraordinary notes. "

"Well, this was nice, I thought, " Mrs. Brookenham said--"from a woman ofher age and her immense position to so young a man. "

Again the Duchess reflected. "My dear, she's not an American and she'snot on the stage. Aren't those what you call positions in this country?And she's also not a hundred. "

"Yes, but Harold's a mere baby. "

"Then he doesn't seem to want for nurses!" the Duchess replied. Shesmiled at her hostess. "Your children are like their mother--they'reeternally young. "

"Well, I'M not a hundred!" moaned Mrs. Brookenham as if she wished withdim perversity she were. 

"Every one's at any rate awfully kind to Harold. " She waited a moment togive her visitor the chance to pronounce that eminently natural, but nopronouncement came--nothing but the footman who had answered her ringand of whom she ordered tea. "And where did you say YOU'RE going?" sheenquired after this. 

"For Easter?" The Duchess achieved a direct encounter with her charmingeyes--which was not in general an easy feat. "I didn't say I was goinganywhere. I haven't of a sudden changed my habits. You know whether Ileave my child--except in the sense of having left her an hour ago atMr. Garlick's class in Modern Light Literature. I confess I'm a littlenervous about the subjects and am going for her at five. "

"And then where do you take her?"

"Home to her tea. Where should you think?"

Mrs. Brookenham declined, in connexion with the matter, anyresponsibility of thought; she did indeed much better by saying after amoment: "You ARE devoted!"

"Miss Merriman has her afternoon--I can't imagine what they do withtheir afternoons, " the Duchess went on. "But she's to be back in theschool-room at seven. "

"And you have Aggie till then?"

"Till then, " said the Duchess cheerfully. "You're off for Easterto--where is it?" she continued. 

Mrs. Brookenham had received with no flush of betrayal the variousdiscriminations thus conveyed by her visitor, and her only revenge forthe moment was to look as sweetly resigned as if she really saw what wasin them. Where were they going for Easter? She had to think an instant, but she brought it out. "Oh to Pewbury--we've been engaged so long thatI had forgotten. We go once a year--one does it for Edward. "

"Ah you spoil him!" smiled the Duchess. "Who's to be there?"

"Oh the usual thing, I suppose. A lot of my lord's tiresome supporters. "

"To pay his debt? Then why are you poor things asked?"

Mrs. Brookenham looked, on this, quite adorably--that is mostwonderingly--grave. "How do I know, my dear Jane, why in the world we'reever asked anywhere? Fancy people wanting Edward!" she exhaled withstupefaction. "Yet we can never get off Pewbury. "

"You're better for getting on, cara mia, than for getting off!" theDuchess blandly returned. She was a person of no small presence, fillingher place, however, without ponderosity, with a massiveness indeedrather artfully kept in bounds. Her head, her chin, her shoulders werewell aloft, but she had not abandoned the cultivation of a "figure" orany of the distinctively finer reasons for passing as a handsome woman. She was secretly at war moreover, in this endeavour, with a lurking noless than with a public foe, and thoroughly aware that if she didn'tlook well she might at times only, and quite dreadfully, look good. There were definite ways of escape, none of which she neglected and fromthe total of which, as she flattered herself, the air of distinctionalmost mathematically resulted. This air corresponded superficially withher acquired Calabrian sonorities, from her voluminous title down, butthe colourless hair, the passionless forehead, the mild cheek andlong lip of the British matron, the type that had set its trap for herearlier than any other, were elements difficult to deal with and wereat moments all a sharp observer saw. The battle-ground then was thehaunting danger of the bourgeois. She gave Mrs. Brookenham no time toresent her last note before enquiring if Nanda were to accompany thecouple. 

"Mercy mercy, no--she's not asked. " Mrs. Brookenham, on Nanda's behalf, fairly radiated obscurity. "My children don't go where they're notasked. "

"I never said they did, love, " the Duchess returned. "But what then doyou do with her?"

"If you mean socially"--Mrs. Brookenham looked as if there might bein some distant sphere, for which she almost yearned, a maternalopportunity very different from that--"if you mean socially, I don't doanything at all. I've never pretended to do anything. You know as wellas I do, dear Jane, that I haven't begun yet. " Jane's hostess now spokeas simply as an earnest anxious child. She gave a vague patient sigh. "Isuppose I must begin!"

The Duchess remained for a little rather grimly silent. "How old isshe--twenty?"

"Thirty!" said Mrs. Brookenham with distilled sweetness. Then with notransition of tone: "She has gone for a few days to Tishy Grendon. "

"In the country?"

"She stays with her to-night in Hill Street. They go down togetherto-morrow. Why hasn't Aggie been?" Mrs. Brookenham went on. 

The Duchess handsomely stared. "Been where?"

"Why here, to see Nanda. "

"Here?" the Duchess echoed, fairly looking again about the room. "Whenis Nanda ever here?"

"Ah you know I've given her a room of her own--the sweetest little roomin the world. " Mrs. Brookenham never looked so comparatively hopeful aswhen obliged to explain. "She has everything there a girl can want. "

"My dear woman, " asked the Duchess, "has she sometimes her own mother?"

The men had now come in to place the tea-table, and it was the movementsof the red-haired footman that Mrs. Brookenham followed. "You had betterask my child herself. "

The Duchess was frank and jovial. "I would, I promise you, if I couldget at her! But isn't that woman always with her?"

Mrs. Brookenham smoothed the little embroidered tea-cloth. "Do you callTishy Grendon a woman?"

Again the Duchess had one of her pauses, which were indeed so frequentin her talks with this intimate that an auditor could sometimes wonderwhat particular form of relief they represented. They might have been ahabit proceeding from the fear of undue impatience. If the Duchess hadbeen as impatient with Mrs. Brookenham as she would possibly have seemedwithout them her frequent visits in the face of irritation would havehad to be accounted for. "What do YOU call her?" she demanded. 

"Why Nanda's best friend--if not her only one. That's the place I SHOULDhave liked for Aggie, " Mrs. Brookenham ever so graciously smiled. 

The Duchess hereupon, going beyond her, gave way to free mirth. "Mydear thing, you're delightful. Aggie OR Tishy is a sweet thought. Sinceyou're so good as to ask why Aggie has fallen off you'll excuse mytelling you that you've just named the reason. You've known ever sincewe came to England what I feel about the proper persons--and the mostimproper--for her to meet. The Tishy Grendons are not a bit the proper. "

Mrs. Brookenham continued to assist a little in the preparations fortea. "Why not say at once, Jane"--and her tone, in its appeal, wasalmost infantine--"that you've come at last to placing even poor Nanda, for Aggie's wonderful purpose, in the same impossible class?"

The Duchess took her time, but at last she accepted her duty. "Well, ifyou will have it. You know my ideas. If it isn't my notion of the way tobring up a girl to give her up, in extreme youth, to an intimacy with ayoung married woman who's both unhappy and silly, whose conversation hasabsolutely no limits, who says everything that comes into her head andtalks to the poor child about God only knows what--if I should neverdream of such an arrangement for my niece I can almost as little facethe prospect of throwing her MUCH, don't you see? with any youngperson exposed to such an association. It would be in the natural ordercertainly"--in spite of which natural order the Duchess made the pointwith but moderate emphasis--"that, since dear Edward is my cousin, Aggieshould see at least as much of Nanda as of any other girl of their age. But what will you have? I must recognise the predicament I'm placed inby the more and more extraordinary development of English manners. Many things have altered, goodness knows, since I was Aggie's age, butnothing's so different as what you all do with your girls. It's all amuddle, a compromise, a monstrosity, like everything else you produce;there's nothing in it that goes on all-fours. _I_ see but one consistentway, which is our fine old foreign way and which makes--in the upperclasses, mind you, for it's with them only I'm concerned--des femmesbien gracieuses. I allude to the immemorial custom of my husband'srace, which was good enough for his mother and his mother's mother, forAggie's own, for his other sisters, for toutes ces dames. It would havebeen good enough for my child, as I call her--my dear husband called herHIS--if, not losing her parents, she had remained in her own country. She would have been brought up there under an anxious eye--that's thegreat point; privately, carefully, tenderly, and with what she was NOTto learn--till the proper time--looked after quite as much as therest. I can only go on with her in that spirit and make of her, underProvidence, what I consider any young person of her condition, of hername, of her particular traditions, should be. Voila, ma chere. Shouldyou put it to me whether I think you're surrounding Nanda with any suchsecurity as that--well, I shouldn't be able to help it if I offended youby an honest answer. What it comes to, simply stated, is that really shemust choose between Aggie and Tishy. I'm afraid I should shock you wereI to tell you what I should think of myself for packing MY child, allalone, off for a week with Mrs. Grendon. "

Mrs. Brookenham, who had many talents, had none perhaps that she oftenerfound useful than that of listening with the appearance of being fairlyhypnotised. It was the way she listened to her housekeeper at theirregular morning conference, and if the rejoinder ensuing upon itfrequently appeared to have nothing to do with her manner this was apuzzle for her interlocutor alone. "Oh of course I know your theory, dear Jane, and I dare say it's very charming and old-fashioned and, ifyou like, aristocratic, in a frowsy foolish old way--though even uponthat, at the same time, there would be something too to be said. But Ican only congratulate you on finding it more workable than there can beany question of MY finding it. If you're all armed for the sacrificesyou speak of I simply am not. I don't think I'm quite a monster, butI don't pretend to be a saint. I'm an English wife and an Englishmother--I live in the mixed English world. My daughter, at any rate, is just my daughter, I thank my stars, and one of a good English bunch:she's not the unique niece of my dead Italian husband, nor doubtlesseither, in spite of her excellent birth, of a lineage, like Aggie's, sovery tremendous. I've my life to lead and she's a part of it. Sugar?"she wound up on a still softer note as she handed the cup of tea. 

"Never! Well, with ME" said the Duchess with spirit, "she would be all. "

"'All' is soon said! Life is composed of many things, " Mrs. Brookenhamgently rang out--"of such mingled intertwisted strands!" Then still withthe silver bell, "Don't you really think Tishy nice?" she asked. 

"I think little girls should live with little girls and young femmes dumonde so immensely initiated should--well, " said the Duchess with atoss of her head, "let them alone. What do they want of them 'at all atall'?"

"Well, my dear, if Tishy strikes you as 'initiated' all one can ask is'Initiated into what?' I should as soon think of applying such a termto a little shivering shorn lamb. Is it your theory, " Mrs. Brookenhampursued, "that our unfortunate unmarried daughters are to have nointelligent friends?"

"Unfortunate indeed, " cried the Duchess, "precisely BECAUSE they'reunmarried, and unmarried, if you don't mind my saying so, a good dealbecause they're unmarriageable. Men, after all, the nice ones--by whichI mean the possible ones--are not on the lookout for little brides whoseusual associates are so up to snuff. It's not their idea that the girlsthey marry shall already have been pitchforked--by talk and contacts andvisits and newspapers and by the way the poor creatures rush about andall the extraordinary things they do--quite into EVERYTHING. A girl'smost intelligent friend is her mother--or the relative acting as such. Perhaps you consider that Tishy takes your place!"

Mrs. Brookenham waited so long to say what she considered that beforeshe next spoke the question appeared to have dropped. Then sheonly replied as if suddenly remembering her manners: "Won't you eatsomething?" She indicated a particular plate. "One of the nice littleround ones?" The Duchess appropriated a nice little round one and herhostess presently went on: "There's one thing I mustn't forget--don'tlet us eat them ALL. I believe they're what Lord Petherton really comesfor. "

The Duchess finished her mouthful imperturbably before she took this up. "Does he come so often?"

Mrs. Brookenham might have been, for judicious candour, the Muse ofHistory. "I don't know what he calls it; but he said yesterday that he'dcome today. I've had tea earlier for you, " she went on with her mostmelancholy kindness--"and he's always late. But we mustn't, between us, lick the platter clean. "

The Duchess entered very sufficiently into her companion's tone. "OhI don't feel at all obliged to consider him, for he has not of lateparticularly put himself out for me. He has not been to see me since Idon't know when, and the last time he did come he brought Mr. Mitchett. "

"Here it was the other way round. It was Mr. Mitchett, the other year, who first brought Lord Petherton. "

"And who, " asked the Duchess, "had first brought Mr. Mitchett?"

Mrs. Brookenham, meeting her friend's eyes, looked for an instant as iftrying to recall. "I give it up. I muddle beginnings. "

"That doesn't matter if you only MAKE them, " the Duchess smiled. 

"No, does it?" To which Mrs. Brookenham added: "Did he bring Mr. Mitchett for Aggie?"

"If he did they'll have been disappointed. Neither of them has seen, inmy house, the tip of her nose. " The Duchess announced it with a pomp ofpride. 

"Ah but with your ideas that doesn't prevent. "

"Prevent what?"

"Why what I suppose you call the pourparlers. "

"For Aggie's hand? My dear, " said the Duchess, "I'm glad you do me thejustice of feeling that I'm a person to take time by the forelock. Itwas not, as you seem to remember, with the sight of Mr. Mitchett thatthe question of Aggie's hand began to occupy me. I should be ashamed ofmyself if it weren't constantly before me and if I hadn't my feelersout in more quarters than one. But I've not so much as thought ofMr. Mitchett--who, rich as he may be, is the son of a shoemaker andsuperlatively hideous--for a reason I don't at all mind telling you. Don't be outraged if I say that I've for a long time hoped you yourselfwould find the right use for him. " She paused--at present with amomentary failure of assurance, from which she rallied, however, toproceed with a burst of earnestness that was fairly noble. "Forgive meif I just tell you once for all how it strikes me, I'm stupefied at yournot seeming to recognise either your interest or your duty. Oh Iknow you want to, but you appear to me--in your perfect good faith ofcourse--utterly at sea. They're one and the same thing, don't you makeout? your interest and your duty. Why isn't it convincingly plain to youthat the thing to do with Nanda is just to marry her--and to marry hersoon? That's the great thing--do it while you CAN. If you don't wanther downstairs--at which, let me say, I don't in the least wonder--yourremedy is to take the right alternative. Don't send her to Tishy--"

"Send her to Mr. Mitchett?" Mrs. Brookenham unresentfully quavered. Hercolour, during her visitor's address had distinctly risen, but there wasno irritation in her voice. "How do you know, Jane, that I don't wanther downstairs?"

The Duchess looked at her with an audacity confirmed by the absencefrom her face of everything but the plaintive. "There you are, with youreternal English false positions! J'aime, moi, les situations nettes--jerien comprends pas d'autres. It wouldn't be to your honour--to that ofyour delicacy--that with your impossible house you SHOULD wish to plantyour girl in your drawing-room. But such a way of keeping her out of itas throwing her into a worse--!"

"Well, Jane, you do say things to me!" Mrs. Brookenham blandly brokein. She had sunk back into her chair; her hands, in her lap pressedthemselves together and her wan smile brought a tear into each of hereyes by the very effort to be brighter. It might have been guessed ofher that she hated to seem to care, but that she had other dislikes too. "If one were to take up, you know, some of the things you say--!" Andshe positively sighed for the wealth of amusement at them of which hertears were the sign. Her friend could quite match her indifference. "Well, my child, TAKE them up; if you were to do that with themcandidly, one by one, you would do really very much what I should liketo bring you to. Do you see?" Mrs. Brookenham's failure to repudiate thevision appeared to suffice, and her visitor cheerfully took a furtherjump. "As much of Tishy as she wants--AFTER. But not before. "

"After what?"

"Well--say after Mr. Mitchett. Mr. Mitchett won't take her after Mrs. Grendon. "

"And what are your grounds for assuming that he'll take her at all?"Then as the Duchess hung fire a moment: "Have you got it by chance fromLord Petherton?"

The eyes of the two women met for a little on this, and there might havebeen a consequence of it in the manner of what came. "I've got it fromnot being a fool. Men, I repeat, like the girls they marry--"

"Oh I already know your old song! The way they like the girls theyDON'T marry seems to be, " Mrs. Brookenham mused, "what more immediatelyconcerns us. You had better wait till you HAVE made Aggie's fortuneperhaps--to be so sure of the working of your system. Pardon me, darling, if I don't take you for an example until you've a little moresuccessfully become one. I know what the sort of men worth speaking ofare not looking for. They ARE looking for smart safe sensible Englishgirls. "

The Duchess glanced at the clock. "What's Mr. Vanderbank looking for?"

Her companion appeared to oblige her by anxiously thinking. "Oh, HE, I'mafraid, poor dear--for nothing at all!"

The Duchess had taken off a glove to appease her appetite, and now, drawing it on, she smoothed it down. "I think he has his ideas. "

"The same as yours?"

"Well, more like them than like yours. "

"Ah perhaps then--for he and I, " said Mrs. Brookenham, "don't agree, Ifeel, on two things in the world. So you think poor Mitchy, " she wenton, "who's the son of a shoemaker and who might be the grandson of agrasshopper, good enough for my child. "

The Duchess appreciated for a moment the superior fit of her glove. "Ilook facts in the face. It's exactly what I'm doing for Aggie. " Then shegrew easy to extravagance. "What are you giving her?"

But Mrs. Brookenham took without wincing whatever, as between amasterful relative and an exposed frivolity, might have been the stingof it. "That you must ask Edward. I haven't the least idea. "

"There you are again--the virtuous English mother! I've got Aggie'slittle fortune in an old stocking and I count it over every night. Ifyou've no old stocking for Nanda there are worse fates than shoemakersand grasshoppers. Even WITH one, you know, I don't at all say that Ishould sniff at poor Mitchy. We must take what we can get and I shall bethe first to take it. You can't have everything for ninepence. " And theDuchess got up--shining, however, with a confessed light of fantasy. "Speak to him, my dear--speak to him!"

"Do you mean offer him my child?"

She laughed at the intonation. "There you are once more--vous autres! Ifyou're shocked at the idea you place drolement your delicacy. I'd offermine to the son of a chimney-sweep if the principal guarantees werethere. Nanda's charming--you don't do her justice. I don't say Mr. Mitchett's either beautiful or noble, and he certainly hasn't as muchdistinction as would cover the point of a pin. He doesn't mind moreoverwhat he says--the lengths he sometimes goes to!--but that, " added theDuchess with decision, "is no doubt much a matter of how he finds you'lltake it. And after marriage what does it signify? He has fortythousand a year, an excellent idea of how to take care of it and a gooddisposition. "

Mrs. Brookenham sat still; she only looked up at her friend. "Is it byLord Petherton that you know of his excellent idea?"

The Duchess showed she was challenged, but also that she madeallowances. "I go by my impression. But Lord Petherton HAS spoken forhim. "

"He ought to do that, " said Mrs. Brookenham--"since he wholly lives onhim. "

"Lord Petherton--on Mr. Mitchett?" The Duchess stared, but rather inamusement than in horror. "Why, hasn't he a--property?"

"The loveliest. Mr. Mitchett's his property. Didn't you KNOW?" There wasan artless wail in Mrs. Brookenham's surprise. 

"How should I know--still a stranger as I'm often rather happy to feelmyself here and choosing my friends and picking my steps very much, Ican assure you--how should I know about all your social scandals andthings?"

"Oh we don't call THAT a social scandal!" Mrs. Brookenham inimitablyreturned. 

"Well, if you should wish to you'd have the way I tell you of to stopit. Divert the stream of Mr. Mitchett's wealth. "

"Oh there's plenty for every one!"--Mrs. Brookenham kept up her tone. "He's always giving us things--bonbons and dinners and opera-boxes. "

"He has never given ME any, " the Duchess contentedly declared. 

Mrs. Brookenham waited a little. "Lord Petherton has the giving of some. He has never in his life before, I imagine, made so many presents. "

"Ah then it's a shame one has nothing!" On which before reaching thedoor, the Duchess changed the subject. "You say I never bring Aggie. Ifyou like I'll bring her back. "

Mrs. Brookenham wondered. "Do you mean today?"

"Yes, when I've picked her up. It will be something to do with her tillMiss Merriman can take her. "

"Delighted, dearest; do bring her. And I think she should SEE Mr. Mitchett. "

"Shall I find him here too then?"

"Oh take the chance. "

The two women, on this, exchanged, tacitly and across the room--theDuchess at the door, which a servant had arrived to open for her, andMrs. Brookenham still at her tea-table--a further stroke of intercourse, over which the latter was not on this occasion the first to lower herlids. "I think I've shown high scruples, " the departing guest said, "butI understand then that I'm free. "

"Free as air, dear Jane. "

"Good. " Then just as she was off, "Ah dear old Edward!" the guestexclaimed. Her kinsman, as she was fond of calling him, had reached thetop of the staircase, and Mrs. Brookenham, by the fire, heard them meeton the landing--heard also the Duchess protest against his turning tosee her down. Mrs. Brookenham, listening to them, hoped Edward wouldaccept the protest and think it sufficient to leave her with thefootman. Their common consciousness that she was a kind of cousin, aconsciousness not devoid of satisfaction, was quite consistent with aview, early arrived at, of the absurdity of any fuss about her. 

III

When Mr. Brookenham appeared his wife was prompt. "She's coming back forLord Petherton. "

"Oh!" he simply said. 

"There's something between them. "

"Oh!" he merely repeated. And it would have taken many such sounds onhis part to represent a spirit of response discernible to any one buthis mate. 

"There have been things before, " she went on, "but I haven't felt sure. Don't you know how one has sometimes a flash?"

It couldn't be said of Edward Brookenham, who seemed to bend for sittingdown more hinges than most men, that he looked as if he knew either thisor anything else. He had a pale cold face, marked and made regular, madeeven in a manner handsome, by a hardness of line in which, oddly, there was no significance, no accent. Clean-shaven, slightly bald, withunlighted grey eyes and a mouth that gave the impression of not workingeasily, he suggested a stippled drawing by an inferior master. Leanmoreover and stiff, and with the air of having here and there in hisperson a bone or two more than his share, he had once or twice, atfancy-balls, been thought striking in a dress copied from one ofHolbein's English portraits. But when once some such meaning as that hadbeen put into him it took a long time to put another, a longer time thaneven his extreme exposure or anybody's study of the problem had yet madepossible. If anything particular had finally been expected from him itmight have been a summary or an explanation of the things he had alwaysnot said; but there was something in him that had long since pacifiedall impatience, drugged all curiosity. He had never in his life answeredsuch a question as his wife had just put him and which she wouldnot have put had she feared a reply. So dry and decent and evendistinguished did he look, as if he had positively been created tomeet a propriety and match some other piece, that lady, with her famousperceptions, would no more have appealed to him seriously on ageneral proposition than she would, for such a response, have rung thedrawing-room bell. He was none the less held to have a great promiscuouswisdom. "What is it that's between them?" he demanded. 

"What's between any woman and the man she's making up to?"

"Why there may often be nothing. I didn't know she even particularlyknew him, " Brookenham added. 

"It's exactly what she would like to prevent any one's knowing, and hercoming here to be with him when she knows I know SHE knows--don't yousee?--that he's to be here, is just one of those calculations that AREsubtle enough to put off the scent a woman who has but half anose. " Mrs. Brookenham as she spoke appeared to attest by the prettystar-gazing way she thrust it into the air her own possession of thetotality of such a feature. "I don't know yet quite what I think, butone wakes up to such things soon enough. "

"Do you suppose it's her idea that he'll marry her?" Brookenham asked inhis colourless way. 

"My dear Edward!" his wife murmured for all answer. 

"But if she can see him in other places why should she want to see himhere?" Edward persisted in a voice destitute of expression. 

Mrs. Brookenham now had plenty of that. "Do you mean if she can see himin his own house?"

"No cream, please, " her husband said. "Hasn't she a house too?"

"Yes, but so pervaded all over by Aggie and Miss Merriman. "

"Oh!" Brookenham commented. 

"There has always been some man--I've always known there has. And nowit's Petherton, " said his companion. 

"But where's the attraction?"

"In HIM? Why lots of women could tell you. Petherton has had a career. "

"But I mean in old Jane. "

"Well, I dare say lots of men could tell you. She's no older than anyone else. She has also such great elements. "

"Oh I dare say she's all right, " Brookenham returned as if his interestin the case had dropped. You might have felt you got a little nearer tohim on guessing that in so peopled a circle satiety was never far fromhim. 

"I mean for instance she has such a grand idea of duty. She thinks we'renowhere!"

"Nowhere?"

"With our children--with our home life. She's awfully down on Tishy. "

"Tishy?"--Edward appeared for a moment at a loss. 

"Tishy Grendon--and her craze for Nanda. "

"Has she a craze for Nanda?"

"Surely I told you Nanda's to be with her for Easter. "

"I believe you did, " he bethought himself, "but you didn't say anythingabout a craze. And where's Harold?" he went on. 

"He's at Brander. That is he will be by dinner. He has just gone. "

"And how does he get there?"

"Why by the South-Western. They'll send to meet him. "

Brookenham appeared for a moment to view this statement in the dry lightof experience. "They'll only send if there are others too. "

"Of course then there'll be others--lots. The more the better forHarold. "

This young man's father was silent a little. "Perhaps--if they don'tplay high. "

"Ah, " said his mother, "however Harold plays he has a way of winning. "

"He has a way too of being a hopeless ass. What I meant was how he comesthere at all, " Edward explained. 

"Why as any one comes--by being invited. She wrote to him--weeks ago. "

Brookenham just traceably took this in, but to what profit was notcalculable. "To Harold? Very good-natured. " He had another shortreflexion, after which he continued: "If they don't send he'll be in forfive miles in a fly--and the man will see that he gets his money. "

"They WILL send--after her note. "

"Did it say so?"

Her melancholy eyes seemed, from afar, to run over the page. "I don'tremember--but it was so cordial. "

Again he meditated. "That often doesn't prevent one's being let in forten shillings. "

There was more gloom in this forecast than his wife had desired toproduce. "Well, my dear Edward, what do you want me to do? Whatever ayoung man does, it seems to me, he's let in for ten shillings. "

"Ah but he needn't be--that's my point. _I_ wasn't at his age. "

Harold's mother took up her book again. "Perhaps you weren't the samesuccess! I mean at such places. "

"Well, I didn't borrow money to make me one--as I've a sharp idea ouryoung scamp does. "

Mrs. Brookenham hesitated. "From whom do you mean--the Jews?"

He looked at her as if her vagueness might be assumed. "No. They, I takeit, are not quite so cordial to him, since you call it so, as the oldladies. He gets it from Mitchy. "

"Oh!" said Mrs. Brookenham. "Are you very sure?" she then demanded. 

He had got up and put his empty cup back on the tea-table, wanderingafterwards a little about the room and looking out, as his wife had donehalf an hour before, at the dreary rain and the now duskier ugliness. Hereverted in this attitude, with a complete unconsciousness of making forirritation, to an issue they might be supposed to have dropped. "He'llhave a lovely drive for his money!" His companion, however, said nothingand he presently came round again. "No, I'm not absolutely sure--of hishaving had it from Mitchy. If I were I should do something. "

"What would you do?" She put it as if she couldn't possibly imagine. 

"I'd speak to him. "

"To Harold?"

"No--that might just put it into his head. " Brookenham walked upand down a little with his hands in his pockets, after which, witha complete concealment of the steps of the transition, "Where are wedining to-night?" he brought out. 

"Nowhere, thank heaven. We grace our own board. "

"Oh--with those fellows, as you said, and Jane?"

"That's not for dinner. The Baggers and Mary Pinthorpe and--upon my wordI forget. "

"You'll see when she comes, " suggested Brookenham, who was again at thewindow. 

"It isn't a she--it's two or three he's, I think, " his wife repliedwith her indifferent anxiety. "But I don't know what dinner it is, " shebethought herself; "it may be the one that's after Easter. Then thatone's this one, " she added with her eyes once more on her book. 

"Well, it's a relief to dine at home"--and Brookenham faced about. "Would you mind finding out?" he asked with some abruptness. 

"Do you mean who's to dine?"

"No, that doesn't matter. But whether Mitchy HAS come down. "

"I can only find out by asking him. "

"Oh _I_ could ask him. " He seemed disappointed at his wife's want ofresource. 

"And you don't want to?"

He looked coldly, from before the fire, over the prettiness of her brownbent head. "It will be such a beastly bore if he admits it. "

"And you think poor I can make him not admit it?" She put the questionas if it were really her own thought too, but they were a couple whocould, even face to face and unlike the augurs behind the altar, thinkthese things without laughing. "If he SHOULD admit it, " Mrs. Brookenhamthrew in, "will you give me the money?"

"The money?"

"To pay Mitchy back. "

She had now raised her eyes to her husband, but, turning away, he failedto meet them. "He'll deny it. "

"Well, if they all deny it, " she presently remarked, "it's a simpleenough matter. I'm sure _I_ don't want them to come down on us! Butthat's the advantage, " she almost prattled on, "of having so many suchcharming friends. They DON'T come down. "

This again was a remark of a sweep that there appeared to be nothing inBrookenham's mind to match; so that, scarcely pausing in the walk he hadresumed, he only said: "Who do you mean by 'all'?"

"Why if he has had anything from Mitchy I dare say he has had somethingfrom Van. "

"Oh!" Brookenham returned as if with a still deeper drop of interest. 

"They oughtn't to do it, " she declared; "they ought to tell us, and whenthey don't it serves them right. " Even this observation, however, failedto rouse in her husband a response, and, as she had quite formed thehabit of doing, she philosophically answered herself. "But I don'tsuppose they do it on spec. "

It was less apparent than ever what Edward supposed. "Oh Van hasn'tmoney to chuck about. "

"Ah I only mean a sovereign here and there. "

"Well, " Brookenham threw out after another turn, "I think Van, you know, is your affair. "

"It ALL seems to be my affair!" she lamented too woefully to have otherthan a comic effect. "And of course then it will be still more so if heshould begin to apply to Mr. Longdon. "

"We must stop that in time. "

"Do you mean by warning Mr. Longdon and requesting him immediately totell us? That won't be very pleasant, " Mrs. Brookenham noted. 

"Well then wait and see. "

She waited only a minute--it might have appeared she already saw. "Iwant him to be kind to Harold and can't help thinking he will. "

"Yes, but I fancy that that will be his notion of it--keeping him frommaking debts. I dare say one needn't trouble about him, " Brookenhamadded. "He can take care of himself. "

"He appears to have done so pretty well all these years, " she mused. "AsI saw him in my childhood I see him now, and I see now that I sawthen even how awfully in love he was with mamma. He's too lovely aboutmamma, " Mrs. Brookenham pursued. 

"Oh!" her husband replied. 

The vivid past held her a moment. "I see now I must have known a lot asa child. "

"Oh!" her companion repeated. 

"I want him to take an interest in us. Above all in the children. Heought to like us"--she followed it up. "It will be a sort of 'poeticjustice. ' He sees the reasons for himself and we mustn't prevent it. "She turned the possibilities over, but they produced a reserve. "Thething is I don't see how he CAN like Harold. "

"Then he won't lend him money, " said Brookenham with all his grimness. 

This contingency too she considered. "You make me feel as if I wished hewould--which is too dreadful. And I don't think he really likes ME!" shewent on. 

"Oh!" her husband again ejaculated. "I mean not utterly REALLY. He hasto try to. But it won't make any difference, " she next remarked. "Do youmean his trying?"

"No, I mean his not succeeding. He'll be just the same. " She saw itsteadily and saw it whole. "On account of mamma. "

Brookenham also, with his perfect propriety, put it before himself. "Andwill he--on account of your mother--also like ME?"

She weighed it. "No, Edward. " She covered him with her loveliestexpression. "No, not really either. But it won't make any difference. "This time she had pulled him up. 

"Not if he doesn't like Harold or like you or like me?" Edward clearlyfound himself able to accept only the premise. 

"He'll be perfectly loyal. It will be the advantage of mamma!" Mrs. Brookenham cried. "Mamma, Edward, " she brought out with a flash ofsolemnity--"mamma WAS wonderful. There have been times when I've alwaysfelt her still with us, but Mr. Longdon makes it somehow so real. Whether she's with me or not, at any rate, she's with HIM; so that whenHE'S with me, don't you see--?"

"It comes to the same thing?" her husband intelligently asked. "I see. And when was he with you last?"

"Not since the day he dined--but that was only last week. He'll comesoon--I know from Van. "

"And what does Van know?"

"Oh all sorts of things. He has taken the greatest fancy to him. "

"The old boy--to Van?"

"Van to Mr. Longdon. And the other way too. Mr. Longdon has been mostkind to him. "

Brookenham still moved about. "Well, if he likes Van and doesn't likeUS, what good will that do us?"

"You'd understand soon enough if you felt Van's loyalty. "

"Oh the things you expect me to feel, my dear!" Edward Brookenhamlightly moaned. 

"Well, it doesn't matter. But he IS as loyal to me as Mr. Longdon tomamma. "

The statement produced on his part an unusual vision of the comedyof things. "Every Jenny has her Jockey!" Yet perhaps--remarkablyenough--there was even more imagination in his next words. "And whatsort of means?"

"Mr. Longdon? Oh very good. Mamma wouldn't have been the loser. Not thatshe cared. He MUST like Nanda, " Mrs. Brookenham wound up. 

Her companion appeared to look at the idea and then meet it. "He'll haveto see her first. "

"Oh he shall see her!" she rang out. "It's time for her at any rate tosit downstairs. "

"It was time, you know, _I_ thought, a year ago. "

"Yes, I know what you thought. But it wasn't. "

She had spoken with decision, but he seemed unwilling to concede thepoint. "You allowed yourself she was all ready. "

"SHE was all ready--yes. But I wasn't. I am now, " Mrs. Brookenham, witha fine emphasis on her adverb, proclaimed as she turned to meetthe opening of the door and the appearance of the butler, whoseannouncement--"Lord Petherton and Mr. Mitchett"--might for an observerhave seemed immediately to offer support to her changed state. 

IV

Lord Petherton, a man of five-and-thirty, whose robust but symmetricalproportions gave to his dark blue double-breasted coat an air oftightness that just failed of compromising his tailor, had for his mainfacial sign a certain pleasant brutality, the effect partly of a boldhandsome parade of carnivorous teeth, partly of an expression of nosesuggesting that this feature had paid a little, in the heat of youth, for some aggression at the time admired and even publicly commemorated. He would have been ugly, he substantively granted, had he not beenhappy; he would have been dangerous had he not been warranted. Manythings doubtless performed for him this last service, but none so muchas the delightful sound of his voice, the voice, as it were, of anotherman, a nature reclaimed, supercivilised, adjusted to the perpetual"chaff" which kept him smiling in a way that would have been a mistakeand indeed an impossibility if he had really been witty. His brightfamiliarity was that of a young prince whose confidence had never had tofalter, and the only thing that at all qualified the resemblance was theequal familiarity excited in his subjects. 

Mr. Mitchett had so little intrinsic appearance that an observer wouldhave felt indebted for help in placing him to the rare prominence ofhis colourless eyes and the positive attention drawn to his chin by theprecipitation of its retreat from discovery. Dressed on the other handnot as gentlemen dress in London to pay their respects to the fair, heexcited by the exhibition of garments that had nothing in common savethe violence and the independence of their pattern a belief that in thedesperation of humility he wished to render public his having thrown tothe winds the effort to please. It was written all over him that hehad judged once for all his personal case and that, as his character, superficially disposed to gaiety, deprived him of the resource ofshyness and shade, the effect of comedy might not escape him if securedby a real plunge. There was comedy therefore in the form of his pot-hatand the colour of his spotted shirt, in the systematic disagreement, above all, of his coat, waistcoat and trousers. It was only on longacquaintance that his so many ingenious ways of showing he appreciatedhis commonness could present him as secretly rare. 

"And where's the child this time?" he asked of his hostess as soon as hewas seated near her. 

"Why do you say 'this time' as if it were different from any othertime?" she replied as she gave him his tea. 

"Only because, as the months and the years elapse, it's more and moreof a wonder, whenever I don't see her, to think what she does withherself--or what you do with her. What it does show, I suppose, " Mr. Mitchett went on, "is that she takes no trouble to meet me. "

"My dear Mitchy, " said Mrs. Brookenham, "what do YOU know about'trouble'--either poor Nanda's or mine or anybody's else? You've neverhad to take any in your life, you're the spoiled child of fortuneand you skim over the surface of things in a way that seems often torepresent you as supposing everybody else has wings. Most other peopleare sticking fast in their native mud. "

"Mud, Mrs. Brook--mud, mud!" he protestingly cried as, while he watchedhis fellow visitor move to a distance with their host, he glanced aboutthe room, taking in afresh the Louis Seize secretary which looked betterclosed than open and for which he always had a knowing eye. "Remarkablycharming--mud!"

"Well, that's what a great deal of the element really appears to-day tobe thought; and precisely as a specimen, Mitchy dear, those two Frenchbooks you were so good as to send me and which--really this time, youextraordinary man!" She fell back, intimately reproachful, from theeffect produced on her, renouncing all expression save that of therolled eye. 

"Why, were they particularly dreadful?"--Mitchy was honestly surprised. "I rather liked the one in the pink cover--what's the confounded thingcalled?--I thought it had a sort of a something-or-other. " He had casthis eye about as if for a glimpse of the forgotten title, and she caughtthe question as he vaguely and good-humouredly dropped it. 

"A kind of a morbid modernity? There IS that, " she dimly conceded. 

"Is that what they call it? Awfully good name. You must have got it fromold Van!" he gaily declared. 

"I dare say I did. I get the good things from him and the bad ones fromyou. But you're not to suppose, " Mrs. Brookenham went on, "that I'vediscussed your horrible book with him. "

"Come, I say!" Mr. Mitchett protested; "I've seen you with books fromVanderbank which if you HAVE discussed them with him--well, " he laughed, "I should like to have been there!"

"You haven't seen me with anything like yours--no, no, never, never!"She was particularly positive. "Van on the contrary gives tremendouswarnings, makes apologies, in advance, for things that--well, after all, haven't killed one. "

"That have even perhaps a little, after the warnings, let one down?"

She took no notice of this coarse pleasantry, she simply adhered to herthesis. "One has taken one's dose and one isn't such a fool as to bedeaf to some fresh true note if it happens to turn up. But for abjecthorrid unredeemed vileness from beginning to end--"

"So you read to the end?" Mr. Mitchett interposed. 

"I read to see what you could possibly have sent such things to me for, and because so long as they were in my hands they were not in the handsof others. Please to remember in future that the children are all overthe place and that Harold and Nanda have their nose in everything. "

"I promise to remember, " Mr. Mitchett returned, "as soon as you make oldVan do the same. "

"I do make old Van--I pull old Van up much oftener than I succeed inpulling you. I must say, " Mrs. Brookenham went on, "you're all gettingto require among you in general an amount of what one may call editing!"She gave one of her droll universal sighs. "I've got your books at anyrate locked up and I wish you'd send for them quickly again; one's toonervous about anything happening and their being perhaps found amongone's relics. Charming literary remains!" she laughed. 

The friendly Mitchy was also much amused. "By Jove, the most awfulthings ARE found! Have you heard about old Randage and what hisexecutors have just come across? The most abominable--"

"I haven't heard, " she broke in, "and I don't want to; but you give mea shudder and I beg you'll have your offerings removed, since I can'tthink of confiding them for the purpose to any one in this house. Imight burn them up in the dead of night, but even then I should befearfully nervous. "

"I'll send then my usual messenger, " said Mitchy, "a person I keepfor such jobs, thoroughly seasoned, as you may imagine, and of adiscretion--what do you call it?--a toute epreuve. Only you must letme say that I like your terror about Harold! Do you think he spends histime over Dr. Watts's hymns?"

Mrs. Brookenham just hesitated, and nothing, in general, was so becomingto her as the act of hesitation. "Dear Mitchy, do you know I wantawfully to talk to you about Harold?"

"About his French reading, Mrs. Brook?" Mitchy responded with interest. "The worse things are, let me just mention to you about that, the betterthey seem positively to be for one's feeling up in the language. They'remore difficult, the bad ones--and there's a lot in that. All the youngmen know it--those who are going up for exams. "

She had her eyes for a little on Lord Petherton and her husband; thenas if she had not heard what her interlocutor had just said she overcameher last scruple. "Dear Mitchy, has he had money from you?"

He stared with his good goggle eyes--he laughed out. "Why on earth--?But do you suppose I'd tell you if he had?"

"He hasn't really borrowed the most dreadful sums?"

Mitchy was highly diverted. "Why should he? For what, please?"

"That's just it--for what? What does he do with it all? What in theworld becomes of it?"

"Well, " Mitchy suggested, "he's saving up to start a business. Harold'sirreproachable--hasn't a vice. Who knows in these days what may happen?He sees further than any young man I know. Do let him save. "

She looked far away with her sweet world-weariness. "If you weren'tan angel it would be a horror to be talking to you. But I insist onknowing. " She insisted now with her absurdly pathetic eyes on him. "Whatkind of sums?"

"You shall never, never find out--not if you were never to speak to meagain, " Mr. Mitchett replied with extravagant firmness. "Harold's one ofmy great amusements--I really have awfully few; and if you deprive me ofhim you'll be a fiend. There are only one or two things I want to livefor, but one of them is to see how far Harold will go. Please give mesome more tea. "

"Do you positively swear?" she asked with intensity as she helped him. Then without waiting for his answer: "You have the common charity to US, I suppose, to see the position you'd put us in. Fancy Edward!" she quiteausterely threw off. 

Mr. Mitchett, at this, had on his side a wonder. "Does Edwardimagine--?"

"My dear man, Edward never 'imagined' anything in life. " She still hadher eyes on him. "Therefore if he SEES a thing, don't you know? it mustexist. "

Mitchy for a little fixed the person mentioned as he sat with his otherguest, but whatever this person saw he failed just then to see hiswife's companion, whose eyes he never met. His face only offered itselfafter the fashion of a clean domestic vessel, a receptacle with thepeculiar property of constantly serving yet never filling, to LordPetherton's talkative splash. "Well, only don't let him take it up. Let it be only between you and me, " Mr. Mitchett pleaded; "keep himquiet--don't let him speak to me. " He appeared to convey with hispleasant extravagance that Edward looked dangerous, and he went on witha rigour of levity: "It must be OUR little quarrel. "

There were different ways of meeting such a tone, but Mrs. Brookenham'schoice was remarkably prompt. "I don't think I quite understand whatdreadful joke you may be making, but I dare say if you HAD let Haroldborrow you'd have another manner, and I was at any rate determined tohave the question out with you. "

"Let us always have everything out--that's quite my own idea. It's you, "said Mr. Mitchett, "who are by no means always so frank with me as Irecognise--oh, I do THAT!--what it must have cost you to be over thislittle question of Harold. There's one thing, Mrs. Brook, you do dodge. "

"What do I ever dodge, dear Mitchy?" Mrs. Brook quite tenderly asked. 

"Why, when I ask you about your other child you're off like a frightenedfawn. When have you ever, on my doing so, said 'my darling Mitchy, I'll ring for her to be asked to come down so that you can see her foryourself'--when have you ever said anything like that?"

"I see, " Mrs. Brookenham mused; "you think I sacrifice her. You're veryinteresting among you all, and I've certainly a delightful circle. TheDuchess has just been letting me have it most remarkably hot, and asshe's presently coming back you'll be able to join forces with her. "

Mitchy looked a little at a loss. "On the subject of your sacrifice--"

"Of my innocent and helpless, yet somehow at the same time, as aconsequence of my cynicism, dreadfully damaged and depraved daughter. "She took in for an instant the slight bewilderment against which, as aresult of her speech, even so expert an intelligence as Mr. Mitchett'shad not been proof; then with a small jerk of her head at the other sideof the room made the quickest of transitions. "What IS there between herand him?"

Mitchy wondered at the other two. "Between Edward and the girl?"

"Don't talk nonsense. Between Petherton and Jane. "

Mitchy could only stare, and the wide noonday light of his regard was atsuch moments really the redemption of his ugliness. "What 'is' there? Isthere anything?"

"It's too beautiful, " Mrs. Brookenham appreciatively sighed, "yourrelation with him! You won't compromise him. "

"It would be nicer of me, " Mitchy laughed, "not to want to compromiseHER!"

"Oh Jane!" Mrs. Brookenham dropped. "DOES he like her?" she continued. "You must know. "

"Ah it's just my knowing that constitutes the beauty of my loyalty--ofmy delicacy. " He had his quick jumps too. "Am I never, never to see thechild?"

This enquiry appeared only to confirm his friend in the view of what wastouching in him. "You're the most delicate thing I know, and it crops upwith effect the oddest in the intervals of your corruption. Your talk'shalf the time impossible; you respect neither age nor sex nor condition;one doesn't know what you'll say or do next; and one has to return yourbooks--c'est tout dire--under cover of darkness. Yet there's in themidst of all this and in the general abyss of you a little deepdowndelicious niceness, a sweet sensibility, that one has actually one'sself, shocked as one perpetually is at you, quite to hold one's breathand stay one's hand for fear of ruffling or bruising. There's no onein talk with whom, " she balmily continued, "I find myself half sooften suddenly moved to pull up short. You've more little toes to treadon--though you pretend you haven't: I mean morally speaking, don't youknow?--than even I have myself, and I've so many that I could wish mostof them cut off. You never spare me a shock--no, you don't do that: itisn't the form your delicacy takes. But you'll know what I mean, all thesame, I think, when I tell you that there are lots I spare YOU!"

Mr. Mitchett fairly glowed with the candour of his attention. "Know whatyou mean, dearest lady? How can a man handicapped to death, a man ofmy origin, my appearance, my general weaknesses, drawbacks, immenseindebtedness, all round, for the start, as it were, that I feel myfriends have been so good as to allow me: how can such a man not beconscious every moment that every one about him goes on tiptoe and winksat every one else? What CAN you all mention in my presence, poor things, that isn't personal?"

Mrs. Brookenham's face covered him for an instant as no paintedMadonna's had ever covered the little charge at the breast beneath it. "And the finest thing of all in you is your beautiful, beautiful pride!You're prouder than all of us put together. " She checked a motion thathe had apparently meant as a protest--she went on with her muffledwisdom. "There isn't a man but YOU whom Petherton wouldn't have madevulgar. He isn't vulgar himself--at least not exceptionally; but he'sjust one of those people, a class one knows well, who are so fearfully, in this country, the cause of it in others. For all I know he's thecause of it in me--the cause of it even in poor Edward. For I'm vulgar, Mitchy dear--very often; and the marvel of you is that you never are. "

"Thank you for everything. Thank you above all for 'marvel'!" Mitchygrinned. 

"Oh I know what I say!"--she didn't in the least blush. "I'll tell yousomething, " she pursued with the same gravity, "if you'll promiseto tell no one on earth. If you're proud I'm not. There! It's mostextraordinary and I try to conceal it even to myself; but there's nodoubt whatever about it--I'm not proud pour deux sous. And some day, onsome awful occasion, I shall show it. So--I notify you. Shall you loveme still?"

"To the bitter end, " Mitchy loyally responded. "For how CAN, how need, a woman be 'proud' who's so preternaturally clever? Pride's only for usewhen wit breaks down--it's the train the cyclist takes when his tire'sdeflated. When that happens to YOUR tire, Mrs. Brook, you'll let meknow. And you do make me wonder just now, " he confessed, "why you'retaking such particular precautions and throwing out such a cloud ofskirmishers. If you want to shoot me dead a single bullet will do. " Hefaltered but an instant before completing his sense. "Where you reallywant to come out is at the fact that Nanda loathes me and that I mightas well give up asking for her. "

"Are you quite serious?" his companion after a moment resumed. "Do youreally and truly like her, Mitchy?"

"I like her as much as I dare to--as much as a man can like a girl whenfrom the very first of his seeing her and judging her he has also seen, and seen with all the reasons, that there's no chance for him whatever. Of course, with all that, he has done his best not to let himself go. But there are moments, " Mr. Mitchett ruefully added, "when it wouldrelieve him awfully to feel free for a good spin. "

"I think you exaggerate, " his hostess replied, "the difficulties in yourway. What do you mean by all the 'reasons'?"

"Why one of them I've already mentioned. I make her flesh creep. "

"My own Mitchy!" Mrs. Brookenham protestingly moaned. 

"The other is that--very naturally--she's in love. "

"With whom under the sun?"

Mrs. Brookenham had, with her startled stare, met his eyes long enoughto have taken something from him before he next spoke. 

"You really have never suspected? With whom conceivably but old Van?"

"Nanda's in love with old Van?"--the degree to which she had neversuspected was scarce to be expressed. "Why he's twice her age--he hasseen her in a pinafore with a dirty face and well slapped for it: he hasnever thought of her in the world. "

"How can a person of your acuteness, my dear woman, " Mitchy asked, "mention such trifles as having the least to do with the case? Howcan you possibly have such a fellow about, so beastly good-looking, soinfernally well turned out in the way of 'culture, ' and so bringing themdown in short on every side, and expect in the bosom of your family theabsence of history of the reigns of the good kings? If YOU were a girlwouldn't YOU turn purple? If I were a girl shouldn't I--unless, as ismore likely, I turned green?"

Mrs. Brookenham was deeply affected. "Nanda does turn purple--?"

"The loveliest shade you ever saw. It's too absurd that you haven'tnoticed. "

It was characteristic of Mrs. Brookenham's amiability that, with hersudden sense of the importance of this new light, she should be quiteready to abase herself. "There are so many things in one's life. Onefollows false scents. One doesn't make out everything at once. If you'reright you must help me. We must see more of her. "

"But what good will that do me?" Mitchy appealed. 

"Don't you care enough for her to want to help HER?" Then beforehe could speak, "Poor little darling dear!" his hostess tenderlyejaculated. "What does she think or dream? Truly she's laying uptreasure!"

"Oh he likes her, " said Mitchy. "He likes her in fact extremely. "

"Do you mean he has told you so?"

"Oh no--we never mention it! But he likes her, " Mr. Mitchett stubbornlyrepeated. "And he's thoroughly straight. "

Mrs. Brookenham for a moment turned these things over; after which shecame out in a manner that visibly surprised him. "It isn't as if youwished to be nasty about him, is it?--because I know you like himyourself. You're so wonderful to your friends"--oh she could let himsee that she knew!--"and in such different and exquisite ways. There arethose like HIM"--she signified her other visitor--"who get everythingout of you and whom you really appear fond of, or at least to put upwith, just FOR that. Then there are those who ask nothing--and whomyou're fond of in spite of it. "

Mitchy leaned back from this, fist within fist, watching her witha certain disguised emotion. He grinned almost too much for mereamusement. "That's the class to which YOU belong. "

"It's the best one, " she returned, "and I'm careful to remain in it. Youtry to get us, by bribery, into the inferior place, because, proud asyou are, it bores you a little that you like us so much. But we won'tgo--at least I won't. You may make Van, " she wonderfully continued. "There's nothing you wouldn't do for him or give him. " Mitchy admiredher from his position, slowly shaking his head with it. "He's theman--with no fortune and just as he is, to the smallest particular--whomyou would have liked to be, whom you intensely envy, and yet to whomyou're magnanimous enough for almost any sacrifice. "

Mitchy's appreciation had fairly deepened to a flush. "Magnificent, magnificent Mrs. Brook! What ARE you in thunder up to?"

"Therefore, as I say, " she imperturbably went on, "it's not to do him anill turn that you make a point of what you've just told me. "

Mr. Mitchett for a minute gave no sign but his high colour and his queerglare. "How could it do him an ill turn?"

"Oh it WOULD be a way, don't you see? to put before me the need ofgetting rid of him. For he may 'like' Nanda as much as you please: he'llnever, never, " Mrs. Brookenham resolutely quavered--"he'll never come tothe scratch. And to feel that as _I_ do, " she explained, "can only be, don't you also see? to want to save her. "

It would have appeared at last that poor Mitchy did see. "By taking itin time? By forbidding him the house?"

She seemed to stand with little nipping scissors in a garden ofalternatives. "Or by shipping HER off. Will you help me to save her?"she broke out again after a moment. "It isn't true, " she continued, "that she has any aversion to you. "

"Have you charged her with it?" Mitchy demanded with a courage thatamounted to high gallantry. 

It inspired on the spot his interlocutress, and her own pluck, of asfine a quality now as her diplomacy, which was saying much, fell butlittle below. "Yes, my dear friend--frankly. "

"Good. Then I know what she said. "

"She absolutely denied it. "

"Oh yes--they always do, because they pity me, " Mitchy smiled. "Shesaid what they always say--that the effect I produce is, though at firstupsetting, one that little by little they find it possible to get usedto. The world's full of people who are getting used to me, " Mr. Mitchettconcluded. 

"It's what _I_ shall never do, for you're quite too great a luxury!"Mrs. Brookenham declared. "If I haven't threshed you out really MOREwith Nanda, " she continued, "it has been from a scruple of a sort youpeople never do a woman the justice to impute. You're the object ofviews that have so much more to set them off. "

Mr. Mitchett on this jumped up; he was clearly conscious of his nerves;he fidgeted away a few steps and then, his hands in his pockets, fixedon his hostess a countenance more controlled. "What does the Duchessmean by your daughter's being--as I understood you to quote her justnow--'damaged and depraved'?"

Mrs. Brookenham came up--she literally rose--smiling. "You fit the cap. You know how she'd like you for little Aggie!"

"What does she mean, what does she mean?" Mitchy repeated. 

The door, as he spoke, was thrown open; Mrs. Brookenham glanced round. "You've the chance to find out from herself!" The Duchess had come backand little Aggie was in her wake. 

V

That young lady, in this relation, was certainly a figure to haveoffered a foundation for the highest hopes. As slight and white, asdelicately lovely, as a gathered garden lily, her admirable trainingappeared to hold her out to them all as with precautionary finger-tips. She presumed, however, so little on any introduction that, shyly andsubmissively, waiting for the word of direction, she stopped shortin the centre of the general friendliness till Mrs. Brookenham fairlybecame, to meet her, also a shy little girl--put out a timid hand withwonder-struck innocent eyes that hesitated whether a kiss of greetingmight be dared. "Why you dear good strange 'ickle' thing, you haven'tbeen here for ages, but it IS a joy to see you and I do hope you'vebrought your doll!"--such might have been the sense of our friend's fondmurmur while, looking at her up and down with pure pleasure, she drewthe rare creature to a sofa. Little Aggie presented, up and down, anarrangement of dress exactly in the key of her age, her complexion, heremphasised virginity. She might have been prepared for her visit bya cluster of doting nuns, cloistered daughters of ancient houses andeducators of similar products, whose taste, hereditarily good, hadgrown, out of the world and most delightfully, so queer as to leave oneverything they touched a particular shade of distinction. The Duchesshad brought in with the child an air of added confidence for which anobserver would in a moment have seen the grounds, the association of thepair being so markedly favourable to each. Its younger member carriedout the style of her aunt's presence quite as one of the accessoryfigures effectively thrown into old portraits. The Duchess on the otherhand seemed, with becoming blandness, to draw from her niece the dignityof a kind of office of state--hereditary governess of the children ofthe blood. Little Aggie had a smile as softly bright as a Southern dawn, and the friends of her relative looked at each other, according to afashion frequent in Mrs. Brookenham's drawing-room, in free exchange oftheir happy impression. Mr. Mitchett was none the less scantly divertedfrom his estimate of the occasion Mrs. Brookenham had just named to him. 

"My dear Duchess, " he promptly asked, "do you mind explaining to me anopinion I've just heard of your--with marked originality--holding?"

The Duchess, her head all in the air, considered an instant her littleivory princess. "I'm always ready, Mr. Mitchett, to defend my opinions;but if it's a question of going much into the things that are thesubjects of some of them perhaps we had better, if you don't mind, choose our time and our place. "

"No 'time, ' gracious lady, for my impatience, " Mr. Mitchett replied, "could be better than the present--but if you've reasons for wanting abetter place why shouldn't we go on the spot into another room?"

Lord Petherton, at this enquiry, broke into instant mirth. "Well, of allthe coolness, Mitchy!--he does go at it, doesn't he, Mrs. Brook? Whatdo you want to do in another room?" he demanded of his friend. "Upon myword, Duchess, under the nose of those--"

The Duchess, on the first blush, lent herself to the humour of the case. "Well, Petherton, of 'those'?--I defy him to finish his sentence!" shesmiled to the others. 

"Of those, " said his lordship, "who flatter themselves that when you dohappen to find them somewhere your first idea is not quite to jump ata pretext for getting off somewhere else. Especially, " he continued tojest, "with a man of Mitchy's vile reputation. "

"Oh!" Edward Brookenham exclaimed at this, but only as with quietrelief. 

"Mitchy's offer is perfectly safe, I may let him know, " his wiferemarked, "for I happen to be sure that nothing would really induce Janeto leave Aggie five minutes among us here without remaining herself tosee that we don't become improper. "

"Well then if we're already pretty far on the way to it, " Lord Pethertonresumed, "what on earth MIGHT we arrive at in the absence of yourcontrol? I warn you, Duchess, " he joyously pursued, "that if you go outof the room with Mitchy I shall rapidly become quite awful. "

The Duchess during this brief passage never took her eyes from herniece, who rewarded her attention with the sweetness of consentingdependence. The child's foreign origin was so delicately butunmistakeably written in all her exquisite lines that her look mighthave expressed the modest detachment of a person to whom the languageof her companions was unknown. Her protectress then glanced round thecircle. "You're very odd people all of you, and I don't think you quiteknow how ridiculous you are. Aggie and I are simple stranger-folk;there's a great deal we don't understand, yet we're none the less noteasily frightened. In what is it, Mr. Mitchett, " the Duchess asked, "that I've wounded your susceptibilities?"

Mr. Mitchett cast about; he had apparently found time to reflect on hisprecipitation. "I see what Petherton's up to, and I won't, by drawingyou aside just now, expose your niece to anything that might immediatelyoblige Mrs. Brook to catch her up and flee with her. But the firsttime I find you more isolated--well, " he laughed, though not with theclearest ring, "all I can say is Mind your eyes dear Duchess!"

"It's about your thinking, Jane, " Mrs. Brookenham placidly explained, "that Nanda suffers--in her morals, don't you know?--by my neglect. I wouldn't say anything about you that I can't bravely say TO you;therefore since he has plumped out with it I do confess that I'veappealed to him on what, as so good an old friend, HE thinks of yourcontention. "

"What in the world IS Jane's contention?" Edward Brookenham put thequestion as if they were "stuck" at cards. 

"You really all of you, " the Duchess replied with excellent coolness, "choose extraordinary conditions for the discussion of delicate matters. There are decidedly too many things on which we don't feel alike. You'reall inconceivable just now. Je ne peux pourtant pas la mettre a laporte, cette cherie"--whom she covered again with the gay solicitudethat seemed to have in it a vibration of private entreaty: "Don'tunderstand, my own darling--don't understand!"

Little Aggie looked about with an impartial politeness that, asan expression of the general blind sense of her being as to everyparticular in hands at full liberty either to spot or to spare her, wastouching enough to bring tears to all eyes. It perhaps had to do withthe sudden emotion with which--using now quite a different manner--Mrs. Brookenham again embraced her, and even with this lady's equally abruptand altogether wonderful address to her: "Between you and me straight, my dear, and as from friend to friend, I know you'll never doubt thateverything must be all right!--What I spoke of to poor Mitchy, " she wenton to the Duchess, "is the dreadful view you take of my letting Nanda goto Tishy--and indeed of the general question of any acquaintance betweenyoung unmarried and young married females. Mr. Mitchett's sufficientlyinterested in us, Jane, to make it natural of me to take him into ourconfidence in one of our difficulties. On the other hand we feel yoursolicitude, and I needn't tell you at this time of day what weightin every respect we attach to your judgement. Therefore it WILL be adifficulty for us, cara mia, don't you see? if we decide suddenly, under the spell of your influence, that our daughter must break off afriendship--it WILL be a difficulty for us to put the thing to Nandaherself in such a way as that she shall have some sort of notion of whatsuddenly possesses us. Then there'll be the much stiffer job of puttingit to poor Tishy. Yet if her house IS an impossible place what else isone to do? Carrie Donner's to be there, and Carrie Donner's a natureapart; but how can we ask even a little lamb like Tishy to give up herown sister?"

The question had been launched with an argumentative sharpness thatmade it for a moment keep possession of the air, and during this moment, before a single member of the circle could rally, Mrs. Brookenham'seffect was superseded by that of the reappearance of the butler. "I say, my dear, don't shriek!"--Edward Brookenham had only time to sound thiswarning before a lady, presenting herself in the open doorway, followedclose on the announcement of her name. "Mrs. Beach Donner!"--theimpression was naturally marked. Every one betrayed it a little butMrs. Brookenham, who, more than the others, appeared to have the helpof seeing that by a merciful stroke her visitor had just failed to hear. This visitor, a young woman of striking, of startling appearance, who, in the manner of certain shiny house-doors and railings, instantlycreated a presumption of the lurking label "Fresh paint, " found herself, with an embarrassment oddly opposed to the positive pitch of hercomplexion, in the presence of a group in which it was yet immediatelyevident that every one was a friend. Every one, to show no one had beencaught, said something extremely easy; so that it was after a momentonly poor Mrs. Donner who, seated close to her hostess, seemed to bein any degree in the wrong. This moreover was essentially her fault, soextreme was the anomaly of her having, without the means to back itup, committed herself to a "scheme of colour" that was practically anadvertisement of courage. Irregularly pretty and painfully shy, she wasretouched from brow to chin like a suburban photograph--the moral ofwhich was simply that she should either have left more to nature ortaken more from art. The Duchess had quickly reached her kinsman with asmothered hiss, an "Edward dear, for God's sake take Aggie!" and at theend of a few minutes had formed for herself in one of Mrs. Brookenham'sadmirable "corners" a society consisting of Lord Petherton and Mr. Mitchett, the latter of whom regarded Mrs. Donner across the room witharticulate wonder and compassion. 

"It's all right, it's all right--she's frightened only at herself!"

The Duchess watched her as from a box at the play, comfortably shutin, as in the old operatic days at Naples, with a pair of entertainers. "You're the most interesting nation in the world. One never gets to theend of your hatred of the nuance. The sense of the suitable, the harmonyof parts--what on earth were you doomed to do that, to be punishedsufficiently in advance, you had to be deprived of it in your verycradles? Look at her little black dress--rather good, but not so goodas it ought to be, and, mixed up with all the rest, see her type, herbeauty, her timidity, her wickedness, her notoriety and her impudeur. It's only in this country that a woman is both so shocking and soshaky. " The Duchess's displeasure overflowed. "If she doesn't know howto be good--"

"Let her at least know how to be bad? Ah, " Mitchy replied, "yourirritation testifies more than anything else could do to our peculiargenius or our peculiar want of it. Our vice is intolerably clumsy--if itcan possibly be a question of vice in regard to that charming child, wholooks like one of the new-fashioned bill-posters, only, in the way of'morbid modernity, ' as Mrs. Brook would say, more extravagant and funnythan any that have yet been risked. I remember, " he continued, "Mrs. Brook's having spoken of her to me lately as 'wild. ' Wild?--why, she'ssimply tameness run to seed. Such an expression shows the state oftraining to which Mrs. Brook has reduced the rest of us. "

"It doesn't prevent at any rate, Mrs. Brook's training, some of the restof you from being horrible, " the Duchess declared. "What did you meanjust now, really, by asking me to explain before Aggie this so seriousmatter of Nanda's exposure?" Then instantly taking herself up before Mr. Mitchett could answer: "What on earth do you suppose Edward's saying tomy darling?"

Brookenham had placed himself, side by side with the child, on a distantlittle settee, but it was impossible to make out from the countenance ofeither if a sound had passed between them. Aggie's little manner was toodeveloped to show, and her host's not developed enough. "Oh he's awfullycareful, " Lord Petherton reassuringly observed. "If you or I orMitchy say anything bad it's sure to be before we know it and withoutparticularly meaning it. But old Edward means it--"

"So much that as a general thing he doesn't dare to say it?" the Duchessasked. "That's a pretty picture of him, inasmuch as for the most part henever speaks. What therefore must he mean?"

"He's an abyss--he's magnificent!" Mr. Mitchett laughed. "I don't knowa man of an understanding more profound, and he's equally incapable ofuttering and of wincing. If by the same token I'm 'horrible, ' as youcall me, " he pursued, "it's only because I'm in everyway so beastlysuperficial. All the same I do sometimes go into things, and I insiston knowing, " he again broke out, "what it exactly was you had in mind insaying to Mrs. Brook the things about Nanda and myself that she repeatedto me. "

"You 'insist, ' you silly man?"--the Duchess had veered a little toindulgence. "Pray on what ground of right, in such a connexion, do youdo anything of the sort?"

Poor Mitchy showed but for a moment that he felt pulled up. "Do you meanthat when a girl liked by a fellow likes him so little in return--?"

"I don't mean anything, " said the Duchess, "that may provoke you tosuppose me vulgar and odious enough to try to put you out of conceit ofa most interesting and unfortunate creature; and I don't quite as yetsee--though I dare say I shall soon make out!--what our friend hasin her head in tattling to you on these matters as soon as my back'sturned. Petherton will tell you--I wonder he hasn't told you before--whyMrs. Grendon, though not perhaps herself quite the rose, is decidedly inthese days too near it. "

"Oh Petherton never tells me anything!" Mitchy's answer was brisk andimpatient, but evidently quite as sincere as if the person alluded tohad not been there. 

The person alluded to meanwhile, fidgeting frankly in his chair, alternately stretching his legs and resting his elbows on his knees, had reckoned as small the profit he might derive from this colloquy. Hisbored state indeed--if he was bored--prompted in him the honest impulseto clear, as he would have perhaps considered it, the atmosphere. Heindicated Mrs. Donner with a remarkable absence of precautions. "Why, what the Duchess alludes to is my poor sister Fanny's stupidgrievance--surely you know about that. " He made oddly vivid for a momentthe nature of his relative's allegation, his somewhat cynical treatmentof which became peculiarly derisive in the light of the attitudeand expression, at that minute, of the figure incriminated. "Mybrother-in-law's too thick with her. But Cashmore's such a fine old ass. It's excessively unpleasant, " he added, "for affairs are just in thatposition in which, from one day to another, there may be something thatpeople will get hold of. Fancy a man, " he robustly reflected whilethe three took in more completely the subject of Mrs. Brookenham'sattention--"fancy a man with THAT odd piece on his hands! The beauty ofit is that the two women seem never to have broken off. Blest if theydon't still keep seeing each other!"

The Duchess, as on everything else, passed succinctly on this. "Ah howcan hatreds comfortably flourish without the nourishment of such regular'seeing' as what you call here bosom friendship alone supplies? What areparties given for in London but--that enemies may meet? I grant you it'sinconceivable that the husband of a superb creature like your sistershould find his requirements better met by an object comme cette petite, who looks like a pen-wiper--an actress's idea of one--made up for atheatrical bazaar. At the same time, if you'll allow me to say so, itscarcely strikes one that your sister's prudence is such as to haveplaced all the cards in her hands. She's the most beautiful woman inEngland, but her esprit de conduite isn't quite on a level. One can'thave everything!" she philosophically sighed. 

Lord Petherton met her comfortably enough on this assumption of hisdetachments. "If you mean by that her being the biggest fool alive I'mquite ready to agree with you. It's exactly what makes me afraid. Yethow can I decently say in especial, " he asked, "of what?"

The Duchess still perched on her critical height. "Of what but one ofyour amazing English periodical public washings of dirty linen? There'snot the least necessity to 'say'!" she laughed. "If there's anythingmore remarkable than these purifications it's the domestic comfort withwhich, when all has come and gone, you sport the articles purified. "

"It comes back, in all that sphere, " Mr. Mitchett instructively opined, "to our national, our fatal want of style. We can never, dear Duchess, take too many lessons, and there's probably at the present time no moreuseful function to be performed among us than that dissemination ofneater methods to which you're so good as to contribute. "

He had had another idea, but before he reached it his companion hadgaily broken in. "Awfully good one for you, Duchess--and I'm bound tosay that, for a clever woman, you exposed yourself! I've at any rate asense of comfort, " Lord Petherton pursued, "in the good relationsnow more and more established between poor Fanny and Mrs. Brook. Mrs. Brook's awfully kind to her and awfully sharp, and Fanny will takethings from her that she won't take from me. I keep saying to Mrs. Brook--don't you know?--'Do keep hold of her and let her have itstrong. ' She hasn't, upon my honour, any one in the world but me. "

"And we know the extent of THAT resource!" the Duchess freely commented. 

"That's exactly what Fanny says--that SHE knows it, " Pethertongood-humouredly agreed. "She says my beastly hypocrisy makes her sick. There are people, " he pleasantly rambled on, "who are awfully free withtheir advice, but it's mostly fearful rot. Mrs. Brook's isn't, upon myword--I've tried some myself!"

"You talk as if it were something nasty and homemade--gooseberry wine!"the Duchess laughed; "but one can't know the dear soul, of course, without knowing that she has set up, for the convenience of her friends, a little office for consultations. She listens to the case, she strokesher chin and prescribes--"

"And the beauty of it is, " cried Lord Petherton, "that she makes nocharge whatever!"

"She doesn't take a guinea at the time, but you may still get youraccount, " the Duchess returned. "Of course we know that the greatbusiness she does is in husbands and wives. "

"This then seems the day of the wives!" Mr. Mitchett interposed as hebecame aware, the first, of the illustration the Duchess's image was inthe act of receiving. "Lady Fanny Cashmore!"--the butler was alreadyin the field, and the company, with the exception of Mrs. Donner, whoremained seated, was apparently conscious of a vibration that brought itafresh, but still more nimbly than on Aggie's advent, to its feet. 

VI

"Go to her straight--be nice to her: you must have plenty to say. YOUstay with me--we have our affair. " The latter of these commands theDuchess addressed to Mr. Mitchett, while their companion, in obedienceto the former and affected, as it seemed, by an unrepressed familiaraccent that stirred a fresh flicker of Mitchy's grin, met the newarrival in the middle of the room before Mrs. Brookenham had had timeto reach her. The Duchess, quickly reseated, watched an instant theinexpressive concussion of the tall brother and sister; then whileMitchy again subsided into his place, "You're not, as a race, clever, you're not delicate, you're not sane, but you're capable ofextraordinary good looks, " she resumed. "Vous avez parfois la grandebeaute. "

Mitchy was much amused. "Do you really think Petherton has?"

The Duchess withstood it. "They've got, both outside and in, the samegreat general things, only turned, in each, rather different ways, away safer for him as a man, and more triumphant for her as--whatever youchoose to call her! What CAN a woman do, " she richly mused, "with suchbeauty as that--?"

"Except come desperately to advise with Mrs. Brook"--Mitchy undertook tocomplete her question--"as to the highest use to make of it? But see, "he immediately added, "how perfectly competent to instruct her ourfriend now looks. " Their hostess had advanced to Lady Fanny with anoutstretched hand but with an eagerness of greeting merged a littlein the sweet predominance of wonder as well as in the habit, at suchmoments most perceptible, of the languid lily-bend. Nothing in generalcould have been less conventionally poor than the kind of receptiongiven in Mrs. Brookenham's drawing-room to the particular element--theelement of physical splendour void of those disparities that make thequestion of others tiresome--comprised in Lady Fanny's presence. Itwas a place in which, at all times, before interesting objects, theunanimous occupants, almost more concerned for each other's vibrationsthan for anything else, were apt rather more to exchange sharp andsilent searchings than to fix their eyes on the object itself. In thecase of Lady Fanny, however, the object itself--and quite by the samelaw that had worked, though less profoundly, on the entrance of littleAggie--superseded the usual rapt communion very much in the manner ofsome beautiful tame tigress who might really coerce attention. Therewas in Mrs. Brookenham's way of looking up at her a dim despairingabandonment of the idea of any common personal ground. Lady Fanny, magnificent, simple, stupid, had almost the stature of her brother, a forehead unsurpassably low and an air of sombre concentration justsufficiently corrected by something in her movements that failed to giveit a point. Her blue eyes were heavy in spite of being perhaps a coupleof shades too clear, and the wealth of her black hair, the dispositionof the massive coils of which was all her own, had possibly a satinsheen depreciated by the current fashion. But the great thing in herwas that she was, with unconscious heroism, thoroughly herself; andwhat were Mrs. Brook and Mrs. Brook's intimates after all, in their freesurrender to the play of perception, but a happy association for keepingher so? The Duchess was moved to the liveliest admiration by the grandsimple sweetness of her encounter with Mrs. Donner, a combination indeedin which it was a question if she or Mrs. Brook appeared to the higheradvantage. It was poor Mrs. Donner--not, like Mrs. Brook, subtle insufficiency, nor, like Lady Fanny, almost too simple--who made thepoorest show. The Duchess immediately marked it to Mitchy as infinitelycharacteristic that their hostess, instead of letting one of hervisitors go, kept them together by some sweet ingenuity and while LordPetherton, dropping his sister, joined Edward and Aggie in the otherangle, sat there between them as if, in pursuance of some awfully cleverline of her own, she were holding a hand of each. Mr. Mitchett of coursedid justice all round, or at least, as would have seemed from an enquiryhe presently made, wished not to fail of it. "Is it your real impressionthen that Lady Fanny has serious grounds--"

"For jealousy of that preposterous little person? My dear Mitchett, " theDuchess resumed after a moment's reflexion, "if you're so rash as toask me in any of these connexions for my 'real' impression you deservewhatever you may get. " The penalty Mitchy had incurred was apparentlygrave enough to make his companion just falter in the infliction of it;which gave him the opportunity of replying that the little personwas perhaps not more preposterous than any one else, that there wassomething in her he rather liked, and that there were many differentways in which a woman could be interesting. This further levity it wastherefore that laid him fully open. "Do you mean to say you'vebeen living with Petherton so long without becoming aware that he'sshockingly worried?"

"My dear Duchess, " Mitchy smiled, "Petherton carries his worries with abravery! They're so many that I've long since ceased to count them; andin general I've been disposed to let those pass that I can't help him tomeet. YOU'VE made, I judge, " he went on, "a better use of opportunitiesperhaps not so good--such as at any rate enables you to see further thanI into the meaning of the impatience he just now expressed. "

The Duchess was admirable, in conversation, for neglecting everythingnot essential to her present plausibility. "A woman like Lady Fanny canhave no 'grounds' for anything--for any indignation, I mean, or for anyrevenge worth twopence. In this particular case at all events they'vebeen sacrificed with such extravagance that, as an injured wife, shehasn't had the gumption to keep back an inch or two to stand on. She cando absolutely nothing. "

"Then you take the view--?" Mitchy, who had, after all, his delicacies, pulled up as at sight of a name. 

"I take the view, " said the Duchess, "and I know exactly why. Elle seles passe--her little fancies! She's a phenomenon, poor dear. And allwith--what shall I call it?--the absence of haunting remorse of a goodhouse-mother who makes the family accounts balance. She looks--and it'swhat they love her for here when they say 'Watch her now!'--like anangry saint; but she's neither a saint nor, to be perfectly fair to her, really angry at all. She has only just enough reflexion to make out thatit may some day be a little better for her that her husband shall, onhis side too, have committed himself; and she's only, in secret, toopleased to be sure whom it has been with. All the same I must tell you, "the Duchess still more crisply added, "that our little friend Nanda isof the opinion--which I gather her to be quite ready to defend--thatLady Fanny's wrong. "

Poor Mitchy found himself staring. "But what has our little friend Nandato do with it?"

"What indeed, bless her heart? If you WILL ask questions, however, youmust take, as I say, your risks. There are days when between you all youstupefy me. One of them was when I happened about a month ago to makesome allusion to the charming example of Mr. Cashmore's fine taste thatwe have there before us: what was my surprise at the tone taken by Mrs. Brook to deny on this little lady's behalf the soft impeachment? Itwas quite a mistake that anything had happened--Mrs. Donner had pulledthrough unscathed. She had been but a day or two at the most in danger, for her family and friends--the best influences--had rallied to hersupport: the flurry was all over. She was now perfectly safe. Do youthink she looks so?" the Duchess asked. 

This was not a point that Mitchy was conscious of freedom of mind toexamine. "Do I understand you that Nanda was her mother's authority--?"

"For the exact shade of the intimacy of the two friends and the state ofMrs. Brook's information? Precisely--it was 'the latest before going topress. ' 'Our own correspondent'! Her mother quoted her. "

Mr. Mitchett visibly wondered. "But how should Nanda know--?"

"Anything about the matter? How should she NOT know everything? You'venot, I suppose, lost sight of the fact that this lady and Mrs. Grendonare sisters. Carrie's situation and Carrie's perils are naturally verypresent to the extremely unoccupied Tishy, who is unhappily married intothe bargain, who has no children, and whose house, as you may imagine, has a good thick atmosphere of partisanship. So, as with Nanda, on HERside, there's no more absorbing interest than her dear friend Tishy, with whom she's at present staying and under whose roof she perpetuallymeets this victim of unjust aspersions--!"

"I see the whole thing from here, you imply?" Mr. Mitchett, under theinfluence of this rapid evocation, had already taken his line. "Well, "he said bravely, "Nanda's not a fool. "

A momentary silence on the part of the Duchess might have been hertribute to his courage. "No. I don't agree with her, as it happens, here; but that there are matters as to which she's not in general atall befogged is exactly the worst I ever said of her. And I hold that inputting it so--on the basis of my little anecdote--you clearly give outthat you're answered. "

Mitchy turned it over. "Answered?"

"In the quarrel that a while back you sought to pick with me. What Itouched on to her mother was the peculiar range of aspects and interestsshe's compelled to cultivate by the special intimacies that Mrs. Brookpermits her. There they are--and that's all I said. Judge them foryourself. "

The Duchess had risen as she spoke, which was also what Mrs. Donner andMrs. Brookenham had done; and Mr. Mitchett was on his feet as well, toact on this last admonition. Mrs. Donner was taking leave, and thereoccurred among the three ladies in connexion with the circumstance asomewhat striking exchange of endearments. Mr. Mitchett, observing this, expressed himself suddenly as diverted. "By Jove, they're kissing--she'sin Lady Fanny's arms!" But his hilarity was still to deepen. "And LadyFanny, by Jove, is in Mrs. Brook's!"

"Oh it's all beyond ME!" the Duchess cried; and the little wail of herbaffled imagination had almost the austerity of a complaint. 

"Not a bit--they're all right. Mrs. Brook has acted!" Mitchy went on. 

"Ah it isn't that she doesn't 'act'!" his interlocutress ejaculated. 

Mrs. Donner's face presented, as she now crossed the room, somethingthat resembled the ravage of a death-struggle between its artificialand its natural elegance. "Well, " Mitchy said with decision as he caughtit--"I back Nanda. " And while a whiff of derision reached him from theDuchess, "Nothing HAS happened!" he murmured. 

As to reward him for an indulgence that she must much more have divinedthan overheard the visitor approached him with her sweet bravery ofalarm. "I go on Thursday to my sister's, where I shall find NandaBrookenham. Can I take her any message from you?"

Mr. Mitchett showed a rosiness that might positively have beenreflected. "Why should you dream of her expecting one?"

"Oh, " said the Duchess with a cheer that but half carried off herasperity, "Mrs. Brook must have told Mrs. Donner to ask you!"

The latter lady, at this, rested strange eyes on the speaker, and theyhad perhaps something to do with a quick flare of Mitchy's wit. "Tellher, please--if, as I suppose, you came here to ask the same of hermother--that I adore her still more for keeping in such happy relationswith you as enable me thus to meet you. "

Mrs. Donner, overwhelmed, took flight with a nervous laugh, leaving Mr. Mitchett and the Duchess still confronted. Nothing had passed betweenthe two ladies, yet it was as if there were a trace of something inthe eyes of the elder, which, during a moment's silence, moved fromthe retreating visitor, now formally taken over at the door by EdwardBrookenham, to Lady Fanny and her hostess, who, in spite of the embracesjust performed, had again subsided together while Mrs. Brook gazed upin exalted intelligence. "It's a funny house, " said the Duchess at last. "She makes me such a scene over my not bringing Aggie, and stillmore over my very faint hint of my reasons for it, that I fly off, in compunction, to do what I can, on the spot, to repair my excess ofprudence. I reappear, panting, with my niece--and it's to THIS company Iintroduce her!"

Her companion looked at the charming child, to whom Lord Petherton wastalking with evident kindness and gaiety--a conjunction that evidentlyexcited Mitchy's interest. "May WE then know her?" he asked with aneffect of drollery. "May I--if HE may?"

The Duchess's eyes, turned to him, had taken another light. He evengaped a little at their expression, which was in a manner carried out byher tone. "Go and talk to her, you perverse creature, and send him overto me. " Lord Petherton, a minute later, had joined her; old Edward hadleft the room with Mrs. Donner; his wife and Lady Fanny were still moreclosely engaged; and the young Agnesina, though visibly a little scaredat Mitchy's queer countenance, had begun, after the fashion he hadtouched on to Mrs. Brook, politely to invoke the aid of the idea ofhabit. "Look here--you must help me, " the Duchess said to Petherton. "You can, perfectly--and it's the first thing I've yet asked of you. "

"Oh, oh, oh!" her interlocutor laughed. 

"I must have Mitchy, " she went on without noticing his particular shadeof humour. 

"Mitchy too?"--he appeared to wish to leave her in no doubt of it. 

"How low you are!" she simply said. "There are times when I despair ofyou. He's in every way your superior, and I like him so that--well, hemust like HER. Make him feel that he does. "

Lord Petherton turned it over as something put to him practically. "Icould wish for him that he would. I see in her possibilities--!" hecontinued to laugh. 

"I dare say you do. I see them in Mitchett, and I trust you'llunderstand me when I say I appeal to you. "

"Appeal to HIM straight. That's much better, " Petherton lucidlyobserved. 

The Duchess wore for a moment her proudest air, which made her, in theconnexion, exceptionally gentle. "He doesn't like me. "

Her interlocutor looked at her with all his bright brutality. "Oh mydear, I can speak for you--if THAT'S what you want!"

The Duchess met his eyes, and so for an instant they sounded each other. "You're so abysmally coarse that I often wonder--!" But as the doorreopened she caught herself. It was the effect of a face apparentlydirected at her. "Be quiet. Here's old Edward. "

BOOK THIRD. MR. LONGDON

If Mitchy arrived exactly at the hour it was quite by design and on acalculation--over and above the prized little pleasure it might givehim--of ten minutes clear with his host, whom it rarely befell him tosee alone. He had a theory of something special to go into, of aplummet to sink or a feeler to put forth; his state of mind in shortwas diplomatic and anxious. But his hopes had a drop as he crossedthe threshold. His precaution had only assured him the company of astranger, for the person in the room to whom the servant announcedhim was not old Van. On the other hand this gentleman would clearly beold--what was it? the fellow Vanderbank had made it a matter of suchimportance he should "really know. " But were they then simply to havetea there together? No; the candidate for Mr. Mitchett's acquaintance, as if quickly guessing his apprehension, mentioned on the spot thattheir entertainer would be with them: he had just come home in ahurry, fearing he was late, and then had rushed off to make a change. "Fortunately, " said the speaker, who offered his explanation as if hehad had it on his mind--"fortunately the ladies haven't yet come. "

"Oh there ARE to be ladies?"--Mr. Mitchett was all response. His fellowguest, who was shy and apparently nervous, sidled about a little, swinging an eye-glass, yet glancing in a manner a trifle birdlike fromobject to object. "Mrs. Edward Brookenham I think. "

"Oh!" Mitchy himself felt, as soon as this comment had quitted his lips, that it might sound even to a stranger like a sign, such as the votariesof Mrs. Edward Brookenham had fallen into the way of constantly throwingoff, that he recognised her hand in the matter. There was, however, something in his entertainer's face that somehow encouraged frankness;it had the sociability of surprise--it hadn't the chill. Mitchy sawat the same time that this friend of old Van's would never reallyunderstand him; though that was a thing he at times liked people as muchfor as he liked them little for it at others. It was in fact when hemost liked that he was on the whole most tempted to mystify. "Only Mrs. Brook?--no others?"

"'Mrs. Brook'?" his elder echoed; staring an instant as if literallymissing the connexion; but quickly after, to show he was not stupid--andindeed it seemed to show he was delightful--smiling with extravagantintelligence. "Is that the right thing to say?"

Mitchy gave the kindest of laughs. "Well, I dare say I oughtn't to. "

"Oh I didn't mean to correct you, " his interlocutor hastened to profess;"I meant on the contrary, will it be right for me too?"

Mitchy's great goggle attentively fixed him. "Try it. "

"To HER?"

"To every one. "

"To her husband?"

"Oh to Edward, " Mitchy laughed again, "perfectly!"

"And must I call him 'Edward'?"

"Whatever you do will be right, " Mitchy returned--"even though it shouldhappen to be sometimes what I do. "

His companion, as if to look at him with a due appreciation of this, stopped swinging the nippers and put them on. "You people here have apleasant way--!"

"Oh we HAVE!"--Mitchy, taking him up, was gaily emphatic. He began, however, already to perceive the mystification which in this case was tobe his happy effect. 

"Mr. Vanderbank, " his victim remarked with perhaps a shade more ofreserve, "has told me a good deal about you. " Then as if, in a finermanner, to keep the talk off themselves: "He knows a great many ladies. "

"Oh yes, poor chap, he can't help it. He finds a lady wherever heturns. "

The stranger took this in, but seemed a little to challenge it. "Well, that's reassuring, if one sometimes fancies there are fewer. "

"Fewer than there used to be?--I see what you mean, " said Mitchy. "Butif it has struck you so, that's awfully interesting. " He glared andgrinned and mused. "I wonder. "

"Well, we shall see. " His friend seemed to wish not to dogmatise. 

"SHALL we?" Mitchy considered it again in its high suggestive light. "You will--but how shall I?" Then he caught himself up with a blush. "What a beastly thing to say--as if it were mere years that make you seeit!"

His companion this time gave way to the joke. "What else can it be--ifI've thought so?"

"Why, it's the facts themselves, and the fine taste, and above allsomething qui ne court pas les rues, an approach to some experience ofwhat a lady IS. " The young man's acute reflexion appeared suddenly toflower into a vision of opportunity that swept everything else away. "Excuse my insisting on your time of life--but you HAVE seen some?" Thequestion was of such interest that he had already begun to follow it. "Oh the charm of talk with some one who can fill out one's idea ofthe really distinguished women of the past! If I could get you, " hecontinued, "to be so awfully valuable as to fill out mine!"

His fellow visitor, on this, made, in a pause, a nearer approach totaking visibly his measure. "Are you sure you've got an idea?" Mr. Mitchett brightly thought. "No. That must be just why I appeal to you. And it can't therefore be for confirmation, can it?" he went on. "Itmust be for the beautiful primary hint altogether. "

His interlocutor began, with a shake of the eyeglass, to shift and sidleagain, as if distinctly excited by the subject. But it was as if hisvery excitement made the poor gentleman a trifle coy. "Are there no niceones now?"

"Oh yes, there must be lots. In fact I know quantities. "

This had the effect of pulling the stranger up. "Ah 'quantities'! Thereit is. "

"Yes, " said Mitchy, "fancy the 'lady' in her millions. Have you comeup to London, wondering, as you must, about what's happening--forVanderbank mentioned, I think, that you HAVE come up--in pursuit ofher?"

"Ah, " laughed the subject of Vanderbank's information, "I'm afraid'pursuit, ' with me, is over. "

"Why, you're at the age, " Mitchy returned, "of--the most exquisite formof it. Observation. "

"Yet it's a form, I seem to see, that you've not waited for my ageto cultivate. " This was followed by a decisive headshake. "I'm not anobserver. I'm a hater. "

"That only means, " Mitchy explained, "that you keep your observation foryour likes--which is more admirable than prudent. But between my fearin the one direction and my desire in the other, " he lightly added, "Iscarcely know how to present myself. I must study the ground. MeanwhileHAS old Van told you much about me?"

Old Van's possible confidant, instead of immediately answering, againassumed the pince-nez. "Is that what you call him?"

"In general, I think--for shortness. "

"And also"--the speaker hesitated--"for esteem?"

Mitchy laughed out. "For veneration! Our disrespects, I think, areall tender, and we wouldn't for the world do to a person we don't likeanything so nice as to call him, or even to call her, don't you know--?"

His questioner had quickly looked as if he knew. "Something pleasant andvulgar?"

Mitchy's gaiety deepened. "That discrimination's our only austerity. Youmust fall in. "

"Then what will you call ME?"

"What can we?" After which, sustainingly, "I'm 'Mitchy, '" our friendstated. 

His interlocutor looked slightly queer. "I don't think I can quitebegin. I'm Mr. Longdon, " he almost blushed to articulate. 

"Absolutely and essentially--that's exactly what I recognise. I defy anyone to see you, " Mitchy declared, "as anything else, and on that footingyou'll be, among us, unique. "

Mr. Longdon appeared to accept his prospect of isolation with acertain gravity. "I gather from you--I've gathered indeed from Mr. Vanderbank--that you're a little sort of a set that hang very muchtogether. "

"Oh yes; not a formal association nor a secret society--still less a'dangerous gang' or an organisation for any definite end. We're simplya collection of natural affinities, " Mitchy explained; "meeting perhapsprincipally in Mrs. Brook's drawing-room--though sometimes also in oldVan's, as you see, sometimes even in mine--and governed at any rateeverywhere by Mrs. Brook, in our mysterious ebbs and flows, very much asthe tides are governed by the moon. As I say, " Mitchy pursued, "you mustjoin. But if Van has got hold of you, " he added, "or you've got hold ofhim, you HAVE joined. We're not quite so numerous as I could wish, andwe want variety; we want just what I'm sure you'll bring us--a fresheye, an outside mind. "

Mr. Longdon wore for a minute the air of a man knowing but too well whatit was to be asked to put down his name. "My friend Vanderbank swaggersso little that it's rather from you than from himself that I seem tocatch the idea--!"

"Of his being a great figure among us? I don't know what he may havesaid to you or have suppressed; but you can take it from me--as betweenourselves, you know--that he's very much the best of us. Old Van infact--if you really want a candid opinion, " and Mitchy shone stillbrighter as he talked, "is formed for a distinctly higher sphere. Ishould go so far as to say that on our level he's positively wasted. "

"And are you very sure you're not?" Mr. Longdon asked with a smile. 

"Dear no--I'm in my element. My element's to grovel before Van. You'veonly to look at me, as you must already have made out, to see I'meverything dreadful that he isn't. But you've seen him for yourself--Ineedn't tell you!" Mitchy sighed. 

Mr. Longdon, as under the coercion of so much confidence, had stood inplace longer than for any previous moment, and the spell continued fora minute after Mitchy had paused. Then nervously and abruptly he turnedaway, his friend watching him rather aimlessly wander. "Our host hasspoken of you to me in high terms, " he said as he came back. "You'd haveno fault to find with them. "

Mitchy took it with his highest light. "I know from your taking thetrouble to remember that, how much what I've said of him pleases andtouches you. We're a little sort of religion then, you and I; we'rean organisation of two, at any rate, and we can't help ourselves. There--that's settled. " He glanced at the clock on the chimney. "Butwhat's the matter with him?"

"You gentlemen dress so much, " said Mr. Longdon. 

Mitchy met the explanation quite halfway. "_I_ try to look funny--butwhy should Apollo in person?"

Mr. Longdon weighed it. "Do you think him like Apollo?"

"The very image. Ask any of the women!"

"But do _I_ know--?"

"How Apollo must look?" Mitchy considered. "Why the way it works is thatit's just from Van's appearance they get the tip, and that then, don'tyou see? they've their term of comparison. Isn't it what you call avicious circle? I borrow a little their vice. "

Mr. Longdon, who had once more been arrested, once more sidled away. Then he spoke from the other side of the expanse of a table covered withbooks for which the shelves had no space--covered with portfolios, withwell-worn leather-cased boxes, with documents in neat piles. The placewas a miscellany, yet not a litter, the picture of an admirable order. "If we're a fond association of two, you and I, let me, accepting youridea, do what, this way, under a gentleman's roof and while enjoying hishospitality, I should in ordinary circumstances think perhaps somethingof a breach. "

"Oh strike out!" Mitchy laughed. It possibly chilled his interlocutor, who again hung fire so long that he himself at last adopted his image. "Why doesn't he marry, you mean?"

Mr. Longdon fairly flushed with recognition. "You're very deep, but withwhat we perceive--why doesn't he?"

Mitchy continued visibly to have his amusement, which might have been, this time and in spite of the amalgamation he had pictured, for what"they" perceived. But he threw off after an instant an answer clearlyintended to meet the case. "He thinks he hasn't the means. He has greatideas of what a fellow must offer a woman. "

Mr. Longdon's eyes travelled a while over the amenities about him. "Hehasn't such a view of himself alone--?"

"As to make him think he's enough as he stands? No, " said Mitchy, "Idon't fancy he has a very awful view of himself alone. And since we AREburning this incense under his nose, " he added, "it's also my impressionthat he has no private means. Women in London cost so much. "

Mr. Longdon had a pause. "They come very high, I dare say. "

"Oh tremendously. They want so much--they want everything. I mean thesort of women he lives with. A modest man--who's also poor--isn't init. I give you that at any rate as his view. There are lots of them thatwould---and only too glad--'love him for himself'; but things are muchmixed, and these not necessarily the right ones, and at all events hedoesn't see it. The result of which is that he's waiting. "

"Waiting to feel himself in love?"

Mitchy just hesitated. "Well, we're talking of marriage. Of courseyou'll say there are women with money. There ARE"--he seemed for amoment to meditate--"dreadful ones!"

The two men, on this, exchanged a long regard. "He mustn't do that. "

Mitchy again hesitated. "He won't. "

Mr. Longdon had also a silence, which he presently terminated by one ofhis jerks into motion. "He shan't!"

Once more Mitchy watched him revolve a little, but now, familiarly yetwith a sharp emphasis, he himself resumed their colloquy. "See here, Mr. Longdon. Are you seriously taking him up?"

Yet again, at the tone of this appeal, the old man perceptibly coloured. It was as if his friend had brought to the surface an inward excitement, and he laughed for embarrassment. "You see things with a freedom--"

"Yes, and it's so I express them. I see them, I know, with a raccourci;but time after all rather presses, and at any rate we understandeach other. What I want now is just to say"--and Mitchy spoke with asimplicity and a gravity he had not yet used--"that if your interest inhim should at any time reach the point of your wishing to do somethingor other (no matter what, don't you see?) FOR him--!"

Mr. Longdon, as he faltered, appeared to wonder, but emitted a sound ofgentleness. "Yes?"

"Why, " said the stimulated Mitchy, "do, for God's sake, just let me havea finger in it. "

Mr. Longdon's momentary mystification was perhaps partly but the naturaleffect of constitutional prudence. "A finger?"

"I mean--let me help. "

"Oh!" breathed the old man thoughtfully and without meeting his eyes. 

Mitchy, as if with more to say, watched him an instant, then beforespeaking caught himself up. "Look out--here he comes. "

Hearing the stir of the door by which he had entered he looked round;but it opened at first only to admit Vanderbank's servant. "MissBrookenham!" the man announced; on which the two gentlemen in the roomwere--audibly, almost violently--precipitated into a union of surprise. 

II

However she might have been discussed Nanda was not one to shrink, for, though she drew up an instant on failing to find in the room the personwhose invitation she had obeyed, she advanced the next moment as ifeither of the gentlemen before her would answer as well. "How do youdo, Mr. Mitchy? How do you do, Mr. Longdon?" She made no difference forthem, speaking to the elder, whom she had not yet seen, as if they werealready acquainted. There was moreover in the air of that personage atthis juncture little to invite such a confidence: he appeared to havebeen startled, in the oddest manner, into stillness and, holding outno hand to meet her, only stared rather stiffly and without a smile. Anobserver disposed to interpret the scene might have fancied him a trifleput off by the girl's familiarity, or even, as by a singular effectof her self-possession, stricken into deeper diffidence. Thisself-possession, however, took on her own part no account of anyawkwardness: it seemed the greater from the fact that she was almostunnaturally grave, and it overflowed in the immediate challenge: "Do youmean to say Van isn't here? I've come without mother--she said I could, to see HIM, " she went on, addressing herself more particularly toMitchy. "But she didn't say I might do anything of that sort to seeYOU. "

If there was something serious in Nanda and something blank in theircompanion, there was, superficially at least, nothing in Mr. Mitchettbut his usual flush of gaiety. "Did she really send you off this wayalone?" Then while the girl's face met his own with the clear confessionof it: "Isn't she too splendid for anything?" he asked with immenseenjoyment. "What do you suppose is her idea?" Nanda's eyes had nowturned to Mr. Longdon, whom she fixed with her mild straightness; whichled to Mitchy's carrying on and repeating the appeal. "Isn't Mrs. Brookcharming? What do you suppose is her idea?"

It was a bound into the mystery, a bound of which his fellow visitorstood quite unconscious, only looking at Nanda still with the samecoldness of wonder. All expression had for the minute been arrestedin Mr. Longdon, but he at last began to show that it had merely beenretarded. Yet it was almost with solemnity that he put forth his hand. "How do you do? How do you do? I'm so glad!"

Nanda shook hands with him as if she had done so already, though itmight have been just her look of curiosity that detracted from her airof amusing herself. "Mother has wanted me awfully to see you. She toldme to give you her love, " she said. Then she added with odd irrelevance:"I didn't come in the carriage, nor in a cab nor an omnibus. "

"You came on a bicycle?" Mitchy enquired. 

"No, I walked. " She still spoke without a gleam. "Mother wants me to doeverything. "

"Even to walk!" Mitchy laughed. "Oh yes, we must in these times keep upour walking!" The ingenious observer just now suggested might even havedetected in the still higher rise of this visitor's spirits a want ofmere inward ease. 

She had taken no notice of the effect upon him of her mention of hermother, and she took none, visibly, of Mr. Longdon's manner or of hiswords. What she did while the two men, without offering her, either, aseat, practically lost themselves in their deepening vision, was to giveher attention all to the place, looking at the books, pictures and othersignificant objects, and especially at the small table set out for tea, to which the servant who had admitted her now returned with a steamingkettle. "Isn't it charming here? Will there be any one else? Where ISMr. Van? Shall I make tea?" There was just a faint quaver, showing acommand of the situation more desired perhaps than achieved, in the veryrapid sequence of these ejaculations. The servant meanwhile had placedthe hot water above the little silver lamp and left the room. 

"Do you suppose there's anything the matter? Oughtn't the man--or do youknow our host's room?" Mr. Longdon, addressing Mitchy with solicitude, yet began to show in a countenance less blank a return of his sense ofrelations. It was as if something had happened to him and he were inhaste to convert the signs of it into an appearance of care for theproprieties. 

"Oh, " said Mitchy, "Van's only making himself beautiful"--which accountof their absent entertainer gained a point from his appearance at themoment in the doorway furthest removed from the place where the threewere gathered. 

Vanderbank came in with friendly haste and with something of thelook indeed--refreshed, almost rosy, brightly brushed and quicklybuttoned--of emerging, out of breath, from pleasant ablutions andrenewals. "What a brute to have kept you waiting! I came back from workquite begrimed. How d'ye do, how d'ye do, how d'ye do? What's the matterwith you, huddled there as if you were on a street-crossing? I want youto think this a refuge--but not of that kind!" he laughed. "Sitdown, for heaven's sake; lie down--be happy! Of course you've madeacquaintance all--except that Mitchy's so modest! Tea, tea!"--and hebustled to the table, where the next minute he appeared rather helpless. "Nanda, you blessed child, do YOU mind making it? How jolly of you!--areyou all right?" He seemed, with this, for the first time, to be aware ofsomebody's absence. "Your mother isn't coming? She let you come alone?How jolly of her!" Pulling off her gloves Nanda had come immediatelyto his assistance; on which, quitting the table and laying hands on Mr. Longdon's shoulder to push him toward a sofa, he continued to talk, tosound a note of which the humour was the exaggeration of his flurry. "How jolly of you to be willing to come--most awfully kind! I hope sheisn't ill? Do, Mitchy, lie down. Down, Mitchy, down!--that's the onlyway to keep you. " He had waited for no account of Mrs. Brookenham'shealth, and it might have been apparent--still to our sharpspectator--that he found nothing wonderful in her daughter's unsupportedarrival. 

"I can make tea beautifully, " she said from behind her table. "Mothershowed me how this morning. "

"This morning?"--and Mitchy, who, before the fire and still erect, had declined to be laid low, greeted the simple remark with uproariousmirth. "Dear young lady, you're the most delicious family!"

"She showed me at breakfast about the little things to do. She thoughtI might have to make it here and told me to offer, " the girl went on. "I haven't yet done it this way at home--I usually have my tea upstairs. They bring it up in a cup, all made and very weak, with a piece ofbread-and-butter in the saucer. That's because I'm so young. Tishy neverlets me touch hers either; so we had to make up for lost time. That'swhat mother said"--she followed up her story, and her young distinctnesshad clearly something to do with a certain pale concentration in Mr. Longdon's face. "Mother isn't ill, but she told me already yesterdayshe wouldn't come. She said it's really all for ME. I'm sure I hope itis!"--with which there flickered in her eyes, dimly but perhaps allthe more prettily, the first intimation they had given of the light oflaughter. "She told me you'd understand, Mr. Van--from something you'vesaid to her. It's for my seeing Mr. Longdon without--she thinks--herspoiling it. "

"Oh my dear child, 'spoiling it'!" Vanderbank protested as he took acup of tea from her to carry to their friend. "When did your mother everspoil anything? I told her Mr. Longdon wanted to see you, but I didn'tsay anything of his not yearning also for the rest of the family. "

A sound of protest rather formless escaped from the gentleman named, butNanda continued to carry out her duty. "She told me to ask why he hadn'tbeen again to see her. Mr. Mitchy, sugar?--isn't that the way to say it?Three lumps? You're like me, only that I more often take five. " Mitchyhad dashed forward for his tea; she gave it to him; then she added withher eyes on Mr. Longdon's, which she had had no difficulty in catching:"She told me to ask you all sorts of things. "

This acquaintance had got up to take his cup from Vanderbank, whosehand, however, dealt with him on the question of his sitting down again. Mr. Longdon, resisting, kept erect with a low gasp that his hostonly was near enough to catch. This suddenly appeared to confirm animpression gathered by Vanderbank in their contact, a strange sense thathis visitor was so agitated as to be trembling in every limb. It broughtto his own lips a kind of ejaculation--"I SAY!" But even as he spokeMr. Longdon's face, still white, but with a smile that was not all pain, seemed to supplicate him not to notice; and he was not a man to requiremore than this to achieve a divination as deep as it was rapid. "Whywe've all been scattered for Easter, haven't we?" he asked of Nanda. "Mr. Longdon has been at home, your mother and father have been payingvisits, I myself have been out of London, Mitchy has been to Paris, andyou--oh yes, I know where you've been. "

"Ah we all know that--there has been such a row made about it!" Mitchysaid. 

"Yes, I've heard of the feeling there is, " Nanda replied. 

"It's supposed to be awful, my knowing Tishy--quite too awful. "

Mr. Longdon, with Vanderbank's covert aid, had begun to appear to havepulled himself together, dropping back on his sofa and attending in amanner to his tea. It might have been with the notion of showing himselfat ease that he turned, on this, a benevolent smile to the girl. "Butwhat, my dear, is the objection--?"

She looked gravely from him to Vanderbank and to Mitchy, and then backagain from one of these to the other. "Do you think I ought to say?"

They both laughed and they both just appeared uncertain, but Vanderbankspoke first. "I don't imagine, Nanda, that you really know. "

"No--as a family, you're perfection!" Mitchy broke out. Before the fireagain, with his cup, he addressed his hilarity to Mr. Longdon. "I toldyou a tremendous lot, didn't I? But I didn't tell you about that. "

His elder maintained, yet with a certain vagueness, the attitude ofamiable enquiry. "About the--a--family?"

"Well, " Mitchy smiled, "about its ramifications. This young lady has atremendous friendship--and in short it's all very complicated. "

"My dear Nanda, " said Vanderbank, "it's all very simple. Don't believe aword of anything of the sort. "

He had spoken as with the intention of a large vague optimism; but therewas plainly something in the girl that would always make for lucidity. "Do you mean about Carrie Donner? I DON'T believe it, and at any rateI don't think it's any one's business. I shouldn't have a very highopinion of a person who would give up a friend. " She stopped short withthe sense apparent that she was saying more than she meant, though, strangely, as if it had been an effect of her type and of her voice, there was neither pertness nor passion in the profession she had justmade. Curiously wanting as she seemed both in timidity and in levity, she was to a certainty not self-conscious--she was extraordinarilysimple. Mr. Longdon looked at her now with an evident surrender to hisextreme interest, and it might well have perplexed him to see her atonce so downright as from experience and yet of so fresh and sweet atenderness of youth. 

"That's right, that's right, my dear young lady: never, never give up afriend for anything any one says!" It was Mitchy who rang out with thislively wisdom, the action of which on Mr. Longdon--unless indeed it wasthe action of something else--was to make that personage, in a mannerthat held the others watching him in slight suspense, suddenly spring tohis feet again, put down his teacup carefully on a table near and thenwithout a word, as if no one had been present, quietly wander away anddisappear through the door left open on Vanderbank's entrance. Itopened into a second, a smaller sitting-room, into which the eyes of hiscompanions followed him. 

"What's the matter?" Nanda asked. "Has he been taken ill?"

"He IS 'rum, ' my dear Van, " Mitchy said; "but you're right--of a charm, a distinction! In short just the sort of thing we want. "

"The sort of thing we 'want'--I dare say!" Vanderbank laughed. "But it'snot the sort of thing that's to be had for the asking--it's a sort weshall be mighty lucky if we can get!"

Mitchy turned with amusement to Nanda. "Van has invented him and, withthe natural greed of the inventor, won't let us have him cheap. Well, "he went on, "I'll 'stand' my share. "

"The difficulty is that he's so much too good for us, " Vanderbankexplained. 

"Ungrateful wretch, " his friend cried, "that's just what I've beentelling him that YOU are! Let the return you make not be to depriveme--!"

"Mr. Van's not at all too good for ME, if you mean that, " Nanda brokein. She had finished her tea-making and leaned back in her chair withher hands folded on the edge of the tray. 

Vanderbank only smiled at her in silence, but Mitchy took it up. "There's nobody too good for you, of course; only you're not quite, don't you know? IN our set. You're in Mrs. Grendon's. I know what you'regoing to say--that she hasn't got any set, that she's just a looselittle white flower dropped on the indifferent bosom of the world. Butyou're the small sprig of tender green that, added to her, makes herimmediately 'compose. '"

Nanda looked at him with her cold kindness. "What nonsense you do talk!"

"Your tone's sweet to me, " he returned, "as showing that you don't thinkME, either, too good for you. No one, remember, will take that for yourexcuse when the world some day sees me annihilated by your having put anend to our so harmless relations. "

The girl appeared to lose herself a moment in the--abysmal humanity overwhich his fairly fascinating ugliness played like the whirl of an eddy. "Martyr!" she gently exclaimed. But there was no smile with it. Sheturned to Vanderbank, who, during the previous minute, had moved towardthe neighbouring room, then faltering, taking counsel of discretion, hadcome back on a scruple. "What IS the matter?"

"What do you want to get out of him, you wretch?" Mitchy went on astheir host for an instant said nothing. 

Vanderbank, whose handsome face had a fine thought in it, looked atrifle absently from one of them to the other; but it was to Nanda hespoke. "Do you like him, Nanda?"

She showed surprise at the question. "How can I know so soon?"

"HE knows already. "

Mitchy, with his eyes on her, became radiant to interpret. "He knowsthat he's pierced to the heart!"

"The matter with him, as you call it, " Vanderbank brought out, "is oneof the most beautiful things I've ever seen. " He looked at her as with ahope she'd understand. "Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful!"

"Precisely, " Mitchy continued; "the victim done for by one glance of thegoddess!"

Nanda, motionless in her chair, fixed her other friend with clearcuriosity. "'Beautiful'? Why beautiful?"

Vanderbank, about to speak, checked himself. 

"I won't spoil it. Have it from HIM!"--and, returning to their friend, he this time went out. 

Mitchy and Nanda looked at each other. "But isn't it rather awful?"Mitchy demanded. 

She got up without answering; she slowly came away from the table. "Ithink I do know if I like him. "

"Well you may, " Mitchy exclaimed, "after his putting before youprobably, on the whole, the greatest of your triumphs. "

"And I also know, I think, Mr. Mitchy, that I like YOU. " She spokewithout attention to this hyperbole. 

"In spite of my ineffectual attempts to be brilliant? That's a joy, " hewent on, "if it's not drawn out by the mere clumsiness of my flattery. "She had turned away from him, kindly enough, as if time for his talk inthe air were always to be allowed him: she took in vaguely Vanderbank'sbooks and prints. "Why didn't your mother come?" Mitchy then enquired. 

At this she again looked at him. "Do you mention her as a way ofalluding to something you guess she must have told me?"

"That I've always supposed I make your flesh creep? Yes, " Mitchyadmitted; "I see she must have said to you: 'Be nice to him, to show himit isn't quite so bad as that!' So you ARE nice--so you always WILL benice. But I adore you, all the same, without illusions. "

She had opened at one of the tables, unperceivingly, a big volume ofwhich she turned the leaves. "Don't 'adore' a girl, Mr. Mitchy--justhelp her. That's more to the purpose. "

"Help you?" he cried. "You bring tears to my eyes!"

"Can't a girl have friends?" she went on. "I never heard of anythingso idiotic. " Giving him, however, no chance to take her up on this, shemade a quick transition. "Mother didn't come because she wants me now, as she says, more to share her own life. "

Mitchy looked at it. "But is this the way for her to share yours?"

"Ah that's another matter--about which you must talk to HER. She wantsme no longer to keep seeing only with her eyes. She's throwing me intothe world. "

Mitchy had listened with the liveliest interest, but he presently brokeinto a laugh. "What a good thing then that I'm there to catch you!"

Without--it might have been seen--having gathered the smallestimpression of what they enclosed, she carefully drew together again thecovers of her folio. There was deliberation in her movements. "I shallalways be glad when you're there. But where do you suppose they'vegone?" Her eyes were on what was visible of the other room, from whichthere arrived no sound of voices. 

"They're off there, " said Mitchy, "but just looking unutterable thingsabout you. The impression's too deep. Let them look, and tell memeanwhile if Mrs. Donner gave you my message. "

"Oh yes, she told me some humbug. "

"The humbug then was in the tone my perfectly sincere speech took fromherself. She gives things, I recognise, rather that sound. It's herweakness, " he continued, "and perhaps even one may say her danger. Allthe more reason you should help her, as I believe you're supposed to bedoing, aren't you? I hope you feel you are, " he earnestly added. 

He had spoken this time gravely enough, and with magnificent gravityNanda replied. "I HAVE helped her. Tishy's sure I have. That's whatTishy wants me for. She says that to be with some nice girl's really thebest thing for her. "

Poor Mitchy's face hereupon would have been interesting, would have beendistinctly touching to other eyes; but Nanda's were not heedful of it. "Oh, " he returned after an instant and without profane mirth, "thatseems to me the best thing for any one. "

Vanderbank, however, might have caught his expression, for Vanderbanknow reappeared, smiling on the pair as if struck by their intimacy. "Howyou ARE keeping it up!" Then to Nanda persuasively: "Do you mind goingto him in there? I want him so really to see you. It's quite, you know, what he came for. "

Nanda seemed to wonder. "What will he do to me? Anything dreadful?"

"He'll tell you what I meant just now. "

"Oh, " said Nanda, "if he's a person who can tell me sometimes what youmean--!" With which she went quickly off. 

"And can't _I_ hear?" Mitchy asked of his host while they looked afterher. 

"Yes, but only from me. " Vanderbank had pushed him to a seat again andwas casting about for cigarettes. "Be quiet and smoke, and I'll tellyou. "

Mitchy, on the sofa, received with meditation a light. "Will sheunderstand? She has everything in the world but one, " he added. "Butthat's half. "

Vanderbank, before him, lighted for himself. "What is it?"

"A sense of humour. "

"Oh yes, she's serious. "

Mitchy smoked a little. "She's tragic. "

His friend, at the fire, watched a moment the empty portion of the otherroom, then walked across to give the door a light push that all butclosed it. "It's rather odd, " he remarked as he came back--"that's quitewhat I just said to him. But he won't treat her to comedy. "

III

"Is it the shock of the resemblance to her grandmother?" Vanderbank hadasked of Mr. Longdon on rejoining him in his retreat. This victim ofmemory, with his back turned, was gazing out of the window, and when inanswer he showed his face there were tears in his eyes. His answerin fact was just these tears, the significance of which Vanderbankimmediately recognised. "It's still greater then than you gathered fromher photograph?"

"It's the most extraordinary thing in the world. I'm too absurd to be soupset"--Mr. Longdon smiled through his tears--"but if you had knownLady Julia you'd understand. It's SHE again, as I first knew her, to thelife; and not only in feature, in stature, in colour, in movement, butin every bodily mark and sign, in every look of the eyes above all--ohto a degree!--in the sound, in the charm of the voice. " He spoke low andconfidentially, but with an intensity that now relieved him--he was asrestless as with a discovery. He moved about as with a sacred awe--hemight a few steps away have been in the very presence. "She's ALL LadyJulia. There isn't a touch of her mother. It's unique--an absoluterevival. I see nothing of her father, I see nothing of any one else. Isn't it thought wonderful by every one?" he went on. "Why didn't youtell me?"

"To have prepared you a little?"--Vanderbank felt almost guilty. "Isee--I should have liked to make more of it; though, " he added alllucidly, "I might so, by putting you on your guard, have caused myselfto lose what, if you'll allow me to say it, strikes me as one of themost touching tributes I've ever seen rendered to a woman. In fact, however, how could I know? I never saw Lady Julia, and you had inadvance all the evidence I could have: the portrait--pretty bad, in thetaste of the time, I admit--and the three or four photographs you musthave noticed with it at Mrs. Brook's. These things must have comparedthemselves for you with my photograph in there of the granddaughter. The similarity of course we had all observed, but it has taken yourwonderful memory and your happy vision to put into it all the detail. "

Mr. Longdon thought a moment, giving a dab with his pocket-handkerchief. "Very true--you're quite right. It's far beyond any identity in thepictures. But why did you tell me, " he added more sharply, "that sheisn't beautiful?"

"You've deprived me, " Vanderbank laughed, "of the power of expressingcivilly any surprise at your finding her so. But I said to you, pleaseremember, nothing that qualified a jot my sense of the special stamp ofher face. I've always positively found in it a recall of the type of theperiod you must be thinking of. It isn't a bit modern. It's a face ofSir Thomas Lawrence--"

"It's a face of Gainsborough!" Mr. Longdon returned with spirit. "LadyJulia herself harked back. "

Vanderbank, clearly, was equally touched and amused. "Let us say at oncethat it's a face of Raphael. "

His old friend's hand was instantly on his arm. "That's exactly what Ioften said to myself of Lady Julia's. "

"The forehead's a little too high, " said Vanderbank. 

"But it's just that excess that, with the exquisite eyes and theparticular disposition round it of the fair hair, makes the individualgrace, makes the beauty of the resemblance. "

Released by Lady Julia's lover, the young man in turn grasped him asan encouragement to confidence. "It's a face that should have thelong side-ringlets of 1830. It should have the rest of the personalarrangement, the pelisse, the shape of bonnet, the sprigged muslindress and the cross-laced sandals. It should have arrived in a pea-green'tilbury' and be a reader of Mrs. Radcliffe. And all this to completethe Raphael!"

Mr. Longdon, who, his discovery proclaimed, had begun, as might havebeen said, to live with it, looked hard a moment at his companion. "Howyou've observed her!"

Vanderbank met it without confusion. "Whom haven't I observed? Do youlike her?" he then rather oddly and abruptly asked. 

The old man broke away again. "How can I tell--with such disparities?"

"The manner must be different, " Vanderbank suggested. "And the thingsshe says. "

His visitor was before him again. "I don't know what to make of them. They don't go with the rest of her. Lady Julia, " said Mr. Longdon, "wasrather shy. "

On this too his host could meet him. "She must have been. AndNanda--yes, certainly--doesn't give that impression. "

"On the contrary. But Lady Julia was gay!" he added with an eagernessthat made Vanderbank smile. 

"I can also see that. Nanda doesn't joke. And yet, " Vanderbank continuedwith his exemplary candour, "we mustn't speak of her, must we? as if shewere bold and grim. "

Mr. Longdon fixed him. "Do you think she's sad?"

They had preserved their lowered tone and might, with their headstogether, have been conferring as the party "out" in some game with thecouple in the other room. "Yes. Sad. " But Vanderbank broke off. "I'llsend her to you. " Thus it was he had come back to her. 

Nanda, on joining the elder man, went straight to the point. "He saysit's so beautiful--what you feel on seeing me: if that IS what hemeant. " Mr. Longdon kept silent again at first, only smiling at her, butless strangely now, and then appeared to look about him for some placewhere she could sit near him. There was a sofa in this room too, onwhich, observing it, she quickly sank down, so that they were presentlytogether, placed a little sideways and face to face. She had shownperhaps that she supposed him to have wished to take her hand, but heforbore to touch her, though letting her feel all the kindness of hiseyes and their long backward vision. These things she evidently feltsoon enough; she went on before he had spoken. "I know how well you knewmy grandmother. Mother has told me--and I'm so glad. She told me to sayto you that she wants YOU to tell me. " Just a shade, at this, might haveappeared to drop over his face, but who was there to know if the girlobserved it? It didn't prevent at any rate her completing her statement. "That's why she wished me to-day to come alone. She said she wished youto have me all to yourself. "

No, decidedly, she wasn't shy: that mute reflexion was in the air aninstant. "That, no doubt, is the best way. I thank her very much. Icalled, after having had the honour of dining--I called, I think, threetimes, " he went on with a sudden displacement of the question; "but Ihad the misfortune each time to miss her. "

She kept looking at him with her crude young clearness. "I didn't knowabout that. Mother thinks she's more at home than almost any one. She does it on purpose: she knows what it is, " Nanda pursued with herperfect gravity, "for people to be disappointed of finding her. "

"Oh I shall find her yet, " said Mr. Longdon. "And then I hope I shallalso find YOU. "

She appeared simply to consider the possibility and after an instant tothink well of it. "I dare say you will now, for now I shall be down. "

Her companion just blinked. "In the drawing-room, you mean--always?"

It was quite what she meant. "Always. I shall see all the people whocome. It will be a great thing for me. I want to hear all the talk. Mr. Mitchett says I ought to--that it helps to form the young mind. I hoped, for that reason, " she went on with the directness that made her honestyalmost violent--"I hoped there would be more people here to-day. "

"I'm very glad there are not!"--the old man rang equally clear. "Mr. Vanderbank kindly arranged the matter for me just this way. I met him atdinner, at your mother's, three weeks ago, and he brought me home herethat night, when, as knowing you so differently, we took the liberty oftalking you all over. It naturally had the effect of making me want tobegin with you afresh--only that seemed difficult too without furtherhelp. This he good-naturedly offered me; he said"--and Mr. Longdonrecovered his spirits to repeat it--"'Hang it, I'll have 'em here foryou!'"

"I see--he knew we'd come. " Then she caught herself up. "But we haven'tcome, have we?"

"Oh it's all right--it's all right. To me the occasion's brilliant andthe affluence great. I've had such talk with those young men--"

"I see"--she was again prompt, but beyond any young person he had evermet she might have struck him as literal. "You're not used to such talk. Neither am I. It's rather wonderful, isn't it? They're thought awfullyclever, Mr. Van and Mr. Mitchy. Do you like them?" she pushed on. 

Mr. Longdon, who, as compared with her, might have struck a spectatoras infernally subtle, took an instant to think. "I've never met Mr. Mitchett before. "

"Well, he always thinks one doesn't like him, " Nanda explained. "But onedoes. One ought to, " she added. 

Her companion had another pause. "He likes YOU. "

Oh Mr. Longdon needn't have hesitated! "I know he does. He has toldmother. He has told lots of people. "

"He has told even you, " Mr. Longdon smiled. 

"Yes--but that isn't the same. I don't think he's a bit dreadful, " shepursued. Still, there was a greater interest. "Do you like Mr. Van?"

This time her interlocutor indeed hung fire. "How can I tell? He dazzlesme. "

"But don't you like that?" Then before he could really say: "You'reafraid he may be false?"

At this he fairly laughed. "You go to the point!" She just coloured tohave amused him so, but he quickly went on: "I think one has a littlenatural nervousness at being carried off one's feet. I'm afraid I'vealways liked too much to see where I'm going. "

"And you don't with him?" She spoke with her curious hard interest. "Iunderstand. But I think I like to be dazzled. "

"Oh you've got time--you can come round again; you've a margin foraccidents, for disappointments and recoveries: you can take one thingwith another. But I've only my last little scrap. "

"And you want to make no mistakes--I see. "

"Well, I'm too easily upset. "

"Ah so am I, " said Nanda. "I assure you that in spite of what you sayI want to make no mistakes either. I've seen a great many--though youmightn't think it, " she persisted; "I really know what they may be. Doyou like ME?" she brought forth. But even on this she spared him too; alook appeared to have been enough for her. "How can you say, of course, already?--if you can't say for Mr. Van. I mean as you've seen him somuch. When he asked me just now if I liked YOU I told him it was toosoon. But it isn't now; you see it goes fast. I DO like you. " She gavehim no time to acknowledge this tribute, but--as if it were a matter ofcourse--tried him quickly with something else. "Can you say if you likemother?"

He could meet it pretty well now. "There are immense reasons why Ishould. "

"Yes--I know about them, as I mentioned: mother has told me. " But whatshe had to put to him kept up his surprise. "Have reasons anything todo with it? I don't believe you like her!" she exclaimed. "SHE doesn'tthink so, " she added. 

The old man's face at last, partly bewildered, partly reassured, showedsomething finer still in the effect she produced. "Into what mysteriesyou plunge!"

"Oh we do; that's what every one says of us. We discuss everything andevery one--we're always discussing each other. I think we must be rathercelebrated for it, and it's a kind of trick--isn't it?--that's catching. But don't you think it's the most interesting sort of talk? Mother sayswe haven't any prejudices. YOU have, probably, quantities--and beautifulones: so perhaps I oughtn't to tell you. But you'll find out foryourself. "

"Yes--I'm rather slow; but I generally end by finding out. And I've got, thank heaven, " said Mr. Longdon, "quite prejudices enough. "

"Then I hope you'll tell me some of them, " Nanda replied in a toneevidently marking how much he pleased her. 

"Ah you must do as _I_ do--you must find out for yourself. Yourresemblance to your grandmother is quite prodigious, " he immediatelyadded. 

"That's what I wish you'd tell me about--your recollection of her andyour wonderful feeling about her. Mother has told me things, but that Ishould have something straight from you is exactly what she also wants. My grandmother must have been awfully nice, " the girl rambled on, "and Isomehow don't see myself at all as the same sort of person. "

"Oh I don't say you're in the least the same sort: all I allude to, "Mr. Longdon returned, "is the miracle of the physical heredity. Nothingcould be less like her than your manner and your talk. "

Nanda looked at him with all her honesty. "They're not so good, you mustthink. "

He hung fire an instant, but was as honest as she. "You're separatedfrom her by a gulf--and not only of time. Personally, you see, youbreathe a different air. "

She thought--she quite took it in. "Of course. And you breathe thesame--the same old one, I mean, as my grandmother. "

"The same old one, " Mr. Longdon smiled, "as much as possible. Some dayI'll tell you more of what you're curious of. I can't go into it now. "

"Because I've upset you so?" Nanda frankly asked. 

"That's one of the reasons. "

"I think I can see another too, " she observed after a moment. "You'renot sure how much I shall understand. But I shall understand, " she wenton, "more, perhaps, than you think. In fact, " she said earnestly, "IPROMISE to understand. I've some imagination. Had my grandmother?"she asked. Her actual sequences were not rapid, but she had alreadyanticipated him. "I've thought of that before, because I put the samequestion to mother. "

"And what did your mother say?"

"'Imagination--dear mamma? Not a grain!'"

The old man showed a faint flush. "Your mother then has a supply thatmakes up for it. "

The girl fixed him on this with a deeper attention. "You don't like herhaving said that. "

His colour came stronger, though a slightly strained smile did what itcould to diffuse coolness. "I don't care a single scrap, my dear, inrespect to the friend I'm speaking of, for any judgement but my own. "

"Not even for her daughter's?"

"Not even for her daughter's. " Mr. Longdon had not spoken loud, but herang as clear as a bell. 

Nanda, for admiration of it, broke almost for the first time into thesemblance of a smile. "You feel as if my grandmother were quite YOURproperty!"

"Oh quite. "

"I say--that's splendid!"

"I'm glad you like it, " he answered kindly. 

The very kindness pulled her up. "Pardon my speaking so, but I'm sureyou know what I mean. You mustn't think, " she eagerly continued, "thatmother won't also want to hear you. "

"On the subject of Lady Julia?" He gently, but very effectively, shookhis head. "Your mother shall never hear me. "

Nanda appeared to wonder at it an instant, and it made her completelygrave again. "It will be all for ME?"

"Whatever there may be of it, my dear. "

"Oh I shall get it all out of you, " she returned without hesitation. Her mixture of free familiarity and of the vividness of evocation ofsomething, whatever it was, sharply opposed--the little worry ofthis contradiction, not altogether unpleasant, continued to fillhis consciousness more discernibly than anything else. It was reallyreflected in his quick brown eyes that she alternately drew him on andwarned him off, but also that what they were beginning more and more tomake out was an emotion of her own trembling there beneath her tension. His glimpse of it widened--his glimpse of it fairly triumphed whensuddenly, after this last declaration, she threw off with quite thesame accent but quite another effect: "I'm glad to be like any one thethought of whom makes you so good! You ARE good, " she continued; "I seealready how I shall feel it. " She stared at him with tears, the sight ofwhich brought his own straight back; so that thus for a moment they satthere together. 

"My dear child!" he at last simply murmured. But he laid his hand on hernow, and her own immediately met it. 

"You'll get used to me, " she said with the same gentleness that theresponse of her touch had tried to express; "and I shall be so carefulwith you that--well, you'll see!" She broke short off with a quaver andthe next instant she turned--there was some one at the door. Vanderbank, still not quite at his ease, had come back to smile upon them. Detachingherself from Mr. Longdon she got straight up to meet him. "You wereright, Mr. Van. It's beautiful, beautiful, beautiful!"

BOOK FOURTH. MR. CASHMORE

Harold Brookenham, whom Mr. Cashmore, ushered in and announced, hadfound in the act of helping himself to a cup of tea at the tableapparently just prepared--Harold Brookenham arrived at the point witha dash so direct as to leave the visitor an option between but twosuppositions: that of a desperate plunge, to have his shame soon over, or that of the acquired habit of such appeals, which had taught him theeasiest way. There was no great sharpness in the face of Mr. Cashmore, who was somehow massive without majesty; yet he mightn't have been proofagainst the suspicion that his young friend's embarrassment was aneasy precaution, a conscious corrective to the danger of audacity. Itwouldn't have been impossible to divine that if Harold shut his eyes andjumped it was mainly for the appearance of doing so. Experience was tobe taken as showing that one might get a five-pound note as one got alight for a cigarette; but one had to check the friendly impulse to askfor it in the same way. Mr. Cashmore had in fact looked surprised, yetnot on the whole so surprised as the young man seemed to have expectedof him. There was almost a quiet grace in the combination of promptitudeand diffidence with which Harold took over the responsibility of allproprietorship of the crisp morsel of paper that he slipped with slowfirmness into the pocket of his waistcoat, rubbing it gently in itspassage against the delicately buff-coloured duck of which that garmentwas composed. "So quite too awfully kind of you that I really don't knowwhat to say"--there was a marked recall, in the manner of this speech, of the sweetness of his mother's droop and the tenderness of her wail. It was as if he had been moved for the moment to moralise, but theeyes he raised to his benefactor had the oddest effect of marking thatpersonage himself as a theme for the moralist. 

Mr. Cashmore, who would have been very red-haired if he had not beenvery bald, showed a single eye-glass and a long upper lip; he was largeand jaunty, with little petulant movements and intense ejaculations thatwere not in the line of his type. "You may say anything you like if youdon't say you'll repay it. That's always nonsense--I hate it. "

Harold remained sad, but showed himself really superior. "Then I won'tsay it. " Pensively, a minute, he appeared to figure the words, in theirabsurdity, on the lips of some young man not, like himself, tactful. "Iknow just what you mean. "

"But I think, you know, that you ought to tell your father, " Mr. Cashmore said. 

"Tell him I've borrowed of you?"

Mr. Cashmore good-humouredly demurred. "It would serve me right--it'sso wretched my having listened to you. Tell him, certainly, " he went onafter an instant. "But what I mean is that if you're in such straits youshould speak to him like a man. "

Harold smiled at the innocence of a friend who could suppose him not tohave exhausted that resource. "I'm ALWAYS speaking to him like a man, and that's just what puts him so awfully out. He denies to my face thatI AM one. One would suppose, to hear him, not only that I'm a smallobjectionable child, but that I'm scarcely even human. He doesn'tconceive me as with human wants. "

"Oh, " Mr. Cashmore laughed, "you've all--you youngsters--as many wants, I know, as an advertisement page of the Times. "

Harold showed an admiration. "That's awfully good. If you think youought to speak of it, " he continued, "do it rather to mamma. " He notedthe hour. "I'll go, if you'll excuse me, to give you the chance. "

The visitor referred to his own watch. "It's your mother herself whogives the chances--the chances YOU take. "

Harold looked kind and simple. "She HAS come in, I know. She'll be withyou in a moment. "

He was halfway to the door, but Mr. Cashmore, though so easy, had notdone with him. "I suppose you mean that if it's only your mother who'stold, you may depend on her to shield you. "

Harold turned this over as if it were a questionable sovereign, but onsecond thoughts he wonderfully smiled. "Do you think that after you'velet me have it you can tell? You could, of course, if you hadn't. " Heappeared to work it out for Mr. Cashmore's benefit. "But I don't mind, "he added, "your telling mamma. "

"Don't mind, you mean really, its annoying her so awfully?"

The invitation to repent thrown off in this could only strike the youngman as absurd--it was so previous to any enjoyment. Harold liked thingsin their proper order; but at the same time his evolutions were quick. "I dare say I AM selfish, but what I was thinking was that the terrificwigging, don't you know?--well, I'd take it from HER. She knows aboutone's life--about our having to go on, by no fault of our own, asour parents start us. She knows all about wants--no one has more thanmamma. "

Mr. Cashmore soundlessly glared his amusement. "So she'll say it's allright?"

"Oh no; she'll let me have it hot. But she'll recognise that at sucha pass more must be done for a fellow, and that may lead tosomething--indirectly, don't you see? for she won't TELL my father, she'll only, in her own way, work on him--that will put me on a betterfooting and for which therefore at bottom I shall have to thank YOU!"

The eye assisted by Mr. Cashmore's glass had with a discernible growthof something like alarm fixed during this address the subject of hisbeneficence. The thread of their relations somehow lost itself in thesubtler twist, and he fell back on mere stature, position and property, things always convenient in the presence of crookedness. "I shall saynothing to your mother, but I think I shall be rather glad you're not ason of mine. "

Harold wondered at this new element in their talk. "Do your sonsnever--?"

"Borrow money of their mother's visitors?" Mr. Cashmore had taken himup, eager, evidently, quite to satisfy him; but the question was caughton the wing by Mrs. Brookenham herself, who had opened the door as herfriend spoke and who quickly advanced with an echo of it. 

"Lady Fanny's visitors?"--and, though her eyes rather avoided than methis own, she seemed to cover her ladyship's husband with a vague butpractised sympathy. "What on earth are you saying to Harold about them?"Thus it was that at the end of a few minutes Mr. Cashmore, on the sofaface to face with her, found his consciousness quite purged of itsactual sense of his weakness and a new turn given to the idea of what, in one's very drawing-room, might go on behind one's back. Harold hadquickly vanished--had been tacitly disposed of, and Mrs. Brook's callerhad moved even in the short space of time so far in another direction asto have drawn from her the little cold question: "'Presents'? You don'tmean money?"

He clearly felt the importance of expressing at least by his silence andhis eye-glass what he meant. "Her extravagance is beyond everything, andthough there are bills enough, God knows, that do come in to me, I don'tsee how she pulls through unless there are others that go elsewhere. "

Mrs. Brookenham had given him his tea--her own she had placed on a smalltable near her; and she could now respond freely to the impulse felt, on this, of settling herself to something of real interest. Except toHarold she was incapable of reproach, though there were of course shadesin her resignation, and her daughter's report of her to Mr. Longdon asconscious of an absence of prejudice would have been justified for aspectator by the particular feeling that Mr. Cashmore's speech causedher to disclose. What did this feeling wonderfully appear unlessstrangely irrelevant? "I've no patience when I hear you talk as if youweren't horribly rich. "

He looked at her an instant as if guessing she might have derived thatimpression from Harold. "What has that to do with it? Does a rich manenjoy any more than a poor his wife's making a fool of him?"

Her eyes opened wider: it was one of her very few ways of betrayingamusement. There was little indeed to be amused at here except hischoice of the particular invidious name. "You know I don't believe aword you say. "

Mr. Cashmore drank his tea, then rose to carry the cup somewhere and putit down, declining with a motion any assistance. When he was on the sofaagain he resumed their intimate talk. "I like tremendously to be withyou, but you mustn't think I've come here to let you say to me suchdreadful things as that. " He was an odd compound, Mr. Cashmore, and theair of personal good health, the untarnished bloom which sometimes lenta monstrous serenity to his mention of the barely mentionable, was onoccasion balanced or matched by his playful application of extravagantterms to matters of much less moment. "You know what I come to youfor, Mrs. Brook: I won't come any more if you're going to be horrid andimpossible. "

"You come to me, I suppose, because--for my deep misfortune, I assureyou--I've a kind of vision of things, of the wretched miseries in whichyou all knot yourselves up, which you yourselves are as little blessedwith as if, tumbling about together in your heap, you were a litter ofblind kittens. "

"Awfully good that--you do lift the burden of my trouble!" He hadlaughed out in the manner of the man who made notes for platform use ofthings that might serve; but the next moment he was grave again, as ifhis observation had reminded him of Harold's praise of his wit. It wasin this spirit that he abruptly brought out: "Where, by the way, is yourdaughter?"

"I haven't the least idea. I do all I can to enter into her life, butyou can't get into a railway train while it's on the rush. "

Mr. Cashmore swung back to hilarity. "You give me lots of things. Do youmean she's so 'fast'?" He could keep the ball going. 

Mrs. Brookenham obliged him with what she meant. "No; she's a tremendousdear, and we're great friends. But she has her free young life, which, by that law of our time that I'm sure I only want, like all other laws, once I know what they ARE, to accept--she has her precious freshness offeeling which I say to myself that, so far as control is concerned, Iought to respect. I try to get her to sit with me, and she does so alittle, because she's kind. But before I know it she leaves me again:she feels what a difference her presence makes in one's liberty oftalk. "

Mr. Cashmore was struck by this picture. "That's awfully charming ofher. "

"Isn't it too dear?" The thought of it, for Mrs. Brook, seemed fairly toopen out vistas. "The modern daughter!"

"But not the ancient mother!" Mr. Cashmore smiled. 

She shook her head with a world of accepted woe. "'Give me back, give meback one hour of my youth'! Oh I haven't a single thrill left to answera compliment. I sit here now face to face with things as they are. Theycome in their turn, I assure you--and they find me, " Mrs. Brook sighed, "ready. Nanda has stepped on the stage and I give her up the house. Besides, " she went on musingly, "it's awfully interesting. It IS themodern daughter--we're really 'doing' her, the child and I; and as themodern has always been my own note--I've gone in, I mean, frankly for myvery own Time--who is one, after all, that one should pretend to declineto go where it may lead?" Mr. Cashmore was unprepared with an answerto this question, and his hostess continued in a different tone: "It'ssweet her sparing one!"

This, for the visitor, was firmer ground. "Do you mean about talkingbefore her?"

Mrs. Brook's assent was positively tender. "She won't have a differencein my freedom. It's as if the dear thing KNEW, don't you see? what wemust keep back. She wants us not to have to think. It's quite maternal!"she mused again. Then as if with the pleasure of presenting it to himafresh: "That's the modern daughter!"

"Well, " said Mr. Cashmore, "I can't help wishing she were a trifle lessconsiderate. In that case I might find her with you, and I may tell youfrankly that I get more from her than I do from you. She has the greatmerit for me, in the first place, of not being such an admirer of mywife. "

Mrs. Brookenham took this up with interest. "No--you're right; shedoesn't, as I do, SEE Lady Fanny, and that's a kind of mercy. "

"There you are then, you inconsistent creature, " he cried with a laugh:"after all you DO believe me! You recognise how benighted it would befor your daughter not to feel that Fanny's bad. "

"You're too tiresome, my dear man, " Mrs. Brook returned, "with yourridiculous simplifications. Fanny's NOT 'bad'; she's magnificentlygood--in the sense of being generous and simple and true, too adorablyunaffected and without the least mesquinerie. She's a great calm silverstatue. "

Mr. Cashmore showed, on this, something of the strength that comes fromthe practice of public debate. "Then why are you glad your daughterdoesn't like her?"

Mrs. Brook smiled as with the sadness of having too much to triumph. "Because I'm not, like Fanny, without mesquinerie. I'm not generousand simple. I'm exaggeratedly anxious about Nanda. I care, in spite ofmyself, for what people may say. Your wife doesn't--she towers abovethem. I can be a shade less brave through the chance of my girl's nothappening to feel her as the rest of us do. "

Mr. Cashmore too heavily followed. "To 'feel' her?"

Mrs. Brook floated over. "There would be in that case perhaps somethingto hint to her not to shriek on the house-tops. When you say, " shecontinued, "that one admits, as regards Fanny, anything wrong, youpervert dreadfully what one does freely grant--that she's a greatglorious pagan. It's a real relief to know such a type--it's like aflash of insight into history. None the less if you ask me why then itisn't all right for young things to 'shriek' as I say, I have my answerperfectly ready. " After which, as her visitor seemed not only tooreduced to doubt it, but too baffled to distinguish audibly, for hiscredit, between resignation and admiration, she produced: "Because she'spurely instinctive. Her instincts are splendid--but it's terrific. "

"That's all I ever maintained it to be!" Mr. Cashmore cried. "It ISterrific. "

"Well, " his friend answered, "I'm watching her. We're all watching her. It's like some great natural poetic thing--an Alpine sunrise or a bighigh tide. "

"You're amazing!" Mr. Cashmore laughed. "I'm watching her too. "

"And I'm also watching YOU!" Mrs. Brook lucidly continued. "What I don'tfor a moment believe is that her bills are paid by any one. It's MUCHmore probable, " she sagaciously observed, "that they're not paid atall. "

"Oh well, if she can get on that way--!"

"There can't be a place in London, " Mrs. Brook pursued, "where they'renot delighted to dress such a woman. She shows things, don't you see?as some fine tourist region shows the placards in the fields and theposters on the rocks. And what proof can you adduce?" she asked. 

Mr. Cashmore had grown restless; he picked a stray thread off the kneeof his trousers. "Ah when you talk about 'adducing'--!" He appeared tointimate--as with the hint that if she didn't take care she might borehim--that it was the kind of word he used only in the House of Commons. 

"When I talk about it you can't meet me, " she placidly returned. But shefixed him with her weary penetration. "You try to believe what you CAN'Tbelieve, in order to give yourself excuses. And she does the same--onlyless, for she recognises less in general the need of them. She's sogrand and simple. "

Poor Mr. Cashmore stared. "Grander and simpler than I, you mean?"

Mrs. Brookenham thought. "Not simpler--no; but very much grander. Shewouldn't, in the case you conceive, recognise really the need of WHATyou conceive. "

Mr. Cashmore wondered--it was almost mystic. "I don't understand you. "

Mrs. Brook, seeing it all from dim depths, tracked it further andfurther. "We've talked her over so!"

Mr. Cashmore groaned as if too conscious of it. "Indeed we have!"

"I mean WE"--and it was wonderful how her accent discriminated. "We'vetalked you too--but of course we talk to every one. " She had a pausethrough which there glimmered a ray from luminous hours, the innerintimacy which, privileged as he was, he couldn't pretend to share; thenshe broke out almost impatiently: "We're looking after her--leave her toUS!"

His envy of this nearer approach to what so touched him than he couldhimself achieve was in his face, but he tried to throw it off. "I doubtif after all you're good for her. "

But Mrs. Brookenham knew. "She's just the sort of person we ARE goodfor, and the thing for her is to be with us as much as possible--justlive with us naturally and easily, listen to our talk, feel ourconfidence in her, be kept up, don't you know? by the sense of what weexpect of her splendid type, and so, little by little, let our influenceact. What I meant to say just now is that I do perfectly see her takingwhat you call presents. "

"Well then, " Mr. Cashmore enquired, "what do you want more?"

Mrs. Brook hung fire an instant--she seemed on the point of telling him. "I DON'T see her, as I said, recognising the obligation. "

"The obligation--?"

"To give anything back. Anything at all. " Mrs. Brook was positive. "Thecomprehension of petty calculations? Never!"

"I don't say the calculations are petty, " Mr. Cashmore objected. 

"Well, she's a great creature. If she does fall--!" His hostess lostherself in the view, which was at last all before her. "Be sure we shallall know it. "

"That's exactly what I'm afraid of!"

"Then don't be afraid till we do. She would fall, as it were, on US, don't you see? and, " said Mrs. Brook, with decision this time inher headshake, "that couldn't be. We MUST keep her up--that's yourguarantee. It's rather too much, " she added with the same increase ofbriskness, "to have to keep YOU up too. Be very sure that if Carriereally wavers--"

"Carrie?"

His interruption was clearly too vague to be sincere, and it was as suchthat, going straight on, she treated it. "I shall never again giveher three minutes' attention. To answer to you for Fanny without beingable--"

"To answer to Fanny for me, do you mean?" He had flushed quickly as ifhe awaited her there. "It wouldn't suit you, you contend? Well then, I hope it will ease you off, " he went on with spirit, "to know that Iwholly LOATHE Mrs. Donner. "

Mrs. Brook, staring, met the announcement with an absolute change ofcolour. "And since when, pray?" It was as if a fabric had crumbled. "Shewas here but the other day, and as full of you, poor thing, as an egg ofmeat. "

Mr. Cashmore could only blush for her. "I don't say she wasn't. Mylife's a burden from her. "

Nothing, for a spectator, could have been so odd as Mrs. Brook'sdisappointment unless it had been her determination. "Have you done withher already?"

"One has never done with a buzzing insect--!"

"Until one has literally killed it?" Mrs. Brookenham wailed. "Ican't take that from you, my dear man: it was yourself who originallydistilled the poison that courses through her veins. " He jumped up atthis as if he couldn't bear it, presenting as he walked across the room, however, a large foolish fugitive back on which her eyes rested as on aproof of her penetration. "If you spoil everything by trying to deceiveme, how can I help you?"

He had looked, in his restlessness, at a picture or two, but he finallyturned round. "With whom is it you talk us over? With Petherton and hisfriend Mitchy? With your adored Vanderbank? With your awful Duchess?"

"You know my little circle, and you've not always despised it. " She methim on his return with a figure that had visibly flashed out for her. "Don't foul your own nest! Remember that after all we've more or lessproduced you. " She had a smile that attenuated a little her image, forthere were things that on a second thought he appeared ready to takefrom her. She patted the sofa as if to invite him again to be seated, and though he still stood before her it was with a face that seemed toshow how her touch went home. "You know I've never quite thought youdo us full honour, but it was because SHE took you for one of us thatCarrie first--"

At this, to stop her, he dropped straight into the seat. "I assure youthere has really been nothing. " With a continuation of his fidget hepulled out his watch. "Won't she come in at all?"

"Do you mean Nanda?"

"Talk me over with HER!" he smiled, "if you like. If you don't believeMrs. Donner is dust and ashes to me, " he continued, "you do littlejustice to your daughter. "

"Do you wish to break it to me that you're in love with Nanda?"

He hesitated, but only as if to give weight to his reply. "Awfully. Ican't tell you how I like her. "

She wondered. "And pray how will THAT help me? Help me, I mean, to helpyou. Is it what I'm to tell your wife?"

He sat looking away, but he evidently had his idea, which he at lastproduced. "Why wouldn't it be just the thing? It would exactly prove mypurity. "

There might have been in her momentary silence a hint of acceptance ofit as a practical contribution to their problem, and there were indeedseveral lights in which it could be considered. Mrs. Brook, on a quicksurvey, selected the ironic. "I see, I see. I might by the same lawarrange somehow that Lady Fanny should find herself in love with Edward. That would 'prove' HER purity. And you could be quite at ease, " shelaughed--"he wouldn't make any presents!"

Mr. Cashmore regarded her with a candour that was almost a reproach toher mirth. "I like your daughter better than I like you. "

But it only amused her more. "Is that perhaps because _I_ don't proveyour purity?"

What he might have replied remained in the air, for the door opened soexactly at the moment she spoke that he rose again with a start andthe butler, coming in, received her enquiry full in the face. Thisfunctionary's answer to it, however, had no more than the usualausterity. "Mr. Vanderbank and Mr. Longdon. "

These visitors took a minute to appear, and Mrs. Brook, notstirring--still only looking from the sofa calmly up at Mr. Cashmore--used the time, it might have seemed, for correcting anyimpression of undue levity made by her recent question. "Where did youlast meet Nanda?"

He glanced at the door to see if he were heard. "At the Grendons'. "

"So you do go there?"

"I went over from Hicks the other day for an hour. "

"And Carrie was there?"

"Yes. It was a dreadful horrid bore. But I talked only to yourdaughter. "

She got up--the others were at hand--and offered Mr. Cashmore anexpression that might have struck him as strange. "It's serious. "

"Serious?"--he had no eyes for the others. 

"She didn't tell me. "

He gave a sound, controlled by discretion, which sufficed none the lessto make Mr. Longdon--beholding him for the first time--receive it with alittle of the stiffness of a person greeted with a guffaw. Mr. Cashmorevisibly liked this silence of Nanda's about their meeting. 

II

Mrs. Brookenham, who had introduced him to the elder of her visitors, had also found in serving these gentlemen with tea, a chance to edge athim with an intensity not to be resisted: "Talk to Mr. Longdon--take himoff THERE. " She had indicated the sofa at the opposite end of the roomand had set him an example by possessing herself, in the place shealready occupied, of her "adored" Vanderbank. This arrangement, however, constituted for her, in her own corner, as soon as she had made it, theground of an appeal. "Will he hate me any worse for doing that?"

Vanderbank glanced at the others. "Will Cashmore, do you mean?"

"Dear no--I don't care whom HE hates. But with Mr. Longdon I want toavoid mistakes. "

"Then don't try quite so hard!" Vanderbank laughed. "Is that your reasonfor throwing him into Cashmore's arms?"

"Yes, precisely--so that I shall have these few moments to ask you fordirections: you must know him by this time so well. I only want, heavenhelp me, to be as nice to him as I possibly can. "

"That's quite the best thing for you and altogether why, this afternoon, I brought him: he might have better luck in finding you--it was hewho suggested it--than he has had by himself. I'm in a general way, "Vanderbank added, "watching over him. "

"I see--and he's watching over you. " Mrs. Brook's sweet vacancy hadalready taken in so much. "He wants to judge of what I may be doing toyou--he wants to save you from me. He quite detests me. "

Vanderbank, with the interest as well as the amusement, fairly threwhimself back. "There's nobody like you--you're too magnificent!"

"I AM; and that I can look the truth in the face and not be angry orsilly about it is, as you know, the one thing in the world for which Ithink a bit well of myself. "

"Oh yes, I know--I know; you're too wonderful!"

Mrs. Brookenham, in a brief pause, completed her covert consciousness. "They're doing beautifully--he's taking Cashmore with a seriousness!"

"And with what is Cashmore taking him?"

"With the hope that from one moment to another Nanda may come in. "

"But how on earth does that concern him?"

"Through an extraordinary fancy he has suddenly taken to her. " Mrs. Brook had been swift to master the facts. "He has been meeting her atTishy's, and she has talked to him so effectually about his behaviourthat she has quite made him cease to care for Carrie. He prefers HERnow--and of course she's much nicer. "

Vanderbank's attention, it was clear, had now been fully seized. "She'smuch nicer. Rather! What you mean is, " he asked the next moment, "thatNanda, this afternoon, has been the object of his call?"

"Yes--really; though he tried to keep it from me. She makes him feel, "she went on, "so innocent and good. "

Her companion for a moment said nothing; but then at last: "And WILL shecome in?"

"I haven't the least idea. "

"Don't you know where she is?"

"I suppose she's with Tishy, who has returned to town. "

Vanderbank turned this over. "Is that your system now--to ask noquestions?"

"Why SHOULD I ask any--when I want her life to be as much as possiblelike my own? It's simply that the hour has struck, as you know. From themoment she IS down the only thing for us is to live as friends. I thinkit's so vulgar, " Mrs. Brook sighed, "not to have the same good mannerswith one's children as one has with other people. She asks ME nothing. "

"Nothing?" Vanderbank echoed. 

"Nothing. "

He paused again; after which, "It's very disgusting!" he declared. Thenwhile she took it up as he had taken her word of a moment before, "It'svery preposterous, " he continued. 

Mrs. Brook appeared at a loss. "Do you mean her helping him?"

"It's not of Nanda I'm speaking--it's of him. " Vanderbank spoke with acertain impatience. "His being with her in any sort of direct relationat all. His mixing her up with his other beastly affairs. "

Mrs. Brook looked intelligent and wan about it, but also perfectlygood-humoured. "My dear man, he and his affairs ARE such twaddle!"

Vanderbank laughed in spite of himself. "And does that make it anybetter?"

Mrs. Brook thought, but presently had a light--she almost smiled withit. "For US!" Then more woefully, "Don't you want Carrie to be saved?"she asked. 

"Why should I? Not a jot. Carrie be hanged!"

"But it's for Fanny, " Mrs. Brook protested. "If Carrie IS rescued it'sa pretext the less for Fanny. " As the young man looked for an instantrather gloomily vague she softly quavered: "I suppose you don'tpositively WANT Fanny to bolt?"

"To bolt?"

"Surely I've not to remind you at this time of day how CaptainDent-Douglas is always round the corner with the post-chaise, and howtight, on our side, we're all clutching her. "

"But why not let her go?"

Mrs. Brook, at this, showed real resentment. "'Go'? Then what wouldbecome of us?" She recalled his wandering fancy. "She's the delight ofour life. "

"Oh!" Vanderbank sceptically murmured. 

"She's the ornament of our circle, " his companion insisted. "She will, she won't--she won't, she will! It's the excitement, every day, ofplucking the daisy over. " Vanderbank's attention, as she spoke, hadattached itself across the room to Mr. Longdon; it gave her thus animage of the way his imagination had just seemed to her to stray, andshe saw a reason in it moreover for her coming up in another place. 

"Isn't he rather rich?" She allowed the question all its effect ofabruptness. 

Vanderbank looked round at her. "Mr. Longdon? I haven't the least idea. "

"Not after becoming so intimate? It's usually, with people, the veryfirst thing I get my impression of. " There came into her face foranother glance at their friend no crudity of curiosity, but anexpression more tenderly wistful. "He must have some mysterious boxunder his bed. "

"Down in Suffolk?--a miser's hoard? Who knows? I dare say, " Vanderbankwent on. "He isn't a miser, but he strikes me as careful. "

Mrs. Brook meanwhile had thought it out. "Then he has something to becareful of; it would take something really handsome to inspire in a manlike him that sort of interest. With his small expenses all these yearshis savings must be immense. And how could he have proposed to mammaunless he had originally had money?"

If Vanderbank a little helplessly wondered he also laughed. "You mustremember your mother refused him. "

"Ah but not because there wasn't enough. "

"No--I imagine the force of the blow for him was just in the otherreason. "

"Well, it would have been in that one just as much if that one had beenthe other. " Mrs. Brook was sagacious, though a trifle obscure, and shepursued the next moment: "Mamma was so sincere. The fortune was nothingto her. That shows it was immense. "

"It couldn't have been as great as your logic, " Vanderbank smiled; "butof course if it has been growing ever since--!"

"I can see it grow while he sits there, " Mrs. Brook declared. But herlogic had in fact its own law, and her next transition was an equaljump. "It was too lovely, the frankness of your admission a minute agothat I affect him uncannily. Ah don't spoil it by explanations!" shebeautifully pleaded: "he's not the first and he won't be the last withwhom I shall not have been what they call a combination. The only thingthat matters is that I mustn't, if possible, make the case worse. So youmust guide me. What IS one to do?"

Vanderbank, now amused again, looked at her kindly. "Be yourself, mydear woman. Obey your fine instincts. "

"How can you be, " she sweetly asked, "so hideously hypocritical? Youknow as well as you sit there that my fine instincts are the thing inthe world you're most in terror of. 'Be myself?'" she echoed. "Whatyou'd LIKE to say is: 'Be somebody else--that's your only chance. ' Well, I'll try--I'll try. "

He laughed again, shaking his head. "Don't--don't. "

"You mean it's too hopeless? There's no way of effacing the badimpression or of starting a good one?" On this, with a drop of hismirth, he met her eyes, and for an instant, through the superficiallevity of their talk, they might have appeared to sound each other. Itlasted till Mrs. Brook went on: "I should really like not to lose him. "

Vanderbank seemed to understand and at last said: "I think you won'tlose him. "

"Do you mean you'll help me, Van, you WILL?" Her voice had at momentsthe most touching tones of any in England, and humble, helpless, affectionate, she spoke with a familiarity of friendship. "It's for thesense of the link with mamma, " she explained. "He's simply full of her. "

"Oh I know. He's prodigious. "

"He has told you more--he comes back to it?" Mrs. Brook eagerly asked. 

"Well, " the young man replied a trifle evasively, "we've had a greatdeal of talk, and he's the jolliest old boy possible, and in short Ilike him. "

"I see, " said Mrs. Brook blandly, "and he likes you in return as much ashe despises me. That makes it all right--makes me somehow so happy foryou. There's something in him--what is it?--that suggests the oncled'Amerique, the eccentric benefactor, the fairy godmother. He's alittle of an old woman--but all the better for it. " She hung fire but aninstant before she pursued: "What can we make him do for you?"

Vanderbank at this was very blank. "Do for me?"

"How can any one love you, " she asked, "without wanting to show it insome way? You know all the ways, dear Van, " she breathed, "in which Iwant to show it. "

He might have known them, something suddenly fixed in his face appearedto say, but they were not what was, on this speech of hers, mostimmediately present to him. "That for instance is the tone not to takewith him. "

"There you are!" she sighed with discouragement. "Well, only TELL me. "Then as he said nothing: "I must be more like mamma?"

His expression confessed to his feeling an awkwardness. "You're perhapsnot quite enough like her. "

"Oh I know that if he deplores me as I am now she would have done soquite as much; in fact probably, as seeing it nearer, a good deal more. She'd have despised me even more than he. But if it's a question, " Mrs. Brook went on, "of not saying what mamma wouldn't, how can I know, don'tyou see, what she WOULD have said?" Mrs. Brook became as wonderful as ifshe saw in her friend's face some admiring reflexion of the fine freedomof mind that--in such a connexion quite as much as in any other--shecould always show. "Of course I revere mamma just as much as he does, and there was everything in her to revere. But she was none the less inevery way a charming woman too, and I don't know, after all, do I? whateven she--in their peculiar relation--may not have said to him. "

Vanderbank's laugh came back. "Very good--very good. I return to myfirst idea. Try with him whatever comes into your head. You're a womanof genius after all, and genius mostly justifies itself. To make youright, " he went on pleasantly and inexorably, "might perhaps be to makeyou wrong. Since you HAVE so great a charm trust it not at all or all inall. That, I dare say, is all you can do. Therefore--yes--be yourself. "

These remarks were followed on either side by the repetition of asomewhat intenser mutual gaze, though indeed the speaker's eyes had morethe air of meeting his friend's than of seeking them. "I can't be YOUcertainly, Van, " Mrs. Brook sadly brought forth. 

"I know what you mean by that, " he rejoined in a moment. "You mean I'mhypocritical. "

"Hypocritical?"

"I'm diplomatic and calculating--I don't show him how bad I am; whereaswith you he knows the worst. "

Of this observation Mrs. Brook, whose eyes attached themselves againto Mr. Longdon, took at first no further notice than might have beenindicated by the way it set her musing. 

"'Calculating'?"--she at last took him up. "On what is there tocalculate?"

"Why, " said Vanderbank, "if, as you just hinted, he's a blessingin disguise--! I perfectly admit, " he resumed, "that I'm capable ofsacrifices to keep on good terms with him. "

"You're not afraid he'll bore you?"

"Oh yes--distinctly. "

"But he'll be worth it? Then, " Mrs. Brook said as he appeared to assent, "he'll be worth a great deal. " She continued to watch Mr. Longdon, who, without his glasses, stared straight at the floor while Mr. Cashmoretalked to him. She pursued, however, dispassionately enough: "He must beof a narrowness--!"

"Oh beautiful!"

She was silent again. "I shall broaden him. YOU won't. "

"Heaven forbid!" Vanderbank heartily concurred. "But none the less, asI've said, I'll help you. "

Her attention was still fixed. "It will be him you'll help. If you're tomake sacrifices to keep on good terms with him the first sacrifice willbe of me. " Then on his leaving this remark so long unanswered that shehad finally looked at him again: "I'm perfectly prepared for it. "

It was as if, jocosely enough, he had had time to make up his mind howto meet her. "What will you have--when he loved my mother?"

Nothing could have been droller than the gloom of her surprise. "Yourstoo?"

"I didn't tell you the other day--out of delicacy. "

Mrs. Brookenham darkly thought. "HE didn't tell me either. "

"The same consideration deterred him. But if I didn't speak of it, "Vanderbank continued, "when I arranged with you, after meeting him hereat dinner, that you should come to tea with him at my rooms--if I didn'tmention it then it wasn't because I hadn't learnt it early. "

Mrs. Brook more deeply sounded this affair, but she spoke with theexaggerated mildness that was the form mostly taken by her gaiety. "Itwas because of course it makes him out such a wretch! What becomes inthat case of his loyalty?"

"To YOUR mother's memory? Oh it's all right--he has it quite straight. She came later. Mine, after my father's death, had refused him. But yousee he might have been my stepfather. "

Mrs. Brookenham took it in, but she had suddenly a brighter light. "Hemight have been my OWN father! Besides, " she went on, "if his line is tolove the mothers why on earth doesn't he love ME? I'm in all conscienceenough of one. "

"Ah but isn't there in your case the fact of a daughter?" Vanderbankasked with a slight embarrassment. 

Mrs. Brookenham stared. "What good does that do me?"

"Why, didn't she tell you?"

"Nanda? She told me he doesn't like her any better than he likes me. "

Vanderbank in his turn showed surprise. "That's really what she said?"

"She had on her return from your rooms a most unusual fit of frankness, for she generally tells me nothing. "

"Well, " said Vanderbank, "how did she put it?"

Mrs. Brook reflected--recovered it. "'I like him awfully, but I am notin the least HIS idea. '"

"His idea of what?"

"That's just what I asked her. Of the proper grandchild for mamma. "

Vanderbank hesitated. "Well, she isn't. " Then after another pause: "Butshe'll do. "

His companion gave him a deep look. "You'll make her?"

He got up, and on seeing him move Mr. Longdon also rose, so that, facingeach other across the room, they exchanged a friendly signal or two. "I'll make her. "

III

Their hostess's account of Mr. Cashmore's motive for his staying on wasso far justified as that Vanderbank, while Mr. Longdon came over to Mrs. Brook, appeared without difficulty further to engage him. The lady inquestion meanwhile had drawn her old friend down, and her present methodof approach would have interested an observer aware of the unhappyconviction she had just privately expressed. Some trace indeed of theglimpse of it enjoyed by Mr. Cashmere's present interlocutor might havebeen detected in the restlessness that Vanderbank's desire to keep theother pair uninterrupted was still not able to banish from his attitude. Not, however, that Mrs. Brook took the smallest account of it as shequickly broke out: "How can we thank you enough, my dear man, for yourextraordinary kindness?" The reference was vivid, yet Mr. Longdon lookedso blank about it that she had immediately to explain. "I mean to dearVan, who has told us of your giving him the great happiness--unless he'stoo dreadfully mistaken--of letting him really know you. He's such atremendous friend of ours that nothing so delightful can befall himwithout its affecting us in the same way. " She had proceeded withconfidence, but suddenly she pulled up. "Don't tell me he IS mistaken--Ishouldn't be able to bear it. " She challenged the pale old man witha loveliness that was for the moment absolutely juvenile. "Aren't youletting him--really?"

Mr. Longdon's smile was queer. "I can't prevent him. I'm not a greathouse--to give orders to go over me. The kindness is Mr. Vanderbank'sown, and I've taken up, I'm afraid, a great deal of his precious time. "

"You have indeed. " Mrs. Brook was undiscouraged. "He has been talkingwith me just now of nothing else. You may say, " she went on, "that it'sI who have kept him at it. So I have, for his pleasure's a joy to us. Ifyou can't prevent what he feels, you know, you can't prevent either whatWE feel. "

Mr. Longdon's face reflected for a minute something he could scarcelyhave supposed her acute enough to make out, the struggle between hisreal mistrust of her, founded on the unconscious violence offered byher nature to his every memory of her mother, and his sense on the otherhand of the high propriety of his liking her; to which latter force hisinterest in Vanderbank was a contribution, inasmuch as he was obligedto recognise on the part of the pair an alliance it would have beendifficult to explain at Beccles. "Perhaps I don't quite see the value ofwhat your husband and you and I are in a position to do for him. "

"Do you mean because he's himself so clever?"

"Well, " said Mr. Longdon, "I dare say that's at the bottom of my feelingso proud to be taken up by him. I think of the young men of MY timeand see that he takes in more. But that's what you all do, " he ratherhelplessly sighed. "You're very, very wonderful!"

She met him with an almost extravagant eagerness that the meeting shouldbe just where he wished. "I don't take in everything, but I take in allI can. That's a great affair in London to-day, and I often feel as ifI were a circus-woman, in pink tights and no particular skirts, ridinghalf a dozen horses at once. We're all in the troupe now, I suppose, "she smiled, "and we must travel with the show. But when you say we'redifferent, " she added, "think, after all, of mamma. "

Mr. Longdon stared. "It's from her you ARE different. "

"Ah but she had an awfully fine mind. We're not cleverer than she. "

His conscious honest eyes looked away an instant. "It's perhaps enoughfor the present that you're cleverer than I! I was very glad the otherday, " he continued, "to make the acquaintance of your daughter. I hopedI should find her with you. "

If Mrs. Brook cast about it was but for a few seconds. "If she had knownyou were coming she would certainly have been here. She wanted so toplease you. " Then as her visitor took no further notice of this speechthan to ask if Nanda were out of the house she had to admit it as anaggravation of failure; but she pursued in the next breath: "Of courseyou won't care, but she raves about you. "

He appeared indeed at first not to care. "Isn't she eighteen?"--it wasoddly abrupt. 

"I have to think. Wouldn't it be nearer twenty?" Mrs. Brook audaciouslyreturned. She tried again. "She told me all about your interview. Istayed away on purpose--I had my idea. "

"And what WAS your idea?"

"I thought she'd remind you more of mamma if I wasn't there. But she's alittle person who sees. Perhaps you didn't think it, but she knew. "

"And what did she know?" asked Mr. Longdon, who was unable, however, tokeep from his tone a certain coldness which really deprived the questionof its proper curiosity. 

Mrs. Brook just showed the chill of it, but she had always her courage. "Why that you don't like her. " She had the courage of carrying offas well as of backing out. "She too has her little place with thecircus--it's the way we earn our living. "

Mr. Longdon said nothing for a moment and when he at last spoke it wasalmost with an air of contradiction. "She's your mother to the life. "

His hostess, for three seconds, looked at him hard. "Ah but with suchdifferences! You'll lose it, " she added with a headshake of pity. 

He had his eyes only on Vanderbank. "Well, my losses are my own affair. "Then his face came back. "Did she tell you I didn't like her?"

The indulgence in Mrs. Brook's view of his simplicity was marked. "Youthought you succeeded so in hiding it? No matter--she bears up. I thinkshe really feels a great deal as I do--that it's no matter how many ofus you hate if you'll only go on feeling as you do about mamma. Show usTHAT--that's what we want. "

Nothing could have expressed more the balm of reassurance, but the milddrops had fallen short of the spot to which they were directed. "'Show'you?"

Oh how he had sounded the word! "I see--you DON'T show. That's just whatNanda saw you thought! But you can't keep us from knowing it--can't keepit in fact, I think, from affecting your own behaviour. You'd be muchworse to us if it wasn't for the still warm ashes of your old passion. "It was an immense pity for Vanderbank's amusement that he was at thismoment too far off to fit to the expression of his old friend's face somuch of the cause of it as had sprung from the deeply informed toneof Mrs. Brook's allusion. To what degree the speaker herself made theconnexion will never be known to history, nor whether as she went on shethought she bettered her case or she simply lost her head. "The greatthing for us is that we can never be for you quite like other ordinarypeople. "

"And what's the great thing for ME?"

"Oh for you, there's nothing, I'm afraid, but small things--so smallthat they can scarcely be worth the trouble of your making them out. Ourbeing so happy that you've come back to us--if only just for a glimpseand to leave us again, in no matter what horror, for ever; our positivedelight in your being exactly so different; the pleasure we have intalking about you, and shall still have--or indeed all the more--evenif we've seen you only to lose you: whatever all this represents forourselves it's for none of us to pretend to say how much or how littleYOU may pick out of it. And yet, " Mrs. Brook wandered on, "however muchwe may disappoint you some little spark of the past can't help beingin us--for the past is the one thing beyond all spoiling: there it is, don't you think?--to speak for itself and, if need be, only OF itself. "She pulled up, but she appeared to have destroyed all power of speech inhim, so that while she waited she had time for a fresh inspiration. Itmight perhaps frankly have been mentioned as on the whole her finest. "Don't you think it possible that if you once get the point of view ofrealising that I KNOW--?"

She held the note so long that he at last supplied a sound. "That youknow what?"

"Why that compared with her I'm a poor creeping thing. I mean"--shehastened to forestall any protest of mere decency that would spoil heridea--"that of course I ache in every limb with the certainty of mydreadful difference. It isn't as if I DIDN'T know it, don't you see?There it is as a matter of course: I've helplessly but finally andcompletely accepted it. Won't THAT help you?" she so ingeniouslypleaded. "It isn't as if I tormented you with any recall of herwhatever. I can quite see how awful it would be for you if, with theeffect I produce on you, I did have her lovely eyes or her distinguishednose or the shape of her forehead or the colour of her hair. Strange asit is in a daughter I'm disconnected altogether, and don't you thinkI MAY be a little saved for you by becoming thus simply out ofthe question? Of course, " she continued, "your real trial is poorNanda--she's likewise so fearfully out of it and yet she's so fearfullyin it. And she, " said Mrs. Brook for a climax--"SHE doesn't know!"

A strange faint flush, while she talked, had come into Mr. Longdon'sface, and, whatever effect, as she put it, she produced on him, it wasclearly not that of causing his attention to wander. She held him atleast for weal or woe; his bright eyes grew brighter and opened into astare that finally seemed to offer him as submerged in mere wonder. Atlast, however, he rose to the surface, and he appeared to have lightedat the bottom of the sea on the pearl of the particular wisdomhe needed. "I dare say there may be something in what you soextraordinarily suggest. "

She jumped at it as if in pleasant pain. "In just letting me go--?"

But at this he dropped. "I shall never let you go. "

It renewed her fear. "Not just for what I AM?"

He rose from his place beside her, but looking away from her and withhis colour marked. "I shall never let you go, " he repeated. 

"Oh you angel!" She sprang up more quickly and the others were by thistime on their feet. "I've done it, I've done it!" she joyously cried toVanderbank; "he likes me, or at least he can bear me--I've found him theway; and now I don't care even if he SAYS I haven't. " Then she turnedagain to her old friend. "We can manage about Nanda--you needn't eversee her. She's 'down' now, but she can go up again. We can arrange it atany rate--c'est la moindre des choses. "

"Upon my honour I protest, " Mr. Cashmore exclaimed, "against anythingof the sort! I defy you to 'arrange' that young lady in any such mannerwithout also arranging ME. I'm one of her greatest admirers, " he gailyannounced to Mr. Longdon. 

Vanderbank said nothing, and Mr. Longdon seemed to show he would havepreferred to do the same: that visitor's eyes might have representedan appeal to him somehow to intervene, to show the due acquaintance, springing from practice and wanting in himself, with the art ofconversation developed to the point at which it could thus sustain alady in the upper air. Vanderbank's silence might, without his mere kindpacific look, have seemed almost inhuman. Poor Mr. Longdon had finallyto do his own simple best. "Will you bring your daughter to see me?" heasked of Mrs. Brookenham. 

"Oh, oh--that's an idea: will you bring her to see ME?" Mr. Cashmoreagain broke out. 

Mrs. Brook had only fixed Mr. Longdon with the air of unutterablethings. "You angel, you angel!"--they found expression but in that. 

"I don't need to ask you to bring her, do I?" Vanderbank now said to hishostess. "I hope you don't mind my bragging all over the place of thegreat honour she did me the other day in appearing quite by herself. "

"Quite by herself? I say, Mrs. Brook!" Mr. Cashmore flourished on. 

It was only now that she noticed him; which she did indeed but byanswering Vanderbank. "She didn't go for YOU I'm afraid--though ofcourse she might: she went because you had promised her Mr. Longdon. ButI should have no more feeling about her going to you--and should expecther to have no more--than about her taking a pound of tea, as shesometimes does, to her old nurse, or her going to read to the old womenat the workhouse. May you never have less to brag of!"

"I wish she'd bring ME a pound of tea!" Mr. Cashmore resumed. "Or ain'tI enough of an old woman for her to come and read to me at home?"

"Does she habitually visit the workhouse?" Mr. Longdon enquired of Mrs. Brook. 

This lady kept him in a moment's suspense, which another contemplationmight moreover have detected that Vanderbank in some degree shared. "Every Friday at three. "

Vanderbank, with a sudden turn, moved straight to one of the windows, and Mr. Cashmore had a happy remembrance. "Why, this is Friday--she musthave gone to-day. But does she stay so late?"

"She was to go afterwards to little Aggie: I'm trying so, in spite ofdifficulties, " Mrs. Brook explained, "to keep them on together. " Sheaddressed herself with a new thought to Mr. Longdon. "You must knowlittle Aggie--the niece of the Duchess: I forget if you've met theDuchess, but you must know HER too--there are so many things on whichI'm sure she'll feel with you. Little Aggie's the one, " she continued;"you'll delight in her; SHE ought to have been mamma's grandchild. "

"Dearest lady, how can you pretend or for a moment compare her--?" Mr. Cashmore broke in. "She says nothing to me at all. "

"She says nothing to any one, " Mrs. Brook serenely replied; "that's justher type and her charm--just above all her education. " Then she appealedto Vanderbank. "Won't Mr. Longdon be struck with little Aggie and won'the find it interesting to talk about all that sort of thing with theDuchess?"

Vanderbank came back laughing, but Mr. Longdon anticipated his reply. "What sort of thing do you mean?"

"Oh, " said Mrs. Brook, "the whole question, don't you know? of bringinggirls forward or not. The question of--well, what do you call it?--theirexposure. It's THE question, it appears--the question--of the future;it's awfully interesting and the Duchess at any rate is great on it. Nanda of course is exposed, " Mrs. Brook pursued--"fearfully. "

"And what on earth is she exposed to?" Mr. Cashmore gaily demanded. 

"She's exposed to YOU, it would seem, my dear fellow!" Vanderbankspoke with a certain discernible impatience not so much of the fact hementioned as of the turn of their talk. 

It might have been in almost compassionate deprecation of this weaknote that Mrs. Brookenham looked at him. Her own reply to Mr. Cashmere'squestion, however, was uttered at Mr. Longdon. "She's exposed--it's muchworse--to ME. But Aggie isn't exposed to anything--never has been andnever is to be; and we're watching to see if the Duchess can carry itthrough. "

"Why not, " asked Mr. Cashmore, "if there's nothing she CAN be exposed tobut the Duchess herself?"

He had appealed to his companions impartially, but Mr. Longdon, whoseattention was now all for his hostess, appeared unconscious. "If you'reall watching is it your idea that I should watch WITH you?"

The enquiry, on his lips, was a waft of cold air, the sense of whichclearly led Mrs. Brook to put her invitation on the right ground. "Notof course on the chance of anything's happening to the dear child--towhom nothing obviously CAN happen but that her aunt will marry her offin the shortest possible time and in the best possible conditions. No, the interest is much more in the way the Duchess herself steers. "

"Ah, she's in a boat, " Mr. Cashmore fully concurred, "that will take agood bit of that. "

It is not for Mr. Longdon's historian to overlook that if he was, notunnaturally, mystified he was yet also visibly interested. "What boat isshe in?"

He had addressed his curiosity, with politeness, to Mr. Cashmore, butthey were all arrested by the wonderful way in which Mrs. Brook managedto smile at once very dimly, very darkly, and yet make it take them allin. "I think YOU must tell him, Van. "

"Heaven forbid!"--and Van again retreated. 

"I'LL tell him like a shot--if you really give me leave, " said Mr. Cashmore, for whom any scruple referred itself manifestly not to thesubject of the information but to the presence of a lady. 

"I DON'T give you leave and I beg you'll hold your tongue, " Mrs. Brookenham returned. "You handle such matters with a minuteness--! Inshort, " she broke off to Mr. Longdon, "he would tell you a gooddeal more than you'll care to know. She IS in a boat--but she's anexperienced mariner. Basta, as she would say. Do you know Mitchy?" Mrs. Brook suddenly asked. 

"Oh yes, he knows Mitchy"--Vanderbank had approached again. 

"Then make HIM tell him"--she put it before the young man as a charmingturn for them all. "Mitchy CAN be refined when he tries. "

"Oh dear--when Mitchy 'tries'!" Vanderbank laughed. "I think I shouldrather, for the job, offer him to Mr. Longdon abandoned to his nativewild impulse. "

"I LIKE Mr. Mitchett, " the old man said, endeavouring to look hishostess straight in the eye and speaking as if somewhat to defy her toconvict him, even from the point of view of Beccles, of a mistake. 

Mrs. Brookenham took it with a wonderful bright emotion. "My dearfriend, vous me rendez la vie! If you can stand Mitchy you can stand anyof us!"

"Upon my honour I should think so!" Mr. Cashmore was eager to remark. "What on earth do you mean, " he demanded of Mrs. Brook, "by saying thatI'm more 'minute' than he?"

She turned her beauty an instant on this critic. "I don't say you'remore minute--I say he's more brilliant. Besides, as I've told youbefore, you're not one of us. " With which, as a check to furtherdiscussion, she went straight on to Mr. Longdon: "The point aboutAggie's conservative education is the wonderful sincerity with whichthe Duchess feels that one's girl may so perfectly and consistently behedged in without one's really ever (for it comes to that) deprivingone's own self--"

"Well, of what?" Mr. Longdon boldly demanded while his hostess appearedthoughtfully to falter. 

She addressed herself mutely to Vanderbank, in whom the movementproduced a laugh. "I defy you, " he exclaimed, "to say!"

"Well, you don't defy ME!" Mr. Cashmore cried as Mrs. Brook failed totake up the challenge. "If you know Mitchy, " he went on to Mr. Longdon, "you must know Petherton. "

The elder man remained vague and not imperceptibly cold. "Petherton?"

"My brother-in-law--whom, God knows why, Mitchy runs. "

"Runs?" Mr. Longdon again echoed. 

Mrs. Brook appealed afresh to Vanderbank. "I think we ought to sparehim. I may not remind you of mamma, " she continued to their companion, "but I hope you don't mind my saying how much you remind me. Explanations, after all, spoil things, and if you CAN make anything ofus and will sometimes come back you'll find everything in its nativefreshness. You'll see, you'll feel for yourself. "

Mr. Longdon stood before her and raised to Vanderbank, when she hadceased, the eyes he had attached to the carpet while she talked. "Andmust I go now?" Explanations, she had said, spoiled things, but he mighthave been a stranger at an Eastern court--comically helpless without hisinterpreter. 

"If Mrs. Brook desires to 'spare' you, " Vanderbank kindly replied, "thebest way to make sure of it would perhaps indeed be to remove you. Buthadn't we a hope of Nanda?"

"It might be of use for us to wait for her?"--it was still to his youngfriend that Mr. Longdon put it. 

"Ah when she's once on the loose--!" Mrs. Brookenham sighed. 

"Unless la voila, " she said as a hand was heard at the door-latch. Itwas only, however, a footman who entered with a little tray that, onhis approaching his mistress, offered to sight the brown envelope ofa telegram. She immediately took leave to open this missive, afterthe quick perusal of which she had another vision of them all. "It ISshe--the modern daughter. 'Tishy keeps me dinner and opera; clothesall right; return uncertain, but if before morning have latch-key. ' Shewon't come home till morning!" said Mrs. Brook. 

"But think of the comfort of the latch-key!" Vanderbank laughed. "Youmight go to the opera, " he said to Mr. Longdon. 

"Hanged if _I_ don't!" Mr. Cashmore exclaimed. 

Mr. Longdon appeared to have caught from Nanda's message an obscureagitation; he met his young friend's suggestion at all events with avisible intensity. "Will you go with me?"

Vanderbank had just debated, recalling engagements; which gave Mrs. Brook time to intervene. "Can't you live without him?" she asked of herelder friend. 

Vanderbank had looked at her an instant. "I think I can get there late, "he then replied to Mr. Longdon. 

"I think _I_ can get there early, " Mr. Cashmore declared. "Mrs. Grendonmust have a box; in fact I know which, and THEY don't, " he jocoselycontinued to his hostess. 

Mrs. Brook meanwhile had given Mr. Longdon her hand. "Well, in any casethe child SHALL soon come to you. And oh alone, " she insisted: "youneedn't make phrases--I know too well what I'm about. "

"One hopes really you do, " pursued the unquenched Mr. Cashmore. 

"If that's what one gets by having known your mother--!"

"It wouldn't have helped YOU" Mrs. Brook retorted. "And won't you haveto say it's ALL you were to get?" she pityingly murmured to her othervisitor. 

He turned to Vanderbank with a strange gasp, and that comforter said"Come!"

BOOK FIFTH. THE DUCHESS

The lower windows of the great white house, which stood high andsquare, opened to a wide flagged terrace, the parapet of which, an oldbalustrade of stone, was broken in the middle of its course by a flightof stone steps that descended to a wonderful garden. The terrace had theafternoon shade and fairly hung over the prospect that dropped away andcircled it--the prospect, beyond the series of gardens, of scatteredsplendid trees and green glades, an horizon mainly of woods. NandaBrookenham, one day at the end of July, coming out to find the placeunoccupied as yet by other visitors, stood there a while with an airof happy possession. She moved from end to end of the terrace, pausing, gazing about her, taking in with a face that showed the pleasure of abrief independence the combination of delightful things--of old roomswith old decorations that gleamed and gloomed through the high windows, of old gardens that squared themselves in the wide angles of old walls, of wood-walks rustling in the afternoon breeze and stretching awayto further reaches of solitude and summer. The scene had an expectantstillness that she was too charmed to desire to break; she watched it, listened to it, followed with her eyes the white butterflies among theflowers below her, then gave a start as the cry of a peacock came toher from an unseen alley. It set her after a minute into less difficultmotion; she passed slowly down the steps, wandering further, lookingback at the big bright house but pleased again to see no one elseappear. If the sun was still high enough she had a pink parasol. Shewent through the gardens one by one, skirting the high walls that wereso like "collections" and thinking how, later on, the nectarines andplums would flush there. She exchanged a friendly greeting with a manat work, passed through an open door and, turning this way and that, finally found herself in the park, at some distance from the house. Itwas a point she had had to take another rise to reach, a place markedby an old green bench for a larger sweep of the view, which, in thedistance where the woods stopped, showed in the most English way in theworld the colour-spot of an old red village and the tower of an oldgrey church. She had sunk down upon the bench almost with a sense ofadventure, yet not too fluttered to wonder if it wouldn't have beenhappy to bring a book; the charm of which precisely would have been infeeling everything about her too beautiful to let her read. 

The sense of adventure grew in her, presently becoming aware of a stirin the thicket below, followed by the coming into sight, on a path that, mounting, passed near her seat, of a wanderer whom, had his particular, his exceptional identity not quickly appeared, it might havedisappointed her a trifle to have to recognise as a friend. He saw herimmediately, stopped, laughed, waved his hat, then bounded up the slopeand, brushing his forehead with his handkerchief, confessing as to ared face, was rejoicingly there before her. Her own ejaculation on firstseeing him--"Why, Mr. Van!"--had had an ambiguous sharpness that wasrather for herself than for her visitor. She made room for him onthe bench, where in a moment he was cooling off and they were bothexplaining. The great thing was that he had walked from the station tostretch his legs, coming far round, for the lovely hour and the pleasureof it, by a way he had learnt on some previous occasion of being atMertle. 

"You've already stayed here then?" Nanda, who had arrived but halfan hour before, spoke as if she had lost the chance to give him a newimpression. 

"I've stayed here--yes, but not with Mitchy; with some people orother--who the deuce can they have been?--who had the place for a fewmonths a year or two ago. "

"Don't you even remember?"

Vanderbank wondered and laughed. "It will come to me. But it's acharming sign of London relations, isn't it?--that one CAN come down topeople this way and be awfully well 'done for' and all that, and thengo away and lose the whole thing, quite forget to whom one has beenbeholden. It's a queer life. "

Nanda seemed for an instant to wish to say that one might deny thequeerness, but she said something else instead. "I suppose a manlike you doesn't quite feel that he IS beholden. It's awfully good ofhim--it's doing a great deal for anybody--that he should come down atall; so that it would add immensely to his burden if anybody had to beremembered for it. "

"I don't know what you mean by a man 'like me, '" Vanderbank returned. "I'm not any particular kind of a man. " She had been looking at him, butshe looked away on this, and he continued good-humoured and explanatory. "If you mean that I go about such a lot, how do you know it but by thefact that you're everywhere now yourself?--so that, whatever I am, inshort, you're just as bad. "

"You admit then that you ARE everywhere. I may be just as bad, " the girlwent on, "but the point is that I'm not nearly so good. Girls are suchnatural hacks--they can't be anything else. "

"And pray what are fellows who are in the beastly grind of fearfullybusy offices? There isn't an old cabhorse in London that's kept at it, I assure you, as I am. Besides, " the young man added, "if I'm out everynight and off somewhere like this for Sunday, can't you understand, mydear child, the fundamental reason of it?"

Nanda, with her eyes on him again, studied an instant this mystery. "Am I to infer with delight that it's the sweet hope of meeting ME? Itisn't, " she continued in a moment, "as if there were any necessityfor your saying that. What's the use?" But all impatiently she stoppedshort. 

He was eminently gay even if his companion was not. "Because we're suchjolly old friends that we really needn't so much as speak at all? Yes, thank goodness--thank goodness. " He had been looking round him, takingin the scene; he had dropped his hat on the ground and, completely athis ease, though still more wishing to show it, had crossed his legs andclosely folded his arms. "What a tremendously jolly place! If I can'tfor the life of me recall who they were--the other people--I've thecomfort of being sure their minds are an equal blank. Do they evenremember the place they had? 'We had some fellows down at--where was it, the big white house last November?--and there was one of them, out ofthe What-do-you-call-it?--YOU know--who might have been a decent enoughchap if he hadn't presumed so on his gifts. '" Vanderbank paused aminute, but his companion said nothing, and he pursued. "It does show, doesn't it?--the fact that we do meet this way--the tremendous changethat has taken place in your life in the last three months. I mean, ifI'm everywhere as you said just now, your being just the same. "

"Yes--you see what you've done. "

"How, what I'VE done?"

"You plunge into the woods for change, for solitude, " the girl said, "and the first thing you do is to find me waylaying you in the depths ofthe forest. But I really couldn't--if you'll reflect upon it--know youwere coming this way. "

He sat there with his position unchanged but with a constant littleshake in the foot that hung down, as if everything--and what she now putbefore him not least--was much too pleasant to be reflected on. "May Ismoke a cigarette?"

Nanda waited a little; her friend had taken out his silver case, whichwas of ample form, and as he extracted a cigarette she put forth herhand. "May _I_?" She turned the case over with admiration. 

Vanderbank demurred. "Do you smoke with Mr. Longdon?"

"Immensely. But what has that to do with it?"

"Everything, everything. " He spoke with a faint ring of impatience. "Iwant you to do with me exactly as you do with him. "

"Ah that's soon said!" the girl replied in a peculiar tone. "How do youmean, to 'do'?"

"Well then to BE. What shall I say?" Vanderbank pleasantly wonderedwhile his foot kept up its motion. "To feel. "

She continued to handle the cigarette-case, without, however, havingprofited by its contents. "I don't think that as regards Mr. Longdon andme you know quite so much as you suppose. "

Vanderbank laughed and smoked. "I take for granted he tells meeverything. "

"Ah but you scarcely take for granted _I_ do!" She rubbed her cheek aninstant with the polished silver and again the next moment turned overthe case. "This is the kind of one I should like. "

Her companion glanced down at it. "Why it holds twenty. "

"Well, I want one that holds twenty. "

Vanderbank only threw out his smoke. "I want so to give you something, "he said at last, "that, in my relief at lighting on an object that willdo, I will, if you don't look out, give you either that or a pipe. "

"Do you mean this particular one?"

"I've had it for years--but even that one if you like it. "

She kept it--continued to finger it. "And by whom was it given you?"

At this he turned to her smiling. "You think I've forgotten that too?"

"Certainly you must have forgotten, to be willing to give it awayagain. "

"But how do you know it was a present?"

"Such things always are--people don't buy them for themselves. "

She had now relinquished the object, laying it upon the bench, andVanderbank took it up. "Its origin's lost in the night of time--it hasno history except that I've used it. But I assure you that I do want togive you something. I've never given you anything. "

She was silent a little. "The exhibition you're making, " she seriouslysighed at last, "of your inconstancy and superficiality! All the relicsof you that I've treasured and that I supposed at the time to have meantsomething!"

"The 'relics'? Have you a lock of my hair?" Then as her meaning came tohim: "Oh little Christmas things? Have you really kept them?"

"Laid away in a drawer of their own--done up in pink paper. "

"I know what you're coming to, " Vanderbank said. "You've given MEthings, and you're trying to convict me of having lost the sweet senseof them. But you can't do it. Where my heart's concerned I'm a walkingreliquary. Pink paper? _I_ use gold paper--and the finest of all, the gold paper of the mind. " He gave a flip with a fingernail to hiscigarette and looked at its quickened fire; after which he pursued veryfamiliarly, but with a kindness that of itself qualified the mere humourof the thing: "Don't talk, my dear child, as if you didn't really knowme for the best friend you have in the world. " As soon as he had spokenhe pulled out his watch, so that if his words had led to something of apause this movement offered a pretext for breaking it. Nanda asked thehour and, on his replying "Five-fifteen, " remarked that there would nowbe tea on the terrace with every one gathered at it. "Then shall we goand join them?" her companion demanded. 

He had made, however, no other motion, and when after hesitating shesaid "Yes, with pleasure" it was also without a change of position. "Ilike this, " she inconsequently added. 

"So do I awfully. Tea on the terrace, " Vanderbank went on, "isn't 'in'it. But who's here?"

"Oh every one. All your set. "

"Mine? Have I still a set--with the universal vagabondism you accuse meof?"

"Well then Mitchy's--whoever they are. "

"And nobody of yours?"

"Oh yes, " Nanda said, "all mine. He must at least have arrived by thistime. My set's Mr. Longdon, " she explained. "He's all of it now. "

"Then where in the world am I?"

"Oh you're an extra. There are always extras. "

"A complete set and one over?" Vanderbank laughed. "Where then's Tishy?"

Charming and grave, the girl thought a moment. "She's in Paris withher mother--on their way to Aix-les-Bains. " Then with impatience shecontinued: "Do you know that's a great deal to say--what you said justnow? I mean about your being the best friend I have. "

"Of course I do, and that's exactly why I said it. You see I'm not inthe least delicate or graceful or shy about it--I just come out withit and defy you to contradict me. Who, if I'm not the best, is a betterone?"

"Well, " Nanda replied, "I feel since I've known Mr. Longdon that I'vealmost the sort of friend who makes every one else not count. "

"Then at the end of three months he has arrived at a value for you thatI haven't reached in all these years?"

"Yes, " she returned--"the value of my not being afraid of him. "

Vanderbank, on the bench, shifted his position, turning more to her andthrowing an arm over the back. "And you're afraid of ME?"

"Horribly--hideously. "

"Then our long, our happy relations--?"

"They're just what makes my terror, " she broke in, "particularly abject. Happy relations don't matter. I always think of you with fear. "

His elbow rested on the back and his hand supported his head. "Howawfully curious--if it be true!"

She had been looking away to the sweet English distance, but at this shemade a movement. "Oh Mr. Van, I'm 'true'!"

As Mr. Van himself couldn't have expressed at any subsequent time to anyinterested friend the particular effect upon him of the tone of thesewords his chronicler takes advantage of the fact not to pretend to agreater intelligence--to limit himself on the contrary to thesimple statement that they produced in Mr. Van's cheek a flush justdiscernible. "Fear of what?"

"I don't know. Fear is fear. "

"Yes, yes--I see. " He took out another cigarette and occupied a momentin lighting it. "Well, kindness is kindness too--that's all one cansay. "

He had smoked again a while before she turned to him. "Have I woundedyou by saying that?"

A certain effect of his flush was still in his smile. "It seems to meI should like you to wound me. I did what I wanted a moment ago, " hecontinued with some precipitation: "I brought you out handsomely on thesubject of Mr. Longdon. That was my idea--just to draw you. "

"Well, " said Nanda, looking away again, "he has come into my life. "

"He couldn't have come into a place where it gives me more pleasure tosee him. "

"But he didn't like, the other day when I used it to him, thatexpression, " the girl returned. "He called it 'mannered modern slang'and came back again to the extraordinary difference between my speechand my grandmother's. "

"Of course, " the young man understandingly assented. "But I rather likeyour speech. Hasn't he by this time, with you, " he pursued, "crossed thegulf? He has with me. "

"Ah with you there was no gulf. He liked you from the first. "

Vanderbank wondered. "You mean I managed him so well?"

"I don't know how you managed him, but liking me has been for him apainful gradual process. I think he does now, " Nanda declared. "Heaccepts me at last as different--he's trying with me on that basis. Hehas ended by understanding that when he talks to me of Granny I can'teven imagine her. "

Vanderbank puffed away. "I can. "

"That's what Mitchy says too. But you've both probably got her wrong. "

"I don't know, " said Vanderbank--"I've gone into it a good deal. Butit's too late. We can't be Greeks if we would. "

Even for this Nanda had no laugh, though she had a quick attention. "Doyou call Granny a Greek?"

Her companion slowly rose. "Yes--to finish her off handsomely and havedone with her. " He looked again at his watch. "Shall we go? I want tosee if my man and my things have turned up. "

She kept her seat; there was something to revert to. "My fear of youisn't superficial. I mean it isn't immediate--not of you just as youstand, " she explained. "It's of some dreadfully possible future you. "

"Well, " said the young man, smiling down at her, "don't forget thatif there's to be such a monster there'll also be a future you, proportionately developed, to deal with him. "

She had closed her parasol in the shade and her eyes attached themselvesto the small hole she had dug in the ground with its point. "We shallboth have moved, you mean?"

"It's charming to feel we shall probably have moved together. "

"Ah if moving's changing, " she returned, "there won't be much for me inthat. I shall never change--I shall be always just the same. The sameold mannered modern slangy hack, " she continued quite gravely. "Mr. Longdon has made me feel that. "

Vanderbank laughed aloud, and it was especially at her seriousness. "Well, upon my soul!"

"Yes, " she pursued, "what I am I must remain. I haven't what's calleda principle of growth. " Making marks in the earth with her umbrella sheappeared to cipher it out. "I'm about as good as I can be--and about asbad. If Mr. Longdon can't make me different nobody can. "

Vanderbank could only speak in the tone of high amusement. "And he hasgiven up the hope?"

"Yes--though not ME altogether. He has given up the hope he originallyhad. "

"He gives up quickly--in three months!"

"Oh these three months, " she answered, "have been a long time: thefullest, the most important, for what has happened in them, of my life. "She still poked at the ground; then she added: "And all thanks to YOU. "

"To me?"--Vanderbank couldn't fancy!

"Why, for what we were speaking of just now--my being to-day so ineverything and squeezing up and down no matter whose staircase. Isn't itone crowded hour of glorious life?" she asked. "What preceded it was anage, no doubt--but an age without a name. "

Vanderbank watched her a little in silence, then spoke quite besidethe question. "It's astonishing how at moments you remind me of yourmother!"

At this she got up. "Ah there it is! It's what I shall never shake off. That, I imagine, is what Mr. Longdon feels. "

Both on their feet now, as if ready for the others, they yet--and evena trifle awkwardly--lingered. It might in fact have appeared to aspectator that some climax had come, on the young man's part, to somestate of irresolution about the utterance of something. What were thewords so repeatedly on his lips, yet so repeatedly not sounded? It wouldhave struck our observer that they were probably not those his lipseven now actually formed. "Doesn't he perhaps talk to you too much aboutyourself?"

Nanda gave him a dim smile, and he might indeed then have exclaimed on acertain resemblance, a resemblance of expression that had nothing todo with form. It wouldn't have been diminished for him moreover by hersuccessful suppression of every sign that she felt his question a littleof a snub. The recall he had previously mentioned could, however, as sheanswered him, only have been brushed away by a supervening sense of hisroughness. "It probably isn't so much that as my own way of going on. "She spoke with a mildness that could scarce have been so full withoutbeing an effort. "Between his patience and my egotism anything'spossible. It isn't his talking--it's his listening. " She gave up thepoint, at any rate, as if from softness to her actual companion. "Wasn'tit you who spoke to mamma about my sitting with her? That's what I meanby my debt to you. It's through you that I'm always there--through youand perhaps a little through Mitchy. "

"Oh through Mitchy--it MUST have been--more than through me. " Vanderbankspoke with the manner of humouring her about a trifle. "Mitchy, delightful man, felt on the subject of your eternal exile, I think, still more strongly. "

They quitted their place together and at the end of a few steps becameaware of the approach of one of the others, a figure but a few yardsoff, arriving from the quarter from which Nanda had come. "Ah Mr. Longdon!"--she spoke with eagerness now. 

Vanderbank instantly waved his hat. "Dear old boy!"

"Between you all, at any rate, " she said more gaily, "you've brought medown. "

Vanderbank made no answer till they met their friend, when, by way ofgreeting, he simply echoed her words. "Between us all, you'll be glad toknow, we've brought her down. "

Mr. Longdon looked from one of them to the other. "Where have you beentogether?"

Nanda was the first to respond. "Only talking--on a bench. "

"Well, _I_ want to talk on a bench!" Their friend showed a spirit. 

"With me, of course?"--Vanderbank met it with encouragement. 

The girl said nothing, but Mr. Longdon sought her eyes. "No--with Nanda. You must mingle in the crowd. "

"Ah, " the their companion laughed, "you two are the crowd!"

"Well--have your tea first. "

Vanderbank on this, giving it up with the air of amused accommodationthat was never--certainly for these two--at fault in him, offered toMr. Longdon before departing the handshake of greeting he had omitted; ademonstration really the warmer for the tone of the joke that went withit. "Intrigant!"

II

Nanda praised to the satellite so fantastically described the charmingspot she had quitted, with the effect that they presently took freshpossession of it, finding the beauty of the view deepened as theafternoon grew old and the shadows long. They were of a comfortableagreement on these matters, by which moreover they were but littledelayed, one of the pair at least being too conscious, for the hour, ofstill other phenomena than the natural and peaceful process that filledthe air. "Well, you must tell me about these things, " Mr. Longdonsociably said: he had joined his young friend with a budget ofimpressions rapidly gathered at the house; as to which his appeal toher for a light or two may be taken as the measure of the confidence nowruling their relations. He had come to feel at last, he mentioned, thathe could allow for most differences; yet in such a situation as thepresent bewilderment could only come back. There were no differences inthe world--so it had all ended for him--but those that marked at everyturn the manners he had for three months been observing in good society. The general wide deviation of this body occupied his mind to theexclusion of almost everything else, and he had finally been brought tobelieve that even in his slow-paced prime he must have hung behind hiscontemporaries. He had not supposed at the moment--in the fifties andthe sixties--that he passed for old-fashioned, but life couldn't haveleft him so far in the rear had the start between them originally beenfair. This was the way he had more than once put the matter to the girl;which gives a sufficient hint, it is hoped, of the range of someof their talk. It had always wound up indeed, their talk, with someassumption of the growth of his actual understanding; but it was justthese pauses in the fray that seemed to lead from time to time to asharper clash. It was apt to be when he felt as if he had exhaustedsurprises that he really received his greatest shocks. There were nosuch queer-tasting draughts as some of those yielded by the bucket thathad repeatedly, as he imagined, touched the bottom of the well. "Nowthis sudden invasion of somebody's--heaven knows whose--house, and ourdropping down on it like a swarm of locusts: I dare say it isn't civilto criticise it when one's going too, so almost culpably, with thestream; but what are people made of that they consent, just for money, to the violation of their homes?"

Nanda wondered; she cultivated the sense of his making her intenselyreflect, "But haven't people in England always let their places?"

"If we're a nation of shopkeepers, you mean, it can't date, on the scaleon which we show it, only from last week? No doubt, no doubt, and themore one thinks of it the more one seems to see that society--for we'reIN society, aren't we, and that's our horizon?--can never have beenanything but increasingly vulgar. The point is that in the twilight oftime--and I belong, you see, to the twilight--it had made out much lesshow vulgar it COULD be. It did its best very probably, but there weretoo many superstitions it had to get rid of. It has been throwing themoverboard one by one, so that now the ship sails uncommonly light. That's the way"--and with his eyes on the golden distance he ingeniouslyfollowed it out--"I come to feel so the lurching and pitching. If Iweren't a pretty fair sailor--well, as it is, my dear, " he interruptedhimself with a laugh, "I show you often enough what grabs I make forsupport. " He gave a faint gasp, half amusement, half anguish, thenabruptly relieved himself by a question. "To whom in point of fact doesthe place belong?"

"I'm awfully ashamed, but I'm afraid I don't know. That just came uphere, " the girl went on, "for Mr. Van. "

Mr. Longdon seemed to think an instant. "Oh it came up, did it? And Mr. Van couldn't tell?"

"He has quite forgotten--though he has been here before. Of course itmay have been with other people, " she added in extenuation. "I mean itmayn't have been theirs then any more than it's Mitchy's. "

"I see. They too had just bundled in. "

Nanda completed the simple history. "To-day it's Mitchy who bundles, andI believe that really he bundled only yesterday. He turned in his peopleand here we are. "

"Here we are, here we are!" her friend more gravely echoed. "Well, it'ssplendid!"

As if at a note in his voice her eyes, while his own still strayedaway, just fixed him. "Don't you think it's really rather exciting?Everything's ready, the feast all spread, and with nothing to bluntour curiosity but the general knowledge that there will be peopleand things--with nothing but that we comfortably take our places. " Heanswered nothing, though her picture apparently reached him. "There AREpeople, there ARE things, and all in a plenty. Had every one, when youcame away, turned up?" she asked as he was still silent. 

"I dare say. There were some ladies and gentlemen on the terrace whomI didn't know. But I looked only for you and came this way on anindication of your mother's. "

"And did she ask that if you should find me with Mr. Van you'd make himcome to her?"

Mr. Longdon replied to this with some delay and without movement. "Howcould she have supposed he was here?"

"Since he had not yet been to the house? Oh it has always been a wonderto me, the things that mamma supposes! I see she asked you, " Nandainsisted. 

At this her old friend turned to her. "But it wasn't because of that Igot rid of him. "

She had a pause. "No--you don't mind everything mamma says. "

"I don't mind 'everything' anybody says: not even, my dear, when theperson's you. "

Again she waited an instant. "Not even when it's Mr. Van?"

Mr. Longdon candidly considered. "Oh I take him up on all sorts ofthings. "

"That shows then the importance they have for you. Is HE like hisgrandmother?" the girl pursued. Then as her companion looked vague:"Wasn't it his grandmother too you knew?"

He had an extraordinary smile. "His mother. "

She exclaimed, colouring, on her mistake, and he added: "I'm not so badas that. But you're none of you like them. "

"Wasn't she pretty?" Nanda asked. 

"Very handsome. But it makes no difference. She herself to-day wouldn'tknow him. "

She gave a small gasp. "His own mother wouldn't--?"

His headshake just failed of sharpness. "No, nor he her. There's a linkmissing. " Then as if after all she might take him too seriously, "Ofcourse it's I, " he more gently moralised, "who have lost the link in mysleep. I've slept half the century--I'm Rip Van Winkle. " He went backafter a moment to her question. "He's not at any rate like his mother. "

She turned it over. "Perhaps you wouldn't think so much of her now. "

"Perhaps not. At all events my snatching you from Mr. Vanderbank was myown idea. "

"I wasn't thinking, " Nanda said, "of your snatching me. I was thinkingof your snatching yourself. "

"I might have sent YOU to the house? Well, " Mr. Longdon replied, "I findI take more and more the economical view of my pleasures. I run themless and less together. I get all I can out of each. "

"So now you're getting all you can out of ME?"

"All I can, my dear--all I can. " He watched a little the flusheddistance, then mildly broke out: "It IS, as you said just now, exciting!But it makes me"--and he became abrupt again--"want you, as I've alreadytold you, to come to MY place. Not, however, that we may be still moremad together. "

The girl shared from the bench his contemplation. "Do you call THISmadness?"

Well, he rather stuck to it. "You spoke of it yourself as excitement. You'll make of course one of your fine distinctions, but I take it in myrough way as a whirl. We're going round and round. " In a minute he hadfolded his arms with the same closeness Vanderbank had used--in a minutehe too was nervously shaking his foot. "Steady, steady; if we sit closewe shall see it through. But come down to Suffolk for sanity. "

"You do mean then that I may come alone?"

"I won't receive you, I assure you, on any other terms. I want to showyou, " he continued, "what life CAN give. Not of course, " he subjoined, "of this sort of thing. "

"No--you've told me. Of peace. "

"Of peace, " said Mr. Longdon. "Oh you don't know--you haven't the leastidea. That's just why I want to show you. "

Nanda looked as if already she saw it in the distance. "But will it bepeace if I'm there? I mean for YOU, " she added. 

"It isn't a question of 'me. ' Everybody's omelet is made of somebody'seggs. Besides, I think that when we're alone together--!"

He had dropped for so long that she wondered. "Well, when we are--?"

"Why, it will be all right, " he simply concluded. "Temples of peace, theancients used to call them. We'll set up one, and I shall be at leastdoorkeeper. You'll come down whenever you like. "

She gave herself to him in her silence more than she could have done inwords. "Have you arranged it with mamma?" she said, however, at last. 

"I've arranged everything. "

"SHE won't want to come?"

Her friend's laugh turned him to her. "Don't be nervous. There arethings as to which your mother trusts me. "

"But others as to which not. "

Their eyes met for some time on this, and it ended in his saying: "Well, you must help me. " Nanda, but without shrinking, looked away again, andMr. Longdon, as if to consecrate their understanding by the air of ease, passed to another subject. "Mr. Mitchett's the most princely host. "

"Isn't he too kind for anything? Do you know what he pretends?" Nandawent on. "He says in the most extraordinary way that he does it all forME. "

"Takes this great place and fills it with servants and company--?"

"Yes, just so that I may come down for a Sunday or two. Of course hehas only taken it for three or four weeks, but even for that time it'sa handsome compliment. He doesn't care what he does. It's his way ofamusing himself. He amuses himself at our expense, " the girl continued. 

"Well, I hope that makes up, my dear, for the rate at which we're doingso at his!"

"His amusement, " said Nanda, "is to see us believe what he says. "

Mr. Longdon thought a moment. "Really, my child, you're most acute. "

"Oh I haven't watched life for nothing! Mitchy doesn't care, " sherepeated. 

Her companion seemed divided between a desire to draw and a certain fearto encourage her. "Doesn't care for what?"

She considered an instant, all coherently, and it might have added toMr. Longdon's impression of her depth. "Well, for himself. I mean forhis money. For anything any one may think. For Lord Petherton, for instance, really at all. Lord Petherton thinks he has helpedhim--thinks, that is, that Mitchy thinks he has. But Mitchy's moreamused at HIM than at anybody else. He takes every one in. "

"Every one but you?"

"Oh I like him. "

"My poor child, you're of a profundity!" Mr. Longdon murmured. 

He spoke almost uneasily, but she was not too much alarmed to continuelucid. "And he likes me, and I know just how much--and just how little. He's the most generous man in the world. It pleases him to feel thathe's indifferent and splendid--there are so many things it makes upto him for. " The old man listened with attention, and his young friendconscious of it, proceeded as on ground of which she knew every inch. "He's the son, as you know, of a great bootmaker--'to all the Courts ofEurope'--who left him a large fortune, which had been made, I believe, in the most extraordinary way, by building-speculations as well. "

"Oh yes, I know. It's astonishing!" her companion sighed. 

"That he should be of such extraction?"

"Well, everything. That you should be talking as you are--that youshould have 'watched life, ' as you say, to such purpose. That we shouldany of us be here--most of all that Mr. Mitchett himself should. Thatyour grandmother's daughter should have brought HER daughter--"

"To stay with a person"--Nanda took it up as, apparently out ofdelicacy, he fairly failed--"whose father used to take the measure, down on his knees on a little mat, as mamma says, of my grandfather'sremarkably large foot? Yes, we none of us mind. Do you think we should?"Nanda asked. 

Mr. Longdon turned it over. "I'll answer you by a question. Would youmarry him?"

"Never. " Then as if to show there was no weakness in her mildness, "Never, never, never, " she repeated. 

"And yet I dare say you know--?" But Mr. Longdon once more faltered; hisscruple came uppermost. "You don't mind my speaking of it?"

"Of his thinking he wants to marry me? Not a bit. I positively enjoytelling you there's nothing in it. "

"Not even for HIM?"

Nanda considered. "Not more than is made up to him by his havingfound out through talks and things--which mightn't otherwise haveoccurred--that I do like him. I wouldn't have come down here if I hadn'tliked him. "

"Not for any other reason?"--Mr. Longdon put it gravely. 

"Not for YOUR being here, do you mean?"

He delayed. "Me and other persons. "

She showed somehow that she wouldn't flinch. "You weren't asked tillafter he had made sure I'd come. We've become, you and I, " she smiled, "one of the couples who are invited together. "

These were couples, his speculative eye seemed to show, he didn't evenyet know about, and if he mentally took them up a moment it was allpromptly to drop them. "I don't think you state it quite stronglyenough, you know. "

"That Mitchy IS hard hit? He states it so strongly himself that itwill surely do for both of us. I'm a part of what I just spoke of--hisindifference and magnificence. It's as if he could only afford to dowhat's not vulgar. He might perfectly marry a duke's daughter, but thatWOULD be vulgar--would be the absolute necessity and ideal of nine outof ten of the sons of shoemakers made ambitious by riches. Mitchy says'No; I take my own line; I go in for a beggar-maid. ' And it's onlybecause I'm a beggar-maid that he wants me. "

"But there are plenty of other beggar-maids, " Mr. Longdon objected. 

"Oh I admit I'm the one he least dislikes. But if I had any money, "Nanda went on, "or if I were really good-looking--for that to-day, thereal thing, will do as well as being a duke's daughter--he wouldn't comenear me. And I think that ought to settle it. Besides, he must marryAggie. She's a beggar-maid too--as well as an angel. So there's nothingagainst it. "

Mr. Longdon stared, but even in his surprise seemed to take fromthe swiftness with which she made him move over the ground a certainagreeable glow. "Does 'Aggie' like him?"

"She likes every one. As I say, she's an angel--but a real, real, realone. The kindest man in the world's therefore the proper husband forher. If Mitchy wants to do something thoroughly nice, " she declared withthe same high competence, "he'll take her out of her situation, which isawful. "

Mr. Longdon looked graver. "In what way awful?"

"Why, don't you know?" His eye was now cold enough to give her, in herchill, a flurried sense that she might displease him least by a gracefullightness. "The Duchess and Lord Petherton are like you and me. "

"Is it a conundrum?" He was serious indeed. 

"They're one of the couples who are invited together. " But his facereflected so little success for her levity that it was in another toneshe presently added: "Mitchy really oughtn't. " Her friend, in silence, fixed his eyes on the ground; an attitude in which there was somethingto make her strike rather wild. "But of course, kind as he is, he canscarcely be called particular. He has his ideas--he thinks nothingmatters. He says we've all come to a pass that's the end of everything. "

Mr. Longdon remained mute a while, and when he at last, raised his eyesit was without meeting Nanda's and with some dryness of manner. "The endof everything? One might easily receive that impression. "

He again became mute, and there was a pause between them of some length, accepted by Nanda with an anxious stillness that it might have touched aspectator to observe. She sat there as if waiting for some further sign, only wanting not to displease her friend, yet unable to pretend to playany part and with something in her really that she couldn't take backnow, something involved in her original assumption that there was tobe a kind of intelligence in their relation. "I dare say, " she said atlast, "that I make allusions you don't like. But I keep forgetting. "

He waited a moment longer, then turned to her with a look rendered atrifle strange by the way it happened to reach over his glasses. It waseven austerer than before. "Keep forgetting what?"

She gave after an instant a faint feeble smile which seemed to speak ofhelplessness and which, when at rare moments it played in her face, wasexpressive from her positive lack of personal, superficial diffidence. "Well--I don't know. " It was as if appearances became at timesso complicated that--so far as helping others to understand wasconcerned--she could only give up. 

"I hope you don't think I want you to be with me as you wouldn't be--soto speak--with yourself. I hope you don't think I don't want you tobe frank. If you were to try to APPEAR to me anything--!" He ended insimple sadness: that, for instance, would be so little what he shouldlike. 

"Anything different, you mean, from what I am? That's just what I'vethought from the first. One's just what one IS--isn't one? I don't meanso much, " she went on, "in one's character or temper--for they have, haven't they? to be what's called 'properly controlled'--as in one'smind and what one sees and feels and the sort of thing one notices. "Nanda paused an instant; then "There you are!" she simply but ratherdesperately brought out. 

Mr. Longdon considered this with visible intensity. "What you suggest isthat the things you speak of depend on other people?"

"Well, every one isn't so beautiful as you. " She had met him withpromptitude, yet no sooner had she spoken than she appeared again toencounter a difficulty. "But there it is--my just saying even that. Ohhow I always know--as I've told you before--whenever I'm different!I can't ask you to tell me the things Granny WOULD have said, becausethat's simply arranging to keep myself back from you, and so beingnasty and underhand, which you naturally don't want, nor I either. Nevertheless when I say the things she wouldn't, then I put before youtoo much--too much for your liking it--what I know and see and feel. Ifwe're both partly the result of other people, HER other people wereso different. " The girl's sensitive boldness kept it up, but there wassomething in her that pleaded for patience. "And yet if she had YOU, soI've got you too. It's the flattery of that, or the sound of it, I know, that must be so unlike her. Of course it's awfully like mother; yet itisn't as if you hadn't already let me see--is it?--that you don't reallythink me the same. " Again she stopped a minute, as to find her scarcepossible way with him, and again for the time he gave no sign. Shestruck out once more with her strange cool limpidity. "Granny wasn't thekind of girl she COULDN't be--and so neither am I. "

Mr. Longdon had fallen while she talked into something that might havebeen taken for a conscious temporary submission to her; he had uncrossedhis fidgety legs and, thrusting them out with the feet together, satlooking very hard before him, his chin sunk on his breast and his hands, clasped as they met, rapidly twirling their thumbs. So he remained fora time that might have given his young friend the sense of having madeherself right for him so far as she had been wrong. He still had all herattention, just as previously she had had his, but, while he now simplygazed and thought, she watched him with a discreet solicitude that wouldalmost have represented him as a near relative whom she supposed unwell. At the end he looked round, and then, obeying some impulse that hadgathered in her while they sat mute, she put out to him the tender handshe might have offered to a sick child. They had been talking aboutfrankness, but she showed a frankness in this instance that made himperceptibly colour. To that in turn, however, he responded only the morecompletely, taking her hand and holding it, keeping it a long minuteduring which their eyes met and something seemed to clear up that hadbeen too obscure to be dispelled by words. Finally he brought out asif, though it was what he had been thinking of, her gesture had mostdetermined him: "I wish immensely you'd get married!"

His tone betrayed so special a meaning that the words had a sound ofsuddenness; yet there was always in Nanda's face that odd preparednessof the young person who has unlearned surprise through the habit, incompany, of studiously not compromising her innocence by blinking atthings said. "How CAN I?" she asked, but appearing rather to take up theproposal than to put it by. 

"Can't you, CAN'T you?" He spoke pressingly and kept her hand. She shookher head slowly, markedly; on which he continued: "You don't do justiceto Mr. Mitchy. " She said nothing, but her look was there and it made himresume: "Impossible?"

"Impossible. " At this, letting her go, Mr. Longden got up; he pulled outhis watch. "We must go back. " She had risen with him and they stood faceto face in the faded light while he slipped the watch away. "Well, thatdoesn't make me wish it any less. "

"It's lovely of you to wish it, but I shall be one of the people whodon't. I shall be at the end, " said Nanda, "one of those who haven't. "

"No, my child, " he returned gravely--"you shall never be anything sosad. "

"Why not--if YOU'VE been?" He looked at her a little, quietly, and then, putting out his hand, passed her own into his arm. "Exactly because Ihave. "

III

"Would you" the Duchess said to him the next day, "be for five minutesawfully kind to my poor little niece?" The words were spoken in charmingentreaty as he issued from the house late on the Sunday afternoon--thesecond evening of his stay, which the next morning was to bring to anend--and on his meeting the speaker at one of the extremities of thewide cool terrace. There was at this point a subsidiary flight of stepsby which she had just mounted from the grounds, one of her purposesbeing apparently to testify afresh to the anxious supervision of littleAggie she had momentarily suffered herself to be diverted from. Thisyoung lady, established in the pleasant shade on a sofa of lightconstruction designed for the open air, offered the image of a patienceof which it was a questionable kindness to break the spell. It was thatbeautiful hour when, toward the close of the happiest days of summer, such places as the great terrace at Mertle present to the fancy a recallof the banquet-hall deserted--deserted by the company lately gathered attea and now dispersed, according to affinities and combinations promptlyfelt and perhaps quite as promptly criticised, either in quieterchambers where intimacy might deepen or in gardens and under trees wherethe stillness knew the click of balls and the good humour of games. There had been chairs, on the terrace, pushed about; there wereungathered teacups on the level top of the parapet; the servants infact, in the manner of "hands" mustered by a whistle on the deck of aship, had just arrived to restore things to an order soon again to bebroken. There were scattered couples in sight below and an idle groupon the lawn, out of the midst of which, in spite of its detachment, somebody was sharp enough sometimes to cry "Out!" The high daylight wasstill in the sky, but with just the foreknowledge already of the longgolden glow in which the many-voiced caw of the rooks would sound atonce sociable and sad. There was a great deal all about to be aware ofand to look at, but little Aggie had her eyes on a book over which herpretty head was bent with a docility visible even from afar. "I've afriend--down there by the lake--to go back to, " the Duchess went on, "and I'm on my way to my room to get a letter that I've promised to showhim. I shall immediately bring it down and then in a few minutes beable to relieve you, --I don't leave her alone too much--one doesn't, youknow, in a house full of people, a child of that age. Besides"--and Mr. Longdon's interlocutress was even more confiding--"I do want you so veryintensely to know her. You, par exemple, you're what I SHOULD like togive her. " Mr. Longdon looked the noble lady, in acknowledgement of herappeal, straight in the face, and who can tell whether or no she acutelyguessed from his expression that he recognised this particular junctureas written on the page of his doom?--whether she heard him inaudiblysay "Ah here it is: I knew it would have to come!" She would at any ratehave been astute enough, had this miracle occurred, quite to completehis sense for her own understanding and suffer it to make no differencein the tone in which she still confronted him. "Oh I take the bull bythe horns--I know you haven't wanted to know me. If you had you'd havecalled on me--I've given you plenty of hints and little coughs. Now, yousee, I don't cough any more--I just rush at you and grab you. You don'tcall on me--so I call on YOU. There isn't any indecency moreover that Iwon't commit for my child. "

Mr. Longdon's impenetrability crashed like glass at the elbow-touchof this large handsome practised woman, who walked for him, like somebrazen pagan goddess, in a cloud of queer legend. He looked off at herchild, who, at a distance and not hearing them, had not moved. "I knowshe's a great friend of Nanda's. "

"Has Nanda told you that?"

"Often--taking such an interest in her. "

"I'm glad she thinks so then--though really her interests are sovarious. But come to my baby. I don't make HER come, " she explained asshe swept him along, "because I want you just to sit down by her thereand keep the place, as one may say--!"

"Well, for whom?" he demanded as she stopped. It was her step that hadchecked itself as well as her tongue, and again, suddenly, they stoodquite consciously and vividly opposed. "Can I trust you?" the Duchessbrought out. Again then she took herself up. "But as if I weren'talready doing it! It's because I do trust you so utterly that I haven'tbeen able any longer to keep my hands off you. The person I want theplace for is none other than Mitchy himself, and half my occupation nowis to get it properly kept for him. Lord Petherton's immensely kind, butLord Petherton can't do everything. I know you really like our host--!"

Mr. Longdon, at this, interrupted her with a certain coldness. "How, mayI ask, do you know it?"

But with a brazen goddess to deal with--! This personage had to fix himbut an instant. "Because, you dear honest man, you're here. You wouldn'tbe if you hated him, for you don't practically condone--!"

This time he broke in with his eyes on the child. "I feel on thecontrary, I assure you, that I condone a great deal. "

"Well, don't boast of your cynicism, " she laughed, "till you're sure ofall it covers. Let the right thing for you be, " she went on, "that Nandaherself wants it. "

"Nanda herself?" He continued to watch little Aggie, who had never yetturned her head. "I'm afraid I don't understand you. "

She swept him on again. "I'll come to you presently and explain. I MUSTget my letter for Petherton; after which I'll give up Mitchy, whom I wasgoing to find, and since I've broken the ice--if it isn't too much tosay to such a polar bear!--I'll show you le fond de ma pensee. Babydarling, " she said to her niece, "keep Mr. Longdon. Show him, " shebenevolently suggested, "what you've been reading. " Then again to herfellow guest, as arrested by this very question: "Caro signore, have YOUa possible book?"

Little Aggie had got straight up and was holding out her volume, whichMr. Longdon, all courtesy for her, glanced at. "Stories from EnglishHistory. Oh!"

His ejaculation, though vague, was not such as to prevent the girl fromventuring gently: "Have you read it?"

Mr. Longdon, receiving her pure little smile, showed he felt he hadnever so taken her in as at this moment, as well as also that she was aperson with whom he should surely get on. "I think I must have. "

Little Aggie was still more encouraged, but not to the point of keepinganything back. "It hasn't any author. It's anonymous. "

The Duchess borrowed, for another question to Mr. Longdon, not a littleof her gravity. "Is it all right?"

"I don't know"--his answer was to Aggie. "There have been some horridthings in English history. "

"Oh horrid--HAVEN'T there?" Aggie, whose speech had the prettiestfaintest foreignness, sweetly and eagerly quavered. 

"Well, darling, Mr. Longdon will recommend to you some nice historicalwork--for we love history, don't we?--that leaves the horrors out. Welike to know, " the Duchess explained to the authority she invoked, "thecheerful happy RIGHT things. There are so many, after all, and this isthe place to remember them. A tantot. "

As she passed into the house by the nearest of the long windows thatstood open Mr. Longdon placed himself beside her little charge, whom hetreated, for the next ten minutes, with an exquisite courtesy. A personwho knew him well would, if present at the scene, have found occasionin it to be freshly aware that he was in his quiet way master of twodistinct kinds of urbanity, the kind that added to distance and the kindthat diminished it. Such an analyst would furthermore have noted, inrespect to the aunt and the niece, of which kind each had the benefit, and might even have gone so far as to detect in him some absolutebetrayal of the impression produced on him by his actual companion, someirradiation of his certitude that, from the point of view under whichshe had been formed, she was a remarkable, a rare success. Since tocreate a particular little rounded and tinted innocence had been aimedat, the fruit had been grown to the perfection of a peach on a shelteredwall, and this quality of the object resulting from a process might wellmake him feel himself in contact with something wholly new. Little Aggiediffered from any young person he had ever met in that she had beendeliberately prepared for consumption and in that furthermore thegentleness of her spirit had immensely helped the preparation. Nanda, beside her, was a Northern savage, and the reason was partly that theelements of that young lady's nature were already, were publicly, werealmost indecorously active. They were practically there for good or forill; experience was still to come and what they might work out to stilla mystery; but the sum would get itself done with the figures now on theslate. On little Aggie's slate the figures were yet to be written; whichsufficiently accounted for the difference of the two surfaces. Boththe girls struck him as lambs with the great shambles of life intheir future; but while one, with its neck in a pink ribbon, had noconsciousness but that of being fed from the hand with the small sweetbiscuit of unobjectionable knowledge, the other struggled with instinctsand forebodings, with the suspicion of its doom and the far-borne scent, in the flowery fields, of blood. 

"Oh Nanda, she's my best friend after three or four others. "

"After so many?" Mr. Longdon laughed. "Don't you think that's rather aback seat, as they say, for one's best?"

"A back seat?"--she wondered with a purity!

"If you don't understand, " said her companion, "it serves me right, asyour aunt didn't leave me with you to teach you the slang of the day. "

"The 'slang'?"--she again spotlessly speculated. 

"You've never even heard the expression? I should think that a greatcompliment to our time if it weren't that I fear it may have been onlythe name that has been kept from you. "

The light of ignorance in the child's smile was positively golden. "Thename?" she again echoed. 

She understood too little--he gave it up. "And who are all the otherbest friends whom poor Nanda comes after?"

"Well, there's my aunt, and Miss Merriman, and Gelsomina, and Dr. Beltram. "

"And who, please, is Miss Merriman?"

"She's my governess, don't you know?--but such a deliciously easygoverness. "

"That, I suppose, is because she has such a deliciously easy pupil. Andwho is Gelsomina?" Mr. Longdon enquired. 

"She's my old nurse--my old maid. "

"I see. Well, one must always be kind to old maids. But who's Dr. Beltram?"

"Oh the most intimate friend of all. We tell him everything. "

There was for Mr. Longdon in this, with a slight incertitude, an effectof drollery. "Your little troubles?"

"Ah they're not always so little! And he takes them all away. "

"Always?--on the spot?"

"Sooner or later, " said little Aggie with serenity. "But why not?"

"Why not indeed?" he laughed. "It must be very plain sailing. " Decidedlyshe was, as Nanda had said, an angel, and there was a wonder in herpossession on this footing of one of the most expressive little facesthat even her expressive race had ever shown him. Formed to expresseverything, it scarce expressed as yet even a consciousness. All theelements of play were in it, but they had nothing to play with. It was arest moreover, after so much that he had lately been through, to be witha person for whom questions were so simple. "But he sounds all the samelike the kind of doctor whom, as soon as one hears of him, one wants tosend for. "

The young girl had at this a small light of confusion. "Oh I don't meanhe's a doctor for medicine. He's a clergyman--and my aunt says he's asaint. I don't think you've many in England, " little Aggie continued toexplain. 

"Many saints? I'm afraid not. Your aunt's very happy to know one. Weshould call Dr. Beltram in England a priest. "

"Oh but he's English. And he knows everything we do--and everything wethink. "

"'We'--your aunt, your governess and your nurse? What a varied wealth ofknowledge!"

"Ah Miss Merriman and Gelsomina tell him only what they like. "

"And do you and the Duchess tell him what you DON'T like?"

"Oh often--but we always like HIM--no matter what we tell him. And weknow that just the same he always likes us. "

"I see then of course, " said Mr. Longdon, very gravely now, "what afriend he must be. So it's after all this, " he continued in a moment, "that Nanda comes in?"

His companion had to consider, but suddenly she caught assistance. "Thisone, I think, comes before. " Lord Petherton, arriving apparently fromthe garden, had drawn near unobserved by Mr. Longdon and the next momentwas within hail. "I see him very often, " she continued--"oftenerthan Nanda. Oh but THEN Nanda. And then, " little Aggie wound up, "Mr. Mitchy. "

"Oh I'm glad HE comes in, " Mr. Longdon returned, "though rather far downin the list. " Lord Petherton was now before them, there being no oneelse on the terrace to speak to, and, with the odd look of an excess ofphysical power that almost blocked the way, he seemed to give them inthe flare of his big teeth the benefit of a kind of brutal geniality. It was always to be remembered for him that he could scarce show withoutsurprising you an adjustment to the smaller conveniences; so that whenhe took up a trifle it was not perforce in every case the sign of anuncanny calculation. When the elephant in the show plays the fiddle itmust be mainly with the presumption of consequent apples; which waswhy, doubtless, this personage had half the time the air of assuringyou that, really civilised as his type had now become, no apples wererequired. Mr. Longdon viewed him with a vague apprehension and as ifquite unable to meet the question of what he would have called for sucha personage the social responsibility. Did this specimen of his classpull the tradition down or did he just take it where he found it--in thevery different place from that in which, on ceasing so long ago to "goout, " Mr. Longdon had left it? Our friend doubtless averted himselffrom the possibility of a mental dilemma; if the man didn't lower theposition was it the position then that let down the man? Somehow hewasn't positively up. More evidence would be needed to decide; yetit was just of more evidence that one remained rather in dread. LordPetherton was kind to little Aggie, kind to her companion, kind toevery one, after Mr. Longdon had explained that she was so good as to begiving him the list of her dear friends. "I'm only a little dismayed, "the elder man said, "to find Mr. Mitchett at the bottom. "

"Oh but it's an awfully short list, isn't it? If it consists only ofme and Mitchy he's not so very low down. We don't allow her very MANYfriends; we look out too well for ourselves. " He addressed the childas on an easy jocose understanding. "Is the question, Aggie, whether weshall allow you Mr. Longdon? Won't that rather 'do' for us--for Mitchyand me? I say, Duchess, " he went on as this lady reappeared, "ARE wegoing to allow her Mr. Longdon and do we quite realise what we're about?We mount guard awfully, you know"--he carried the joke back to theperson he had named. "We sift and we sort, we pick the candidates over, and I should like to hear any one say that in this case at least I don'tkeep a watch on my taste. Oh we close in!"

The Duchess, the object of her quest in her hand, had come back. "Wellthen Mr. Longdon will close WITH us--you'll consider henceforth thathe's as safe as yourself. Here's the letter I wanted you to read--withwhich you'll please take a turn, in strict charge of the child, and thenrestore her to us. If you don't come I shall know you've found Mitchyand shall be at peace. Go, little heart, " she continued to the child, "but leave me your book to look over again. I don't know that I'm quitesure!" She sent them off together, but had a grave protest as her friendput out his hand for the volume. "No, Petherton--not for books; for herreading I can't say I do trust you. But for everything else--quite!" shedeclared to Mr. Longdon with a look of conscientious courage as theircompanion withdrew. "I do believe, " she pursued in the same spirit, "ina certain amount of intelligent confidence. Really nice men are steadiedby the sense of your having had it. But I wouldn't, " she added gaily, "trust him all round!"

IV

Many things at Mertle were strange for her interlocutor, but nothingperhaps as yet had been so strange as the sight of this arrangement forlittle Aggie's protection; an arrangement made in the interest of herremaining as a young person of her age and her monde--so her aunt wouldhave put it--should remain. The strangest part of the impression toowas that the provision might really have its happy side and his lordshipunderstand definitely better than any one else his noble friend's wholetheory of perils and precautions. The child herself, the spectator ofthe incident was sure enough, understood nothing; but the understandingsthat surrounded her, filling all the air, made it a heavier compound tobreathe than any Mr. Longdon had yet tasted. This heaviness had grownfor him through the long sweet summer day, and there was something inhis at last finding himself ensconced with the Duchess that made itsupremely oppressive. The contact was one that, none the less, he wouldnot have availed himself of a decent pretext to avoid. With so manyfine mysteries playing about him there was relief, at the point he hadreached, rather than alarm, in the thought of knowing the worst; whichit pressed upon him somehow that the Duchess must not only altogetherknow but must in any relation quite naturally communicate. It flutteredhim rather that a person who had an understanding with Lord Pethertonshould so single him out as to wish for one also with himself; such aperson must either have great variety of mind or have a wonderful ideaof HIS variety. It was true indeed that Mr. Mitchett must have the mostextraordinary understanding, and yet with Mr. Mitchett he now foundhimself quite pleasantly at his ease. Their host, however, was a personsui generis, whom he had accepted, once for all, the inconsequence ofliking in conformity with the need he occasionally felt to put it onrecord that he was not narrow-minded. Perhaps at bottom he most likedMitchy because Mitchy most liked Nanda; there hung about him stillmoreover the faded fragrance of the superstition that hospitality notdeclined is one of the things that "oblige. " It obliged the thoughts, for Mr. Longdon, as well as the manners, and in the especial form inwhich he was now committed to it would have made him, had he reallythought any ill, ask himself what the deuce then he was doing inthe man's house. All of which didn't prevent some of Mitchy's queercondonations--if condonations in fact they were--from not wholly, bythemselves, soothing his vague unrest, an unrest which never had been sogreat as at the moment he heard the Duchess abruptly say to him: "Doyou know my idea about Nanda? It's my particular desire you should--thereason, really, why I've thus laid violent hands on you. Nanda, my dearman, should marry at the very first moment. "

This was more interesting than he had expected, and the effect producedby his interlocutress, as well as doubtless not lost on her, wasshown in his suppressed start. "There has been no reason why I shouldattribute to you any judgement of the matter; but I've had one myself, and I don't see why I shouldn't say frankly that it's very much the oneyou express. It would be a very good thing. "

"A very good thing, but none of my business?"--the Duchess's vivacitywas not unamiable. 

It was on this circumstance that her companion for an instant perhapsmeditated. "It's probably not in my interest to say that. I should giveyou too easy a retort. It would strike any one as quite as much yourbusiness as mine. "

"Well, it ought to be somebody's, you know. One would suppose it to beher mother's--her father's; but in this country the parents are evenmore emancipated than the children. Suppose, really, since it appears tobe nobody's affair, that you and I do make it ours. We needn't eitherof us, " she continued, "be concerned for the other's reasons, though I'mperfectly ready, I assure you, to put my cards on the table. You've yourfeelings--we know they're beautiful. I, on my side, have mine--for whichI don't pretend anything but that they're strong. They can dispensewith being beautiful when they're so perfectly settled. Besides, Imay mention, they're rather nice than otherwise. Edward and I have acousinage, though for all he does to keep it up--! If he leaves hischildren to play in the street I take it seriously enough to make anoccasional dash for them before they're run over. And I want for Nandasimply the man she herself wants--it isn't as if I wanted for her adwarf or a hunchback or a coureur or a drunkard. Vanderbank's a man whomany woman, don't you think? might be--whom more than one woman IS--gladof for herself: beau comme le jour, awfully conceited and awfullypatronising, but clever and successful and yet liked, and without, sofar as I know, any of the terrific appendages which in this country sooften diminish the value of even the pleasantest people. He hasn't fivehorrible unmarried sisters for his wife to have always on a visit. Theway your women don't marry is the ruin here of society, and I've beenassured in good quarters--though I don't know so much about that--theruin also of conversation and of literature. Isn't it precisely just alittle to keep Nanda herself from becoming that kind of appendage--sayto poor Harold, say, one of these days, to her younger brother andsister--that friends like you and me feel the importance of bestirringourselves in time? Of course she's supposedly young, but she's reallyany age you like: your London world so fearfully batters and bruisesthem. " She had gone fast and far, but it had given Mr. Longdon time tofeel himself well afloat. There were so many things in it all to take upthat he laid his hand--of which, he was not unconscious, the feeblenessexposed him--on the nearest. "Why I'm sure her mother--after twentyyears of it--is fresh enough. "

"Fresh? You find Mrs. Brook fresh?" The Duchess had a manner that, inits all-knowingness, rather humiliated than encouraged; but he was allthe more resolute for being conscious of his own reserves. "It seems tome it's fresh to look about thirty. "

"That indeed would be perfect. But she doesn't--she looks about three. She simply looks a baby. "

"Oh Duchess, you're really too particular!" he retorted, feeling that, as the trodden worm will turn, anxiety itself may sometimes tend to wit. 

She met him in her own way. "I know what I mean. My niece is a person_I_ call fresh. It's warranted, as they say in the shops. Besides, " shewent on, "if a married woman has been knocked about that's only a partof her condition. Elle l'a lien voulu, and if you're married you'remarried; it's the smoke--or call it the soot!--of the fire. You know, yourself, " she roundly pursued, "that Nanda's situation appals you. "

"Oh 'appals'!" he restrictively murmured. 

It even tried a little his companion's patience. "There you are, youEnglish--you'll never face your own music. It's amazing what you'drather do with a thing--anything not to shoot at or to make moneywith--than look at its meaning. If I wished to save the girl as YOU wishit I should know exactly from what. But why differ about reasons, " sheasked, "when we're at one about the fact? I don't mention the greatestof Vanderbank's merits, " she added--"his having so delicious a friend. By whom, let me hasten to assure you, " she laughed, "I don't in theleast mean Mrs. Brook! She IS delicious if you like, but believe me whenI tell you, caro mio--if you need to be told--that for effective actionon him you're worth twenty of her. "

What was most visible in Mr. Longdon was that, however it came to him, he had rarely before, all at once, had so much given him to thinkabout. Again the only way to manage was to take what came uppermost. "By effective action you mean action on the matter of his proposing forNanda?"

The Duchess's assent was noble. "You can make him propose--you can make, I mean, a sure thing of it. You can doter the bride. " Then as withthe impulse to meet benevolently and more than halfway her companion'simperfect apprehension: "You can settle on her something that will makeher a parti. " His apprehension was perhaps imperfect, but it couldstill lead somehow to his flushing all over, and this demonstration theDuchess as quickly took into account. "Poor Edward, you know, won't giveher a penny. "

Decidedly she went fast, but Mr. Longdon in a moment had caught up. "Mr. Vanderbank--your idea is--would require on the part of his wifesomething of that sort?"

"Pray who wouldn't--in the world we all move in--require it quite asmuch? Mr. Vanderbank, I'm assured, has no means of his own at all, andif he doesn't believe in impecunious marriages it's not I who shall beshocked at him. For myself I simply despise them. He has nothing but apoor official salary. If it's enough for one it would be little for two, and would be still less for half a dozen. They're just the people tohave, that blessed pair, a fine old English family. "

Mr. Longdon was now fairly abreast of it. "What it comes to then, theidea you're so good as to put before me, is to bribe him to take her. "

The Duchess remained bland, but she fixed him. "You say that as if youwere scandalised, but if you try Mr. Van with it I don't think he'llbe. And you won't persuade me, " she went on finely, "that you haven'tyourself thought of it. " She kept her eyes on him, and the effect ofthem, soon enough visible in his face, was such as presently to make herexult at her felicity. "You're of a limpidity, dear man--you've onlyto be said 'bo!' to and you confess. Consciously or unconsciously--theformer, really, I'm inclined to think--you've wanted him for her. " Shepaused an instant to enjoy her triumph, after which she continued: "Andyou've wanted her for him. I make you out, you'll say--for I see youcoming--one of those horrible benevolent busy-bodies who are the worstof the class, but you've only to think a little--if I may go so far--tosee that no 'making' at all is required. You've only one link with theBrooks, but that link is golden. How can we, all of us, by this time, not have grasped and admired the beauty of your feeling for Lady Julia?There it is--I make you wince: to speak of it is to profane it. Let usby all means not speak of it then, but let us act on it. " He had at lastturned his face from her, and it now took in, from the vantage of hishigh position, only the loveliness of the place and the hour, whichincluded a glimpse of Lord Petherton and little Aggie, who, down inthe garden, slowly strolled in familiar union. Each had a hand in theother's, swinging easily as they went; their talk was evidently offlowers and fruits and birds; it was quite like father and daughter. One could see half a mile off in short that THEY weren't flirting. Ourfriend's bewilderment came in odd cold gusts: these were unreasoned andcapricious; one of them, at all events, during his companion's pause, must have roared in his ears. Was it not therefore through somecontinuance of the sound that he heard her go on speaking? "Of courseyou know the poor child's own condition. "

It took him a good while to answer. "Do YOU know it?" he asked with hiseyes still away. 

"If your question's ironical, " she laughed, "your irony's perfectlywasted. I should be ashamed of myself if, with my relationship and myinterest, I hadn't made sure. Nanda's fairly sick--as sick as a littlecat--with her passion. " It was with an intensity of silence that heappeared to accept this; he was even so dumb for a minute that theoddity of the image could draw from him no natural sound. The Duchessonce more, accordingly, recognised an occasion. "It has doubtlessalready occurred to you that, since your sentiment for the living isthe charming fruit of your sentiment for the dead, there would be asacrifice to Lady Julia's memory more exquisite than any other. "

At this finally Mr. Longdon turned. "The effort--on the lines you speakof--for Nanda's happiness?"

She fairly glowed with hope. "And by the same token such a piece ofpoetic justice! Quite the loveliest it would be, I think, one had everheard of. "

So, for some time more, they sat confronted. "I don't quite see yourdifficulty, " he said at last. "I do happen to know, I confess, thatNanda herself extremely desires the execution of your project. "

His friend's smile betrayed no surprise at this effect of her eloquence. "You're bad at dodging. Nanda's desire is inevitably to stop off forherself every question of any one but Vanderbank. If she wants me tosucceed in arranging with Mr. Mitchett can you ask for a plainer signof her private predicament? But you've signs enough, I see"--she caughtherself up: "we may take them all for granted. I've known perfectly fromthe first that the only difficulty would come from her mother--but alsothat that would be stiff. "

The movement with which Mr. Longdon removed his glasses might havedenoted a certain fear to participate in too much of what the Duchesshad known. "I've not been ignorant that Mrs. Brookenham favours Mr. Mitchett. "

But he was not to be let off with that. "Then you've not been blind, Isuppose, to her reason for doing so. " He might not have been blind, buthis vision, at this, scarce showed sharpness, and it determined in hisinterlocutress the shortest of short cuts. "She favours Mr. Mitchettbecause she wants 'old Van' herself. "

He was evidently conscious of looking at her hard. "In whatsense--herself?"

"Ah you must supply the sense; I can give you only the fact--and it'sthe fact that concerns us. Voyons" she almost impatiently broke out;"don't try to create unnecessary obscurities by being unnecessarilymodest. Besides, I'm not touching your modesty. Supply any sensewhatever that may miraculously satisfy your fond English imagination:I don't insist in the least on a bad one. She does want himherself--that's all I say. 'Pourquoi faires' you ask--or rather, beingtoo shy, don't ask, but would like to if you dared or didn't fear I'dbe shocked. I CAN'T be shocked, but frankly I can't tell you either. Thesituation belongs, I think, to an order I don't understand. I understandeither one thing or the other--I understand taking a man up or lettinghim alone. But I don't really get at Mrs. Brook. You must judge at anyrate for yourself. Vanderbank could of course tell you if he would--butit wouldn't be right that he should. So the one thing we have to dowith is that she's in fact against us. I can only work Mitchy throughPetherton, but Mrs. Brook can work him straight. On the other handthat's the way you, my dear man, can work Vanderbank. "

One thing evidently beyond the rest, as a result of this vividdemonstration, disengaged itself to our old friend's undismayed sense, but his consternation needed a minute or two to produce it. "I canabsolutely assure you that Mr. Vanderbank entertains no sentiment forMrs. Brookenham--!"

"That he may not keep under by just setting his teeth and holding on?I never dreamed he does, and have nothing so alarming in store foryou--rassurez-vous bien!--as to propose that he shall be invited to sinka feeling for the mother in order to take one up for the child. Don't, please, flutter out of the whole question by a premature scare. I neversupposed it's he who wants to keep HER. He's not in love with her--becomforted! But she's amusing--highly amusing. I do her perfect justice. As your women go she's rare. If she were French she'd be a femmed'esprit. She has invented a nuance of her own and she has done it allby herself, for Edward figures in her drawing-room only as one of thosequeer extinguishers of fire in the corridors of hotels. He's just abucket on a peg. The men, the young and the clever ones, find it ahouse--and heaven knows they're right--with intellectual elbow-room, with freedom of talk. Most English talk is a quadrille in a sentry-box. You'll tell me we go further in Italy, and I won't deny it, but in Italywe have the common sense not to have little girls in the room. Theyoung men hang about Mrs. Brook, and the clever ones ply her withthe uproarious appreciation that keeps her up to the mark. She's in aprodigious fix--she must sacrifice either her daughter or what she oncecalled to me her intellectual habits. Mr. Vanderbank, you've seen foryourself, is of these one of the most cherished, the most confirmed. Three months ago--it couldn't be any longer kept off--Nanda begandefinitely to 'sit'; to be there and look, by the tea-table, modestlyand conveniently abstracted. "

"I beg your pardon--I don't think she looks that, Duchess, " Mr. Longdonlucidly broke in. How much she had carried him with her in spite ofhimself was betrayed by the very terms of his dissent. "I don't think itwould strike any one that she looks 'convenient. '"

His companion, laughing, gave a shrug. "Try her and perhaps you'll findher so!" But his objection had none the less pulled her up a little. "Idon't say she's a hypocrite, for it would certainly be less decent forher to giggle and wink. It's Mrs. Brook's theory moreover, isn't it?that she has, from five to seven at least, lowered the pitch. Doesn'tshe pretend that she bears in mind every moment the tiresome differencemade by the presence of sweet virginal eighteen?"

"I haven't, I'm afraid, a notion of what she pretends!"

Mr. Longdon had spoken with a curtness to which his friend's particularmanner of overlooking it only added significance. "They've become, " shepursued, "superficial or insincere or frivolous, but at least they'vebecome, with the way the drag's put on, quite as dull as other people. "

He showed no sign of taking this up; instead of it he said abruptly:"But if it isn't Mr. Mitchett's own idea?"

His fellow visitor barely hesitated. "It would be his own if he werefree--and it would be Lord Petherton's FOR him. I mean by his being freeNanda's becoming definitely lost to him. Then it would be impossiblefor Mrs. Brook to continue to persuade him, as she does now, that by awaiting game he'll come to his chance. His chance will cease to exist, and he wants so, poor darling, to marry. You've really now seen myniece, " she went on. "That's another reason why I hold you can help me. "

"Yes--I've seen her. "

"Well, there she is. " It was as if in the pause that followed this theysat looking at little absent Aggie with a wonder that was almost equal. "The good God has given her to me, " the Duchess said at last. 

"It seems to me then that she herself is, in her remarkable loveliness, really your help. "

"She'll be doubly so if you give me proofs that you believe in her. " Andthe Duchess, appearing to consider that with this she had made herselfclear and her interlocutor plastic, rose in confident majesty. "I leaveit to you. "

Mr. Longdon did the same, but with more consideration now. "Is it yourexpectation that I shall speak to Mr. Mitchett?"

"Don't flatter yourself he won't speak to YOU!"

Mr. Longdon made it out. "As supposing me, you mean, an interestedparty?"

She clapped her gloved hands for joy. "It's a delight to hear youpractically admit that you ARE one! Mr. Mitchett will take anything fromyou--above all perfect candour. It isn't every day one meets YOUR kind, and he's a connoisseur. I leave it to you--I leave it to you. "

She spoke as if it were something she had thrust bodily into hishands and wished to hurry away from. He put his hands behindhim--straightening himself a little, half-kindled, still half-confused. "You're all extraordinary people!"

She gave a toss of her head that showed her as not so dazzled. "You'rethe best of us, caro mio--you and Aggie: for Aggie's as good as you. Mitchy's good too, however--Mitchy's beautiful. You see it's not onlyhis money. He's a gentleman. So are you. There aren't so many. But wemust move fast, " she added more sharply. 

"What do you mean by fast?"

"What should I mean but what I say? If Nanda doesn't get a husband earlyin the business--"

"Well?" said Mr. Longdon, as she appeared to pause with the weight ofher idea. 

"Why she won't get one late--she won't get one at all. One, I mean, ofthe kind she'll take. She'll have been in it over-long for THEIR taste. "

She had moved, looking off and about her--little Aggie always on hermind--to the flight of steps, where she again hung fire; and had reallyended by producing in him the manner of keeping up with her to challengeher. "Been in what?"

She went down a few steps while he stood with his face full ofperceptions strained and scattered. "Why in the air they themselves haveinfected for her!"

V

Late that night, in the smoking room, when the smokers--talkers andlisteners alike--were about to disperse, Mr. Longdon asked Vanderbank tostay, and then it was that the young man, to whom all the evening he hadnot addressed a word, could make out why, a little unnaturally, he hadprolonged his vigil. "I've something particular to say to you and I'vebeen waiting. I hope you don't mind. It's rather important. " Vanderbankexpressed on the spot the liveliest desire to oblige him and, quicklylighting another cigarette, mounted again to the deep divan with whicha part of the place was furnished. The smoking-room at Mertle was notunworthy of the general nobleness, and the fastidious spectator hadclearly been reckoned on in the great leather-covered lounge that, raised by a step or two above the floor, applied its back to twoquarters of the wall and enjoyed most immediately a view of thebilliard-table. Mr. Longdon continued for a minute to roam with the airof dissimulated absence that, during the previous hour and among theother men, his companion's eye had not lost; he pushed a ball or twoabout, examined the form of an ash-stand, swung his glasses almostwith violence and declined either to smoke or to sit down. Vanderbank, perched aloft on the bench and awaiting developments, had a little thelook of some prepossessing criminal who, in court, should have changedplaces with the judge. He was unlike many a man of marked good looksin that the effect of evening dress was not, with a perversity oftenobserved in such cases, to over-emphasise his fineness. His type wasrather chastened than heightened, and he sat there moreover with aprimary discretion quite in the note of the deference that from thefirst, with his friend of the elder fashion, he had taken as imposed. He had a strong sense for shades of respect and was now careful tololl scarcely more than with an official superior. "If you ask me, " Mr. Longdon presently continued, "why at this hour of the night--after a dayat best too heterogeneous--I don't keep over till to-morrow whatever Imay have to say, I can only tell you that I appeal to you now becauseI've something on my mind that I shall sleep the better for being ridof. "

There was space to circulate in front of the haut-pas, where he hadstill paced and still swung his glasses; but with these words he hadpaused, leaning against the billiard-table, to meet the interestedurbanity of the answer they produced. "Are you very sure that havinggot rid of it you WILL sleep? Is it a pure confidence, " Vanderbank said, "that you do me the honour to make me? Is it something terrific thatrequires a reply, so that I shall have to take account on my side of therest I may deprive you of?"

"Don't take account of anything--I'm myself a man who always takes toomuch. It isn't a matter about which I press you for an immediate answer. You can give me no answer probably without a good deal of thought. I'VEthought a good deal--otherwise I wouldn't speak. I only want to putsomething before you and leave it there. "

"I never see you, " said Vanderbank, "that you don't put something beforeme. "

"That sounds, " his friend returned, "as if I rather overloaded--what'sthe sort of thing you fellows nowadays say?--your intellectual board. If there's a congestion of dishes sweep everything without scruple away. I've never put before you anything like this. "

He spoke with a weight that in the great space, where it resounded alittle, made an impression--an impression marked by the momentary pausethat fell between them. He partly broke the silence first by beginningto walk again, and then Vanderbank broke it as through the apprehensionof their becoming perhaps too solemn. "Well, you immensely interestme and you really couldn't have chosen a better time. A secret--for weshall make it that of course, shan't we?--at this witching hour, in thisgreat old house, is all my visit here will have required to make thewhole thing a rare remembrance. So I assure you the more you put beforeme the better. "

Mr. Longdon took up another ash-tray, but with the air of doing so asa direct consequence of Vanderbank's tone. After he had laid it down heput on his glasses; then fixing his companion he brought out: "Have youno idea at all--?"

"Of what you have in your head? Dear Mr. Longdon, how SHOULD I have?"

"Well, I'm wondering if I shouldn't perhaps have a little in your place. There's nothing that in the circumstances occurs to you as likely Ishould want to say?"

Vanderbank gave a laugh that might have struck an auditor as atrifle uneasy. "When you speak of 'the circumstances' you do a thingthat--unless you mean the simple thrilling ones of this particularmoment--always of course opens the door of the lurid for a man ofany imagination. To such a man you've only to give a nudge for hisconscience to jump. That's at any rate the case with mine. It's neverquite on its feet--so it's now already on its back. " He stopped alittle--his smile was even strained. "Is what you want to put before mesomething awful I've done?"

"Excuse me if I press this point. " Mr. Longdon spoke kindly, but ifhis friend's anxiety grew his own thereby diminished. "Can you think ofnothing at all?"

"Do you mean that I've done?"

"No, but that--whether you've done it or not--I may have become awareof. "

There could have been no better proof than Vanderbank's expression, onthis, of his having mastered the secret of humouring without appearingto patronise. "I think you ought to give me a little more of a clue. "

Mr. Longdon took off his glasses. "Well--the clue's Nanda Brookenham. "

"Oh I see. " His friend had responded quickly, but for a minute saidnothing more, and the great marble clock that gave the place the airof a club ticked louder in the stillness. Mr. Longdon waited with abenevolent want of mercy, yet with a look in his face that spoke of whatdepended for him--though indeed very far within--on the upshot of hispatience. The hush between them, for that matter, became a consciouspublic measure of the young man's honesty. He evidently at last feltit as such, and there would have been for an observer of his handsomecontrolled face a study of some sharp things. "I judge that you ask mefor such an utterance, " he finally said, "as very few persons at anytime have the right to expect of a man. Think of the people--and verydecent ones--to whom on so many a question one must only reply that it'snone of their business. "

"I see you know what I mean, " said Mr. Longdon. 

"Then you know also the distinguished exception I make of you. Thereisn't another man with whom I'd talk of it. "

"And even to me you don't! But I'm none the less obliged to you, " Mr. Longdon added. 

"It isn't only the gravity, " his companion went on; "it's the ridiculethat inevitably attaches--!"

The manner in which Mr. Longdon indicated the empty room was in itselfan interruption. "Don't I sufficiently spare you?"

"Thank you, thank you, " said Vanderbank. 

"Besides, it's not for nothing. "

"Of course not!" the young man returned, though with a look of notingthe next moment a certain awkwardness in his concurrence. "But don'tspare me now. "

"I don't mean to. " Mr. Longdon had his back to the table again, on whichhe rested with each hand on the rim. "I don't mean to, " he repeated. 

His victim gave a laugh that betrayed at least the drop of a tension. "Yet I don't quite see what you can do to me. "

"It's just what for some time past I've been trying to think. "

"And at last you've discovered?"

"Well--it has finally glimmered out a little in this extraordinaryplace. "

Vanderbank frankly wondered. "In consequence of anything particular thathas happened?"

Mr. Longdon had a pause. "For an old idiot who notices as much asI something particular's always happening. If you're a man ofimagination--"

"Oh, " Vanderbank broke in, "I know how much more in that case you'reone! It only makes me regret, " he continued, "that I've not attendedmore since yesterday to what you've been about. "

"I've been about nothing but what among you people I'm always about. I've been seeing, feeling, thinking. That makes no show, of course I'maware, for any one but myself, and it's wholly my own affair. Exceptindeed, " he added, "so far as I've taken into my head to make, on itall, this special appeal. There are things that have come home to me. "

"Oh I see, I see, " Vanderbank showed the friendliest alertness. "I'm totake it from you then, with all the avidity of my vanity, that I strikeyou as the person best able to understand what they are. "

Mr. Longdon appeared to wonder an instant if his intelligence now hadnot almost too much of a glitter: he kept the same position, his backagainst the table, and while Vanderbank, on the settee, pressed uprightagainst the wall, they recognised in silence that they were trying eachother. "You're much the best of them. I've my ideas about you. You'vegreat gifts. "

"Well then, we're worthy of each other. When Greek meets Greek--!" andthe young man laughed while, a little with the air of bracing himself, he folded his arms. "Here we are. "

His companion looked at him a moment longer, then, turning away, wentslowly round the table. On the further side of it he stopped again and, after a minute, with a nervous movement, set a ball or two in motion. "It's beautiful--but it's terrible!" he finally murmured. He hadn't hiseyes on Vanderbank, who for a minute said nothing, and he presently wenton: "To see it and not to want to try to help--well, I can't do that. "Vanderbank, still neither speaking nor moving, remained as if he mightinterrupt something of high importance, and his friend, passing alongthe opposite edge of the table, continued to produce in the stillness, without the cue, the small click of the ivory. "How long--if you don'tmind my asking--have you known it?"

Even for this at first Vanderbank had no answer--none but to rise fromhis place, come down to the floor and, standing there, look at Mr. Longdon across the table. He was serious now, but without being solemn. "How can one tell? One can never be sure. A man may fancy, may wonder;but about a girl, a person so much younger than himself and so much morehelpless, he feels a--what shall I call it?"

"A delicacy?" Mr. Longdon suggested. "It may be that; the name doesn'tmatter; at all events he's embarrassed. He wants not to be an ass on theone side and yet not some other kind of brute on the other. "

Mr. Longdon listened with consideration--with a beautiful little airindeed of being, in his all but finally benighted state, earnestly opento information on such points from a magnificent young man. "He doesn'twant, you mean, to be a coxcomb?--and he doesn't want to be cruel?"

Vanderbank, visibly preoccupied, produced a faint kind smile. "Oh youKNOW!"

"I? I should know less than any one. " Mr. Longdon had turned away fromthe table on this, and the eyes of his companion, who after an instanthad caught his meaning, watched him move along the room and approachanother part of the divan. The consequence of the passage was thatVanderbank's only rejoinder was presently to say: "I can't tell youhow long I've imagined--have asked myself. She's so charming, sointeresting, and I feel as if I had known her always. I've thought ofone thing and another to do--and then, on purpose, haven't thought atall. That has mostly seemed to me best. "

"Then I gather, " said Mr. Longdon, "that your interest in her--?"

"Hasn't the same character as her interest in ME?" Vanderbank had takenhim up responsively, but after speaking looked about for a match andlighted a new cigarette. "I'm sure you understand, " he broke out, "whatan extreme effort it is to me to talk of such things!"

"Yes, yes. But it's just effort only? It gives you no pleasure? I meanthe fact of her condition, " Mr. Longdon explained. 

Vanderbank had really to think a little. "However much it might give meI should probably not be a fellow to gush. I'm a self-conscious stick ofa Briton. "

"But even a stick of a Briton--!" Mr. Longdon faltered and hovered. "I've gushed in short to YOU. "

"About Lady Julia?" the young man frankly asked. "Is gushing what youcall what you've done?"

"Say then we're sticks of Britons. You're not in any degree at all inlove?"

There fell between them, before Vanderbank replied, another pause, ofwhich he took advantage to move once more round the table. Mr. Longdonmeanwhile had mounted to the high bench and sat there as if the judgewere now in his proper place. At last his companion spoke. "What you'recoming to is of course that you've conceived a desire. "

"That's it--strange as it may seem. But believe me, it has not beenprecipitate. I've watched you both. "

"Oh I knew you were watching HER, " said Vanderbank. 

"To such a tune that I've made up my mind. I want her so to marry--!"But on the odd little quaver of longing with which he brought it out theelder man fairly hung. 

"Well?" said Vanderbank. 

"Well, so that on the day she does she'll come into the interest of aconsiderable sum of money--already very decently invested--that I'vedetermined to settle on her. "

Vanderbank's instant admiration flushed across the room. "How awfullyjolly of you--how beautiful!"

"Oh there's a way to show practically your appreciation of it. "

But Vanderbank, for enthusiasm, scarcely heard him. "I can't tell youhow admirable I think you. " Then eagerly, "Does Nanda know it?" hedemanded. 

Mr. Longdon, after a wait, spoke with comparative dryness. "My idea hasbeen that for the present you alone shall. "

Vanderbank took it in. "No other man?"

His companion looked still graver. "I need scarcely say that I depend onyou to keep the fact to yourself. "

"Absolutely then and utterly. But that won't prevent what I think of it. Nothing for a long time has given me such joy. "

Shining and sincere, he had held for a minute Mr. Longdon's eyes. "Thenyou do care for her?"

"Immensely. Never, I think, so much as now. That sounds of a grossness, doesn't it?" the young man laughed. "But your announcement really lightsup the mind. "

His friend for a moment almost glowed with his pleasure. "The sum I'vefixed upon would be, I may mention, substantial, and I should of coursebe prepared with a clear statement--a very definite pledge--of myintentions. "

"So much the better! Only"--Vanderbank suddenly pulled himself up--"toget it she MUST marry?"

"It's not in my interest to allow you to suppose she needn't, and it'sonly because of my intensely wanting her marriage that I've spoken toyou. "

"And on the ground also with it"--Vanderbank so far concurred--"of yourquite taking for granted my only having to put myself forward?"

If his friend seemed to cast about it proved but to be for the fullestexpression. Nothing in fact could have been more charged than the quietway in which he presently said: "My dear boy, I back you. "

Vanderbank clearly was touched by it. "How extraordinarily kind you areto me!" Mr. Longdon's silence appeared to reply that he was willing tolet it go for that, and the young man next went on: "What it comes tothen--as you put it--is that it's a way for me to add something handsometo my income. "

Mr. Longdon sat for a little with his eyes attached to the green fieldof the billiard-table, vivid in the spreading suspended lamplight. "Ithink I ought to tell you the figure I have in mind. "

Another person present might have felt rather taxed either to determinethe degree of provocation represented by Vanderbank's considerate smile, or to say if there was an appreciable interval before he rang out:"I think, you know, you oughtn't to do anything of the sort. Let thatalone, please. The great thing is the interest--the great thing is thewish you express. It represents a view of me, an attitude toward me--!"He pulled up, dropping his arms and turning away before the completeimage. 

"There's nothing in those things that need overwhelm you. It would beodd if you hadn't yourself, about your value and your future a feelingquite as lively as any feeling of mine. There IS mine at all events. Ican't help it. Accept it. Then of the other feeling--how SHE moves me--Iwon't speak. "

"You sufficiently show it!"

Mr. Longdon continued to watch the bright circle on the table, lost inwhich a moment he let his friend's answer pass. "I won't begin to you onNanda. "

"Don't, " said Vanderbank. But in the pause that ensued each, in one wayor another, might have been thinking of her for himself. 

It was broken by Mr. Longdon's presently going on: "Of course what itsuperficially has the air of is my offering to pay you for taking acertain step. It's open to you to be grand and proud--to wrap yourselfin your majesty and ask if I suppose you bribeable. I haven't spokenwithout having thought of that. "

"Yes, " said Vanderbank all responsively, "but it isn't as if youproposed to me, is it, anything dreadful? If one cares for a girl one'sdeucedly glad she has money. The more of anything good she has thebetter. I may assure you, " he added with the brightness of his friendlyintelligence and quite as if to show his companion the way to be leastconcerned--"I may assure you that once I were disposed to act on yoursuggestion I'd make short work of any vulgar interpretation of mymotive. I should simply try to be as fine as yourself. " He smoked, hemoved about, then came up in another place. "I dare say you know thatdear old Mitchy, under whose blessed roof we're plotting this midnighttreason, would marry her like a shot and without a penny. "

"I think I know everything--I think I've thought of everything. Mr. Mitchett, " Mr. Longdon added, "is impossible. "

Vanderbank appeared for an instant to wonder. "Wholly then through HERattitude?"

"Altogether. "

Again he hesitated. "You've asked her?"

"I've asked her. "

Once more Vanderbank faltered. "And that's how you know?"

"About YOUR chance? That's how I know. "

The young man, consuming his cigarette with concentration, took againseveral turns. "And your idea IS to give one time?"

Mr. Longdon had for a minute to turn his idea over. "How much time doyou want?"

Vanderbank gave a headshake that was both restrictive and indulgent. "Imust live into it a little. Your offer has been before me only these fewminutes, and it's too soon for me to commit myself to anything whatever. Except, " he added gallantly, "to my gratitude. "

Mr. Longdon, at this, on the divan, got up, as Vanderbank had previouslydone, under the spring of emotion; only, unlike Vanderbank, he stillstood there, his hands in his pockets and his face, a little paler, directed straight. There was disappointment in him even before he spoke. "You've no strong enough impulse--?"

His friend met him with admirable candour. "Wouldn't it seem that if Ihad I would by this time have taken the jump?"

"Without waiting, you mean, for anybody's money?" Mr. Longdoncultivated for a little a doubt. "Of course she has struck one as--tillnow--tremendously young. "

Vanderbank looked about once more for matches and occupied a time withrelighting. "Till now--yes. But it's not, " he pursued, "only becauseshe's so young that--for each of us, and for dear old Mitchy too--she'sso interesting. " Mr. Longdon had restlessly stepped down, andVanderbank's eyes followed him till he stopped again. "I make out thatin spite of what you said to begin with you're conscious of a certainpressure. "

"In the matter of time? Oh yes, I do want it DONE. That, " Nanda's patronsimply explained, "is why I myself put on the screw. " He spoke with thering of impatience. "I want her got out. "

"'Out'?"

"Out of her mother's house. "

Vanderbank laughed though--more immediately--he had coloured. "Why, hermother's house is just where I see her!"

"Precisely; and if it only weren't we might get on faster. "

Vanderbank, for all his kindness, looked still more amused. "But if itonly weren't, as you say, I seem to understand you wouldn't have yourparticular vision of urgency. "

Mr. Longdon, through adjusted glasses, took him in with a look thatwas sad as well as sharp, then jerked the glasses off. "Oh you dounderstand. "

"Ah, " said Vanderbank, "I'm a mass of corruption!"

"You may perfectly be, but you shall not, " Mr. Longdon returned withdecision, "get off on any such plea. If you're good enough for me you'regood enough, as you thoroughly know, on whatever head, for any one. "

"Thank you. " But Vanderbank, for all his happy appreciation, thoughtagain. "We ought at any rate to remember, oughtn't we? that we shouldhave Mrs. Brook against us. "

His companion faltered but an instant. "Ah that's another thing I know. But it's also exactly why. Why I want Nanda away. "

"I see, I see. "

The response had been prompt, yet Mr. Longdon seemed suddenly to showthat he suspected the superficial. "Unless it's with Mrs. Brook you'rein love. " Then on his friend's taking the idea with a mere headshake ofnegation, a repudiation that might even have astonished by its own lackof surprise, "Or unless Mrs. Brook's in love with you, " he amended. 

Vanderbank had for this any decent gaiety. "Ah that of course mayperfectly be!"

"But IS it? That's the question. "

He continued light. "If she had declared her passion shouldn't I rathercompromise her--?"

"By letting me know?" Mr. Longdon reflected. "I'm sure I can't say--it'sa sort of thing for which I haven't a measure or a precedent. In my timewomen didn't declare their passion. I'm thinking of what the meaning isof Mrs. Brookenham's wanting you--as I've heard it called--herself. "

Vanderbank, still with his smile, smoked a minute. "That's what you'veheard it called?"

"Yes, but you must excuse me from telling you by whom. "

He was amused at his friend's discretion. "It's unimaginable. But itdoesn't matter. We all call everything--anything. The meaning of it, ifyou and I put it so, is--well, a modern shade. "

"You must deal then yourself, " said Mr. Longdon, "with your modernshades. " He spoke now as if the case simply awaited such dealing. 

But at this his young friend was more grave. "YOU could do nothing?--tobring, I mean, Mrs. Brook round. "

Mr. Longdon fairly started. "Propose on your behalf for her daughter?With your authority--tomorrow. Authorise me and I instantly act. "

Vanderbank's colour again rose--his flush was complete. "How awfully youwant it!"

Mr. Longdon, after a look at him, turned away. "How awfully YOU don't!"

The young man continued to blush. "No--you must do me justice. You'venot made a mistake about me--I see in your proposal, I think, all youcan desire I should. Only YOU see it much more simply--and yet I can'tjust now explain. If it WERE so simple I should say to you in a moment'do speak to them for me'--I should leave the matter with delight inyour hands. But I require time, let me remind you, and you haven't yettold me how much I may take. "

This appeal had brought them again face to face, and Mr. Longdon's firstreply to it was a look at his watch. "It's one o'clock. "

"Oh I require"--Vanderbank had recovered his pleasant humour--"more thanto-night!"

Mr. Longdon went off to the smaller table that still offered to viewtwo bedroom candles. "You must take of course the time you need. I won'ttrouble you--I won't hurry you. I'm going to bed. "

Vanderbank, overtaking him, lighted his candle for him; after which, handing it and smiling: "Shall we have conduced to your rest?"

Mr. Longdon looked at the other candle. "You're not coming to bed?"

"To MY rest we shall not have conduced. I stay up a while longer. "

"Good. " Mr. Longdon was pleased. "You won't forget then, as we promised, to put out the lights?"

"If you trust me for the greater you can trust me for the less. Good-night. "

Vanderbank had offered his hand. "Good-night. " But Mr. Longdon kept hima moment. "You DON'T care for my figure?"

"Not yet--not yet. PLEASE. " Vanderbank seemed really to fear it, but onMr. Longdon's releasing him with a little drop of disappointment theywent together to the door of the room, where they had another pause. 

"She's to come down to me--alone--in September. "

Vanderbank appeared to debate and conclude. "Then may I come?"

His friend, on this footing, had to consider. "Shall you know by thattime?"

"I'm afraid I can't promise--if you must regard my coming as a pledge. "

Mr. Longdon thought on; then raising his eyes: "I don't quite see whyyou won't suffer me to tell you--!"

"The detail of your intention? I do then. You've said quite enough. Ifmy visit must commit me, " Vanderbank pursued, "I'm afraid I can't come. "

Mr. Longdon, who had passed into the corridor, gave a dry sad littlelaugh. "Come then--as the ladies say--'as you are'!"

On which, rather softly closing the door, the young man remained alonein the great emptily lighted billiard-room. 

BOOK SIXTH. MRS. BROOK

Presenting himself at Buckingham Crescent three days after the Sundayspent at Mertle, Vanderbank found Lady Fanny Cashmore in the act oftaking leave of Mrs. Brook and found Mrs. Brook herself in the state ofmuffled exaltation that was the mark of all her intercourse--and mostof all perhaps of her farewells--with Lady Fanny. This splendid creaturegave out, as it were, so little that Vanderbank was freshly struckwith all Mrs. Brook could take in, though nothing, for that matter, inBuckingham Crescent, had been more fully formulated on behalf of thefamous beauty than the imperturbable grandeur of her almost totalabsence of articulation. Every aspect of the phenomenon had been freelydiscussed there and endless ingenuity lavished on the question of howexactly it was that so much of what the world would in another case havecalled complete stupidity could be kept by a mere wonderful face fromboring one to death. It was Mrs. Brook who, in this relation as in manyothers, had arrived at the supreme expression of the law, had thrownoff, happily enough, to whomever it might have concerned: "My dearthing, it all comes back, as everything always does, simply to personalpluck. It's only a question, no matter when or where, of having enough. Lady Fanny has the courage of all her silence--so much therefore thatit sees her completely through and is what really makes her interesting. Not to be afraid of what may happen to you when you've no more to sayfor yourself than a steamer without a light--that truly is the highestheroism, and Lady Fanny's greatness is that she's never afraid. Shetakes the risk every time she goes out--takes, as you may say, her lifein her hand. She just turns that glorious mask upon you and practicallysays: 'No, I won't open my lips--to call it really open--for the fortyminutes I shall stay; but I calmly defy you, all the same, to kill mefor it. ' And we don't kill her--we delight in her; though when either ofus watches her in a circle of others it's like seeing a very large blindperson in the middle of Oxford Street. One fairly looks about for thepolice. " Vanderbank, before his fellow visitor withdrew it, had thebenefit of the glorious mask and could scarce have failed to be amusedat the manner in which Mrs. Brook alone showed the stress of thought. Lady Fanny, in the other scale, sat aloft and Olympian, so that thoughvisibly much had happened between the two ladies it had all happenedonly to the hostess. The sense in the air in short was just of LadyFanny herself, who came to an end like a banquet or a procession. Mrs. Brook left the room with her and, on coming back, was full of it. "She'll go, she'll go!"

"Go where?" Vanderbank appeared to have for the question less attentionthan usual. 

"Well, to the place her companion will propose. Probably--like AnnaKarenine--to one of the smaller Italian towns. "

"Anna Karenine? She isn't a bit like Anna. "

"Of course she isn't so clever, " said Mrs. Brook. "But that would spoilher. So it's all right. "

"I'm glad it's all right, " Vanderbank laughed. "But I dare say we shallstill have her with us a while. "

"We shall do that, I trust, whatever happens. She'll come upagain--she'll remain, I feel, one of those enormous things that fateseems somehow to have given me as the occupation of my odd moments. Idon't see, " Mrs. Brook added, "what still keeps her on the edge, whichisn't an inch wide. "

Vanderbank looked this time as if he only tried to wonder. "Isn't itYOU?"

Mrs. Brook mused more deeply. "Sometimes I think so. But I don't know. "

"Yes, how CAN you of course know, since she can't tell you?"

"Oh if I depended on her telling--!" Mrs. Brook shook out with thisa sofa-cushion or two and sank into the corner she had arranged. TheAugust afternoon was hot and the London air heavy; the room moreover, though agreeably bedimmed, gave out the staleness of the season's end. "If you hadn't come to-day, " she went on, "you'd have missed me till Idon't know when, for we've let the Hovel again--wretchedly, but stillwe've let it--and I go down on Friday to see that it isn't too filthy. Edward, who's furious at what I've taken for it, had his idea that weshould go there this year ourselves. "

"And now"--Vanderbank took her up--"that fond fancy has become simplythe ghost of a dead thought, a ghost that, in company with a thousandpredecessors, haunts the house in the twilight and pops at you out ofodd corners. "

"Oh Edward's dead thoughts are indeed a cheerful company and worthy ofthe perpetual mental mourning we seem to go about in. They're worse thanthe relations we're always losing without seeming to have any fewer, and I expect every day to hear that the Morning Post regrets to haveto announce in that line too some new bereavement. The apparitionsfollowing the deaths of so many thoughts ARE particularly awful in thetwilight, so that at this season, while the day drags and drags, I'mglad to have any one with me who may keep them at a distance. "

Vanderbank had not sat down; slowly, familiarly he turned about. "Andwhere's Nanda?"

"Oh SHE doesn't help--she attracts rather the worst of the bogies. Edward and Nanda and Harold and I seated together are fairly a case forthat--what do you call it?--investigating Society. Deprived of the sweetresource of the Hovel, " Mrs. Brook continued, "we shall each, from aboutthe tenth on, forage somehow or other for ourselves. Mitchy perhaps, "she added, "will insist on taking us to Baireuth. "

"That will be the form, you mean, of his own forage?"

Mrs. Brook just hesitated. "Unless you should prefer to take it as theform of yours. "

Vanderbank appeared for a moment obligingly enough to turn this over, but with the effect of noting an objection. "Oh I'm afraid I shall haveto grind straight through the month and that by the time I'm free everyRing at Baireuth will certainly have been rung. Is it your idea to takeNanda?" he asked. 

She reached out for another cushion. "If it's impossible for you tomanage what I suggest why should that question interest you?"

"My dear woman"--and her visitor dropped into a chair--"do you supposemy interest depends on such poverties as what I can 'manage'? You knowwell enough, " he went on in another tone, "why I care for Nanda andenquire about her. "

She was perfectly ready. "I know it, but only as a bad reason. Don't betoo sure!"

For a moment they looked at each other. "Don't be so sure, you mean, that the elation of it may go to my head? Are you really warning meagainst vanity?"

"Your 'reallys, ' my dear Van, are a little formidable, but it strikesme that before I tell you there's something I've a right to ask. Are you'really' what they call thinking of my daughter?"

"Your asking, " Vanderbank returned, "exactly shows the state of yourknowledge of the matter. I don't quite see moreover why you speak as ifI were paying an abrupt and unnatural attention. What have I done thelast three months but talk to you about her? What have you done but talkto ME about her? From the moment you first spoke to me--'monstrously, 'I remember you called it--of the difference made in your social life byher finally established, her perpetual, her inexorable participation:from that moment what have we both done but put our heads together overthe question of keeping the place tidy, as you called it--or as _I_called it, was it?--for the young female mind?"

Mrs. Brook faced serenely enough the directness of this challenge. "Well, what are you coming to? I spoke of the change in my life ofcourse; I happen to be so constituted that my life has something to dowith my mind and my mind something to do with my talk. Good talk: youknow--no one, dear Van, should know better--what part for me that plays. Therefore when one has deliberately to make one's talk bad--!"

"'Bad'?" Vanderbank, in his amusement, fell back in his chair. "DearMrs. Brook, you're too delightful!"

"You know what I mean--stupid, flat, fourth-rate. When one has to haulin sail to that degree--and for a perfectly outside reason--there'snothing strange in one's taking a friend sometimes into the confidenceof one's irritation. "

"Ah, " Vanderbank protested, "you do yourself injustice. Irritationhasn't been for you the only consequence of the affair. "

Mrs. Brook gloomily thought. "No, no--I've had my calmness: the calmnessof deep despair. I've seemed to see everything go. "

"Oh how can you say that, " her visitor demanded, "when just what we'vemost been agreed upon so often is the practical impossibility ofmaking any change? Hasn't it seemed as if we really can't overcomeconversational habits so thoroughly formed?"

Again Mrs. Brook reflected. "As if our way of looking at things were tooserious to be trifled with? I don't know--I think it's only you who havedenied our sacrifices, our compromises and concessions. I myself haveconstantly felt smothered in them. But there it is, " she impatientlywent on. "What I don't admit is that you've given me ground to take fora proof of your 'intentions'--to use the odious term--your associationwith me on behalf of the preposterous fiction, as it after all is, ofNanda's blankness of mind. "

Vanderbank's head, in his chair, was thrown back; his eyes ranged overthe top of the room. "There never has been any mystery about my thinkingher--all in her own way--the nicest girl in London. She IS. "

His companion was silent a little. "She is, by all means. Well, " shethen added, "so far as I may have been alive to the fact of any one'sthinking her so, it's not out of place I should mention to you thedifference made in my appreciation of it by our delightful little stayat Mertle. My views for Nanda, " said Mrs. Brook, "have somehow gone up. "

Vanderbank was prompt to show how he could understand it. "So that youwouldn't consider even Mitchy now?"

But his friend took no notice of the question. "The way Mr. Longdondistinguishes her is quite the sort of thing that gives a girl, asHarold says, a 'leg up. ' It's awfully curious and has made me think:he isn't anything whatever, as London estimates go, in himself--so thatwhat is it, pray, that makes him, when 'added on' to her, so doubleNanda's value? I somehow or other see, through his being known to backher and through the pretty story of his loyalty to mamma and all therest of it (oh if one chose to WORK that!) ever so much more of a chancefor her. "

Vanderbank's eyes were on the ceiling. "It IS curious, isn't it?--thoughI think he's rather more 'in himself, ' even for the London estimate, than you quite understand. " He appeared to give her time to take thisup, but as she said nothing he pursued: "I dare say that if even I nowWERE to enter myself it would strike you as too late. "

Her attention to this was but indirect. "It's awfully vulgar to betalking about it, but I can't help feeling that something possiblyrather big will come of Mr. Longdon. "

"Ah we've touched on that before, " said Vanderbank, "and you know youdid think something might come even for me. "

She continued however, as if she scarce heard him, to work out her ownvision. "It's very true that up to now--"

"Well, up to now?" he asked as she faltered. 

She faltered still a little. "I do say the most hideous things. Butwe HAVE said worse, haven't we? Up to now, I mean, he hasn't given heranything. Unless indeed, " she mused, "she may have had something withouttelling me. "

Vanderbank went much straighter. "What sort of thing have you in mind?Are you thinking of money?"

"Yes. Isn't it awful?"

"That you should think of it?"

"That I should talk this way. " Her friend was apparently not preparedwith an assent, and she quickly enough pursued: "If he HAD given her anyit would come out somehow in her expenditure. She has tremendous libertyand is very secretive, but still it would come out. "

"He wouldn't give her any without letting you know. Nor would she, without doing so, " Vanderbank added, "take it. "

"Ah, " Mrs. Brook quietly said, "she hates me enough for anything. "

"That's only your romantic theory. "

Once more she appeared not to hear him; she gave the discussion anotherturn. "Has he given YOU anything?"

Her visitor smiled. "Not so much as a cigarette. I've always my pocketsfull of them, and HE never: so he only takes mine. Oh Mrs. Brook, " hecontinued, "with me too--though I've also tremendous liberty!--it wouldcome out. "

"I think you'd let me know, " she returned. 

"Yes, I'd let you know. "

Silence, upon this, fell between them a little; which she was thefirst to break. "She has gone with him this afternoon--by solemnappointment--to the South Kensington Museum. "

There was something in Mrs. Brook's dolorous drop that yet presented thenews as a portent so great that he was moved again to mirth. "Ah that'swhere she is? Then I confess she has scored. He has never taken ME tothe South Kensington Museum. "

"You were asking what we're going to do, " she went on. "What I meantwas--about Baireuth--that the question for Nanda's simplified. He haspressed her so to pay him a visit. "

Vanderbank's assent was marked. "I see: so that if you do go abroadshe'll be provided for by that engagement. "

"And by lots of other invitations. "

These were such things as, for the most part, the young man could turnover. "Do you mean you'd let her go alone--?"

"To wherever she's asked?" said Mrs. Brook. "Why not? Don't talk likethe Duchess. "

Vanderbank seemed for a moment to try not to. "Couldn't Mr. Longdon takeher? Why not?"

His friend looked really struck with it. "That WOULD be working him. Butto a beautiful end!" she meditated. "The only thing would be to get himalso asked. "

"Ah but there you are, don't you see? Fancy 'getting' Mr. Longdonanything or anywhere whatever! Don't you feel, " Vanderbank threw out, "how the impossibility of exerting that sort of patronage for himimmediately places him?"

Mrs. Brook gave her companion one of those fitful glances of almostgrateful appreciation with which their intercourse was even at itsdarkest hours frequently illumined. "As if he were the Primate or theFrench Ambassador? Yes, you're right--one couldn't do it; though it'svery odd and one doesn't quite see why. It does place him. But hebecomes thereby exactly the very sort of person with whom it wouldbe most of an advantage for her to go about. What a pity, " Mrs. Brooksighed, "he doesn't know more people!"

"Ah well, we ARE, in our way, bringing that to pass. Only we mustn'trush it. Leave it to Nanda herself, " Vanderbank presently added; onwhich his companion so manifestly left it that she touched after amoment's silence on quite a different matter. "I dare say he'd tellYOU--wouldn't he?--if he were to give her any considerable sum. "

She had only obeyed his injunction, but he stared at the length of herjump. "He might attempt to do so, but I shouldn't at all like it. "He was moved immediately to dismiss this branch of the subjectand, apparently to help himself, take up another. "Do you mean sheunderstands he has asked her down for a regular long stay?"

Mrs. Brook barely hesitated. "She understands, I think, that what Iexpect of her is to make it as long as possible. "

Vanderbank laughed out--as it was even after ten years still possible tolaugh--at the childlike innocence with which her voice could invest thehardest teachings of life; then with something a trifle nervous in thewhole sound and manner he sprang up from his chair. "What a blessing heis to us all!"

"Yes, but think what we must be to HIM. "

"An immense interest, no doubt. " He took a few aimless steps and, stooping over a basket of flowers, inhaled it with violence, almostburied his face. "I dare say we ARE interesting. " He had spoken rathervaguely, but Mrs. Brook knew exactly why. "We render him no end of aservice. We keep him in touch with old memories. "

Vanderbank had reached one of the windows, shaded from without by agreat striped sun-blind beneath which and between the flower-pots of thebalcony he could see a stretch of hot relaxed street. He looked a minuteat these things. "I do so like your phrases!"

She had a pause that challenged his tone. "Do you call mamma a'phrase'?"

He went off again, quite with extravagance, but quickly, leaving thewindow, pulled himself up. "I dare say we MUST put things for him--hedoes it, cares or is able to do it, so little himself. "

"Precisely. He just quietly acts. That's his nature, dear thing. We mustLET him act. "

Vanderbank seemed to stifle again too vivid a sense of her particularemphasis. "Yes, yes--we must let him. "

"Though it won't prevent Nanda, I imagine, " his hostess pursued, "fromfinding the fun of a whole month at Beccles--or whatever she putsin--not exactly fast and furious. "

Vanderbank had the look of measuring what the girl might "put in. ""The place will be quiet, of course, but when a person's so fond of aperson--!"

"As she is of him, you mean?"

He hesitated. "Yes. Then it's all right. "

"She IS fond of him, thank God!" said Mrs. Brook. 

He was before her now with the air of a man who had suddenly determinedon a great blind leap. "Do you know what he has done? He wants me so tomarry her that he has proposed a definite basis. "

Mrs. Brook got straight up. "'Proposed'? To HER?"

"No, I don't think he has said a word to Nanda--in fact I'm sure that, very properly, he doesn't mean to. But he spoke to me on Sunday nightat Mertle--I had a big talk with him there alone, very late, in thesmoking-room. " Mrs. Brook's stare was serious, and Vanderbank now wenton as if the sound of his voice helped him to meet it. "We had thingsout very much and his kindness was extraordinary--he's the mostbeautiful old boy that ever lived. I don't know, now that I come tothink of it, if I'm within my rights in telling you--and of course Ishall immediately let him know that I HAVE told you; but I feel I can'tarrive at any respectable sort of attitude in the matter without takingyou into my confidence. Which is really what I came here to-day to do, though till this moment I've funked it. "

It was either, as her friends chose to think it, an advantage or adrawback of intercourse with Mrs. Brook that, her face being at anymoment charged with the woe of the world, it was unavoidable to remainrather in the dark as to the effect there of particular strokes. Something in Vanderbank's present study of the signs accordingly showedhe had had to learn to feel his way and had more or less mastered thetrick. That she had turned a little pale was really the one freshmark. "'Funked' it? Why in the world--?" His own colour deepened at heraccent, which was a sufficient light on his having been stupid. "Do youmean you've declined the arrangement?"

He only, with a smile somewhat strained, continued for a moment to lookat her; clearly, however, at last feeling, and not much caring, that hegot in still deeper. "You're magnificent. You're magnificent. "

Her lovely gaze widened out. "Comment donc? Where--why? You HAVEdeclined her?" she went on. After which, as he replied only with a slowhead-shake that seemed to say it was not for the moment all so simple asthat, she had one of the inspirations to which she was constitutionallysubject. "Do you imagine I want you myself?"

"Dear Mrs. Brook, you're so admirable, " he returned with gaiety, "thatif by any chance you did, upon my honour, I don't see how I should beable not to say 'All right. '" But he spoke too more responsibly. "I wasshy of really bringing out to you what has happened to me, for a reasonthat I've of course to look in the face. Whatever you want yourself, forNanda you want Mitchy. "

"I see, I see. " She did full justice to his explanation. "And what didyou say about a 'basis'? The blessed man offers to settle--?"

"You're a real prodigy, " her visitor answered, "and your imaginationtakes its fences in a way that, when I'm out with you, quite puts mineto shame. When he mentioned it to me I was quite surprised. "

"And I, " Mrs. Brook asked, "am not surprised a bit? Isn't it only, " shemodestly suggested, "because I've taken him in more than you? Didn't youknow he WOULD?" she quavered. 

Vanderbank thought or at least pretended to. "Make ME the condition? Howcould I be sure of it?"

But the point of his question was lost for her in the growing light. "Ohthen the condition's 'you' only--?"

"That, at any rate, is all I have to do with. He's ready to settle ifI'm ready to do the rest. "

"To propose to her straight, you mean?" She waited, but as he saidnothing she went on: "And you're not ready. Is that it?"

"I'm taking my time. "

"Of course you know, " said Mrs. Brook, "that she'd jump at you. "

He turned away from her now, but after some steps came back. "Then youdo admit it. "

She hesitated. "To YOU. "

He had a strange faint smile. "Well, as I don't speak of it--!"

"No--only to me. What is it he settles?" Mrs. Brook demanded. 

"I can't tell you. "

"You didn't ask?"

"On the contrary I stopped him off. "

"Oh then, " Mrs. Brook exclaimed, "that's what I call declining. "

The words appeared for an instant to strike her companion. "Is it? Isit?" he almost musingly repeated. But he shook himself the next momentfree of his wonder, was more what would have been called in BuckinghamCrescent on the spot. "Isn't there rather something in my having thusthought it my duty to warn you that I'm definitely his candidate?"

Mrs. Brook turned impatiently away. "You've certainly--with your talkabout 'warning'--the happiest expressions!" She put her face into theflowers as he had done just before; then as she raised it: "What kind ofa monster are you trying to make me out?"

"My dear lady"--Vanderbank was prompt--"I really don't think I sayanything but what's fair. Isn't it just my loyalty to you in fact thathas in this case positively strained my discretion?"

She shook her head in mere mild despair. "'Loyalty' again is exquisite. The tact of men has a charm quite its own. And you're rather good, " shecontinued, "as men go. "

His laugh was now a little awkward, as if she had already succeededin making him uncomfortable. "I always become aware with you sooner orlater that they don't go at all--in your sense: but how am I, after all, so far out if you HAVE put your money on another man?"

"You keep coming back to that?" she wearily sighed. 

He thought a little. "No, then. You've only to tell me not to, and I'llnever speak of it again. "

"You'll be in an odd position for speaking of it if you do really go in. You deny that you've declined, " said Mrs. Brook; "which means then thatyou've allowed our friend to hope. "

Vanderbank met it bravely. "Yes, I think he hopes. "

"And communicates his hope to my child?"

This arrested the young man, but only for a moment. "I've the mostperfect faith in his wisdom with her. I trust his particular delicacy. He cares more for her, " he presently added, "even than we do. "

Mrs. Brook gazed away at the infinite of space. "'We, ' my dear Van, "she at last returned, "is one of your own real, wonderful touches. Butthere's something in what you say: I HAVE, as between ourselves--betweenme and him--been backing Mitchy. That is I've been saying to him 'Wait, wait: don't at any rate do anything else. ' Only it's just from thedepth of my thought for my daughter's happiness that I've clung to thisresource. He would so absolutely, so unreservedly do anything for her. "She had reached now, with her extraordinary self-control, the pitch ofquiet bland demonstration. "I want the poor thing, que diable, to haveanother string to her bow and another loaf, for her desolate old age, onthe shelf. When everything else is gone Mitchy will still be there. Thenit will be at least her own fault--!" Mrs. Brook continued. "What canrelieve me of the primary duty of taking precautions, " she wound up, "when I know as well as that I stand here and look at you--"

"Yes, what?" he asked as she just paused. 

"Why that so far as they count on you they count, my dear Van, on ablank. " Holding him a minute as with the soft low voice of his fate, shesadly but firmly shook her head. "You won't do it. "

"Oh!" he almost too loudly protested. 

"You won't do it, " she went on. 

"I SAY!"--he made a joke of it. 

"You won't do it, " she repeated. 

It was as if he couldn't at last but show himself really struck; yetwhat he exclaimed on was what might in truth most have impressed him. "You ARE magnificent, really!"

"Mr. Mitchett!" the butler, appearing at the door, almost familiarlydropped; after which Vanderbank turned straight to the person announced. 

Mr. Mitchett was there, and, anticipating Mrs. Brook in receiving him, her companion passed it straighten. "She's magnificent!"

Mitchy was already all interest. "Rather! But what's her last?"

It had been, though so great, so subtle, as they said in BuckinghamCrescent, that Vanderbank scarce knew how to put it. "Well, she's sothoroughly superior. "

"Oh to whom do you say it?" Mitchy cried as he greeted her. 

II

The subject of this eulogy had meanwhile returned to her sofa, where shereceived the homage of her new visitor. "It's not I who am magnificenta bit--it's dear Mr. Longdon. I've just had from Van the most wonderfulpiece of news about him--his announcement of his wish to make it worthsomebody's while to marry my child. "

"'Make it'?"--Mitchy stared. "But ISN'T it?"

"My dear friend, you must ask Van. Of course you've always thoughtso. But I must tell you all the same, " Mrs. Brook went on, "that I'mdelighted. "

Mitchy had seated himself, but Vanderbank remained erect and becameperhaps even slightly stiff. He was not angry--no member of the innercircle at Buckingham Crescent was ever angry--but he looked graveand rather troubled. "Even if it IS decidedly fine"--he addressed hishostess straight--"I can't make out quite why you're doing THIS--I meanimmediately making it known. "

"Ah but what do we keep from Mitchy?" Mrs. Brook asked. 

"What CAN you keep? It comes to the same thing, " Mitchy said. "Besides, here we are together, share and share alike--one beautiful intelligence. Mr. Longdon's 'somebody' is of course Van. Don't try to treat me as anoutsider. "

Vanderbank looked a little foolishly, though it was but the shade of ashade, from one of them to the other. "I think I've been rather an ass!"

"What then by the terms of our friendship--just as Mitchy says--can heand I have a better right to know and to feel with you about? You'llwant, Mitchy, won't you?" Mrs. Brook went on, "to hear all about THAT?"

"Oh I only mean, " Vanderbank explained, "in having just now blurted mytale out to you. However, I of course do know, " he pursued to Mitchy, "that whatever's really between us will remain between us. Let me thentell you myself exactly what's the matter. " The length of his pauseafter these words showed at last that he had stopped short; on which hiscompanions, as they waited, exchanged a sympathetic look. They waitedanother minute, and then he dropped into a chair where, leaning forward, his elbows on the arms and his gaze attached to the carpet, he drew outthe silence. Finally he looked at Mrs. Brook. "YOU make it clear. "

The appeal called up for some reason her most infantine manner. "I don'tthink I CAN, dear Van--really CLEAR. You know however yourself, " shecontinued to Mitchy, "enough by this time about Mr. Longdon and mamma. "

"Oh rather!" Mitchy laughed. 

"And about mamma and Nanda. "

"Oh perfectly: the way Nanda reminds him, and the 'beautiful loyalty'that has made him take such a fancy to her. But I've already embracedthe facts--you needn't dot any i's. " With another glance at his fellowvisitor Mitchy jumped up and stood there florid. "He has offered youmoney to marry her. " He said this to Vanderbank as if it were the mostnatural thing in the world. 

"Oh NO" Mrs. Brook interposed with promptitude: "he has simply let himknow before any one else that the money's there FOR Nanda, and thattherefore--!"

"First come first served?" Mitchy had already taken her up. "I see, Isee. Then to make her sure of the money, " he put to Vanderbank, "youMUST marry her?"

"If it depends upon that she'll never get it, " Mrs. Brook returned. "Dear Van will think conscientiously a lot about it, but he won't doit. "

"Won't you, Van, really?" Mitchy asked from the hearth-rug. 

"Never, never. We shall be very kind to him, we shall help him, hope andpray for him, but we shall be at the end, " said Mrs. Brook, "just wherewe are now. Dear Van will have done his best, and we shall have doneours. Mr. Longdon will have done his--poor Nanda even will have donehers. But it will all have been in vain. However, " Mrs. Brook continuedto expound, "she'll probably have the money. Mr. Longdon will surelyconsider that she'll want it if she doesn't marry still more than if shedoes. So we shall be SO much at least, " she wound up--"I mean Edward andI and the child will be--to the good. "

Mitchy, for an equal certainty, required but an instant's thought. "Ohthere can be no doubt about THAT. The things about which your mind maynow be at ease--!" he cheerfully exclaimed. 

"It does make a great difference!" Mrs. Brook comfortably sighed. Thenin a different tone: "What dear Van will find at the end that hecan't face will be, don't you see? just this fact of appearing to haveaccepted a bribe. He won't want, on the one hand--out of kindness forNanda--to have the money suppressed; and yet he won't want to have thepecuniary question mixed up with the matter: to look in short as if hehad had to be paid. He's like you, you know--he's proud; and it will bethere we shall break down. "

Mitchy had been watching his friend, who, a few minutes beforeperceptibly embarrassed, had quite recovered himself and, at his ease, though still perhaps with a smile a trifle strained, leaned back and lethis eyes play everywhere but over the faces of the others. Vanderbankevidently wished now to show a good-humoured detachment. 

"See here, " Mitchy said to him: "I remember your once submitting to me acase of some delicacy. "

"Oh he'll submit it to you--he'll submit it even to ME" Mrs. Brook brokein. "He'll be charming, touching, confiding--above all he'll be awfullyINTERESTING about it. But he'll make up his mind in his own way, and hisown way won't be to accommodate Mr. Longdon. "

Mitchy continued to study their companion in the light of these remarks, then turned upon his hostess his sociable glare. "Splendid, isn't it, the old boy's infatuation with him?"

Mrs. Brook just delayed. "From the point of view of the immense interestit--just now, for instance--makes for you and me? Oh yes, it's one ofour best things yet. It places him a little with Lady Fanny--'He will, he won't; he won't, he will!' Only, to be perfect, it lacks, as I say, the element of real suspense. "

Mitchy frankly wondered. "It does, you think? Not for me--not wholly. "He turned again quite pleadingly to their friend. "I hope it doesn't foryourself totally either?"

Vanderbank, cultivating his detachment, made at first no more replythan if he had not heard, and the others meanwhile showed faces thattestified perhaps less than their respective speeches had done to theabsence of anxiety. The only token he immediately gave was to get up andapproach Mitchy, before whom he stood a minute laughing kindly enough, though not altogether gaily. As if then for a better proof of gaietyhe presently seized him by the shoulders and, still without speaking, pushed him backward into the chair he himself had just quitted. Mrs. Brook's eyes, from the sofa, while this went on, attached themselves toher visitors. It took Vanderbank, as he moved about and his companionswaited, a minute longer to produce what he had in mind. "What ISsplendid, as we call it, is this extraordinary freedom and good humourof our intercourse and the fact that we do care--so independently of ourpersonal interests, with so little selfishness or other vulgarity--toget at the idea of things. The beautiful specimen Mrs. Brook had justgiven me of that, " he continued to Mitchy, "was what made me breakout to you about her when you came in. " He spoke to one friend, but helooked at the other. "What's really 'superior' in her is that, thoughI suddenly show her an interference with a favourite plan, her personalresentment's nothing--all she wants is to see what may really happen, totake in the truth of the case and make the best of that. She offers methe truth, as she sees it, about myself, and with no nasty elation ifit does chance to be the truth that suits her best. It was a charming, charming stroke. "

Mitchy's appreciation was no bar to his amusement. "You're wonderfullyright about us. But still it was a stroke. "

If Mrs. Brook was less diverted she followed perhaps more closely. "Ifyou do me so much justice then, why did you put to me such a cold cruelquestion?--I mean when you so oddly challenged me on my handing on yournews to Mitchy. If the principal beauty of our effort to live togetheris--and quite according to your own eloquence--in our sincerity, Isimply obeyed the impulse to do the sincere thing. If we're not sincerewe're nothing. "

"Nothing!"--it was Mitchy who first responded. "But we ARE sincere. "

"Yes, we ARE sincere, " Vanderbank presently said. "It's a great chancefor us not to fall below ourselves: no doubt therefore we shall continueto soar and sing. We pay for it, people who don't like us say, in ourself-consciousness--"

"But people who don't like us, " Mitchy broke in, "don't matter. Besides, how can we be properly conscious of each other--?"

"That's it!"--Vanderbank completed his idea: "without my finding myselffor instance in you and Mrs. Brook? We see ourselves reflected--we'reconscious of the charming whole. I thank you, " he pursued after aninstant to Mrs. Brook--"I thank you for your sincerity. "

It was a business sometimes really to hold her eyes, but they had, it must be said for her, their steady moments. She exchanged withVanderbank a somewhat remarkable look, then, with an art of her own, broke short off without appearing to drop him. "The thing is, don't youthink?"--she appealed to Mitchy--"for us not to be so awfully cleveras to make it believed that we can never be simple. We mustn't see TOOtremendous things--even in each other. " She quite lost patience with thedanger she glanced at. "We CAN be simple!"

"We CAN, by God!" Mitchy laughed. 

"Well, we are now--and it's a great comfort to have it settled, " saidVanderbank. 

"Then you see, " Mrs. Brook returned, "what a mistake you'd make to seeabysses of subtlety in my having been merely natural. "

"We CAN be natural, " Mitchy declared. 

"We can, by God!" Vanderbank laughed. 

Mrs. Brook had turned to Mitchy. "I just wanted you to know. So I spoke. It's not more complicated than that. As for WHY I wanted you to know--!"

"What better reason could there be, " Mitchy interrupted, "than yourbeing filled to the finger-tips with the sense of how I would want itmyself, and of the misery, the absolute pathos, of my being left out?Fancy, my dear chap"--he had only to put it to Van--"my NOT knowing!". 

Vanderbank evidently couldn't fancy it, but he said quietly enough: "Ishould have told you myself. "

"Well, what's the difference?"

"Oh there IS a difference, " Mrs. Brook loyally said. Then she openedan inch or two, for Vanderbank, the door of her dim radiance. "OnlyI should have thought it a difference for the better. Of course, " sheadded, "it remains absolutely with us three alone, and don't you alreadyfeel from it the fresh charm--with it here between us--of our beingtogether?"

It was as if each of the men had waited for the other to assent betterthan he himself could and Mitchy then, as Vanderbank failed, hadgracefully, to cover him, changed the subject. "But isn't Nanda, theperson most interested, to know?"

Vanderbank gave on this a strange sound of hilarity. "Ah that wouldfinish it off!"

It produced for a few seconds something like a chill, a chill that hadfor consequence a momentary pause which in its turn added weight to thewords next uttered. "It's not I who shall tell her, " Mrs. Brook saidgently and gravely. "There!--you may be sure. If you want a promise, it's a promise. So that if Mr. Longdon's silent, " she went on, "and youare, Mitchy, and I am, how in the world shall she have a suspicion?"

"You mean of course except by Van's deciding to mention it himself. "

Van might have been, from the way they looked at him, some beautifulunconscious object; but Mrs. Brook was quite ready to answer. "Oh poorman, HE'LL never breathe. "

"I see. So there we are. "

To this discussion the subject of it had for the time nothing tocontribute, even when Mitchy, rising with the words he had last utteredfrom the chair in which he had been placed, took sociably as well, onthe hearth-rug, a position before their hostess. This move ministeredapparently to Vanderbank's mere silence, for it was still withoutspeaking that, after a little, he turned away from his friend anddropped once more into the same seat. "I've shown you already, you ofcourse remember, " Vanderbank presently said to him, "that I'm perfectlyaware of how much better Mrs. Brook would like YOU for the position. "

"He thinks I want him myself, " Mrs. Brook blandly explained. 

She was indeed, as they always thought her, "wonderful, " but she wasperhaps not even now so much so as Mitchy found himself able to be. "Buthow would you lose old Van--even at the worst?" he earnestly asked ofher. 

She just hesitated. "What do you mean by the worst?"

"Then even at the best, " Mitchy smiled. "In the event of his falsifyingyour prediction; which, by the way, has the danger, hasn't it?--I meanfor your intellectual credit--of making him, as we all used to be calledby our nursemaids, 'contrairy. '"

"Oh I've thought of that, " Mrs. Brook returned. "But he won't do, on thewhole, even for the sweetness of spiting me, what he won't want to do. _I_ haven't said I should lose him, " she went on; "that's only the viewhe himself takes--or, to do him perfect justice, the idea he candidlyimputes to me; though without, I imagine--for I don't go so far asthat--attributing to me anything so unutterably bete as a feeling ofjealousy. "

"You wouldn't dream of my supposing anything inept of you, " Vanderbanksaid on this, "if you understood to the full how I keep on admiring you. Only what stupefies me a little, " he continued, "is the extraordinarycritical freedom--or we may call it if we like the high intellectualdetachment--with which we discuss a question touching you, dearMrs. Brook, so nearly and engaging so your private and most sacredsentiments. What are we playing with, after all, but the idea of Nanda'shappiness?"

"Oh I'm not playing!" Mrs. Brook declared with a little rattle ofemotion. 

"She's not playing"--Mr. Mitchett gravely confirmed it. "Don't youfeel in the very air the vibration of the passion that she's simply toocharming to shake at the window as the housemaid shakes the tableclothor the jingo the flag?" Then he took up what Vanderbank had previouslysaid. "Of course, my dear man, I'm 'aware, ' as you just now put it, ofeverything, and I'm not indiscreet, am I, Mrs. Brook? in admitting foryou as well as for myself that there WAS an impossibility you and I usedsometimes to turn over together. Only--Lord bless us all!--it isn't asif I hadn't long ago seen that there's nothing at all FOR me. "

"Ah wait, wait!" Mrs. Brook put in. "She has a theory"--Vanderbank, fromhis chair, lighted it up for Mitchy, who hovered before them--"that yourchance WILL come, later on, after I've given my measure. "

"Oh but that's exactly, " Mitchy was quick to respond, "what you'll neverdo! You won't give your measure the least little bit. You'll walk inmagnificent mystery 'later on' not a bit less than you do today;you'll continue to have the benefit of everything that our imagination, perpetually engaged, often baffled and never fatigued, will continueto bedeck you with. Nanda, in the same way, to the end of all her time, will simply remain exquisite, or genuine, or generous--whatever wechoose to call it. It may make a difference to us, who are comparativelyvulgar, but what difference will it make to HER whether you do or youdon't decide for her? You can't belong to her more, for herself, thanyou do already--and that's precisely so much that there's no room forany one else. Where therefore, without that room, do I come in?"

"Nowhere, I see, " Vanderbank seemed obligingly to muse. 

Mrs. Brook had followed Mitchy with marked admiration, but she gave onthis a glance at Van that was like the toss of a blossom from the samebranch. "Oh then shall I just go on with you BOTH? That WILL be joy!"She had, however, the next thing, a sudden drop which shaded thepicture. "You're so divine, Mitchy, that how can you not in the long-runbreak ANY woman down?"

It was not as if Mitchy was struck--it was only that he was courteous. "What do you call the long-run? Taking about till I'm eighty?"

"Ah your genius is of a kind to which middle life will be particularlyfavourable. You'll reap then somehow, one feels, everything you'vesown. "

Mitchy still accepted the prophecy only to control it. "Do you calleighty middle life? Why, my moral beauty, my dear woman--if that's whatyou mean by my genius--is precisely my curse. What on earth--is left fora man just rotten with goodness? It renders necessary the kind of likingthat renders unnecessary anything else. "

"Now that IS cheap paradox!" Vanderbank patiently sighed. "You're downfor a fine. "

It was with less of the patience perhaps that Mrs. Brook took this up. "Yes, on that we ARE stiff. Five pounds, please. "

Mitchy drew out his pocket-book even though he explained. "What I meanis that I don't give out the great thing. " With which he produced acrisp banknote. 

"DON'T you?" asked Vanderbank, who, having taken it from him to hand toMrs. Brook, held it a moment, delicately, to accentuate the doubt. 

"The great thing's the sacred terror. It's you who give THAT out. "

"Oh!"--and Vanderbank laid the money on the small stand at Mrs. Brook'selbow. 

"Ain't I right, Mrs. Brook?--doesn't he, tremendously, and isn't thatmore than anything else what does it?"

The two again, as if they understood each other, gazed in a unityof interest at their companion, who sustained it with an air clearlyintended as the happy mean between embarrassment and triumph. Then Mrs. Brook showed she liked the phrase. "The sacred terror! Yes, one feelsit. It IS that. "

"The finest case of it, " Mitchy pursued, "that I've ever met. So mymoral's sufficiently pointed. "

"Oh I don't think it can be said to be that, " Vanderbank returned, "tillyou've put the whole thing into a box by doing for Nanda what she doesmost want you to do. "

Mitchy caught on without a shade of wonder. "Oh by proposing to theDuchess for little Aggie?" He took but an instant to turn it over. "Well, I WOULD propose--to please Nanda. Only I've never yet quite madeout the reason of her wish. "

"The reason is largely, " his friend answered, "that, being very fond ofAggie and in fact extremely admiring her, she wants to do somethinggood for her and to keep her from anything bad. Don't you know--it'stoo charming--she regularly believes in her?" Mitchy, with all hisrecognition, vibrated to the touch. "Isn't it too charming?"

"Well then, " Vanderbank went on, "she secures for her friend a phoenixlike you, and secures for you a phoenix like her friend. It's hard tosay for which of you she desires most to do the handsome thing. Sheloves you both in short"--he followed it up--"though perhaps when onethinks of it the price she puts on you, Mitchy, in the arrangement, isa little the higher. Awfully fine at any rate--and yet awfully oddtoo--her feeling for Aggie's type, which is divided by such abysses fromher own. "

"Ah, " laughed Mitchy, "but think then of her feeling for mine!"

Vanderbank, still more at his ease now and with his head back, hadhis eyes aloft and far. "Oh there are things in Nanda--!" The othersexchanged a glance at this, while their companion added: "Little Aggie'sreally the sort of creature she would have liked to be able to be. "

"Well, " Mitchy said, "I should have adored her even if she HAD beenable. "

Mrs. Brook had for some minutes played no audible part, but the acuteobserver we are constantly taking for granted would perhaps havedetected in her, as one of the effects of the special complexion to-dayof Vanderbank's presence, a certain smothered irritation. "She couldn'tpossibly have been able, " she now interposed, "with so loose--or rather, to express it more properly, with so perverse--a mother. "

"And yet, my dear lady, " Mitchy promptly qualified, "how if in littleAggie's case the Duchess hasn't prevented--?"

Mrs. Brook was full of wisdom. "Well, it's a different thing. I'm not, as a mother--am I, Van?--bad ENOUGH. That's what's the matter with me. Aggie, don't you see? is the Duchess's morality, her virtue; which, byhaving it that way outside of you, as one may say, you can make a muchbetter thing of. The child has been for Jane, I admit, a capital littlesubject, but Jane has kept her on hand and finished her like somewonderful piece of stitching. Oh as work it's of a soigne! There itis--to show. A woman like me has to be HERSELF, poor thing, her virtueand her morality. What will you have? It's our lumbering English plan. "

"So that her daughter, " Mitchy sympathised, "can only, by thearrangement, hope to become at the best her immorality and her vice?"

But Mrs. Brook, without an answer for the question, appeared suddenly tohave plunged into a sea of thought. "The only way for Nanda to have beenREALLY nice--!"

"Would have been for YOU to be like Jane?"

Mitchy and his hostess seemed for a minute, on this, to gaze togetherat the tragic truth. Then she shook her head. "We see our mistakestoo late. " She repeated the movement, but as if to let it all go, andVanderbank meanwhile, pulling out his watch, had got up with a laughthat showed some inattention and made to Mitchy a remark about theirwalking away together. Mitchy, engaged for the instant with Mrs. Brook, had assented only with a nod, but the attitude of the two men had becomethat of departure. Their friend looked at them as if she would like tokeep one of them, and for a purpose connected somehow with the other, but was oddly, almost ludicrously, embarrassed to choose. What was inher face indeed during this short passage might prove to have been, should we penetrate, the flicker of a sense that in spite of allintimacy and amiability they could, at bottom and as things commonlyturned out, only be united against her. Yet she made at the end a sortof choice in going on to Mitchy: "He hasn't at all told you the realreason of Nanda's idea that you should go in for Aggie. "

"Oh I draw the line there, " said Vanderbank. "Besides, he understandsthat too. "

Mitchy, on the spot, did himself and every one justice. "Why it justdisposes of me, doesn't it?"

It made Vanderbank, restless now and turning about the room, stop with asmile at Mrs. Brook. "We understand too well!"

"Not if he doesn't understand, " she replied after a moment while sheturned to Mitchy, "that his real 'combination' can in the nature of thecase only be--!"

"Oh yes"--Mitchy took her straight up--"with the young thing who is, asyou say, positively and helplessly modern and the pious fraud of whoseclassic identity with a sheet of white paper has been--ah tacitlyof course, but none the less practically!--dropped. You've so oftenreminded me. I do understand. If I were to go in for Aggie it would onlybe to oblige. The modern girl, the product of our hard London facts andof her inevitable consciousness of them just as they are--she, wonderfulbeing, IS, I fully recognise, my real affair, and I'm not ashamed to saythat when I like the individual I'm not afraid of the type. She knowstoo much--I don't say; but she doesn't know after all a millionth partof what _I_ do. "

"I'm not sure!" Mrs. Brook earnestly exclaimed. 

He had rung out and he kept it up with a limpidity unusual. "And productfor product, when you come to that, I'm a queerer one myself than anyother. The traditions _I_ smash!" Mitchy laughed. 

Mrs. Brook had got up and Vanderbank had gone again to the window. "That's exactly why, " she returned. "You're a pair of monsters and yourmonstrosity fits. She does know too much, " she added. 

"Well, " said Mitchy with resolution, "it's all my fault. "

"Not ALL--unless, " Mrs. Brook returned, "that's only a sweet way ofsaying that it's mostly mine. "

"Oh yours too--immensely; in fact every one's. Even Edward's, I daresay; and certainly, unmistakably, Harold's. Ah and Van's own--rather!"Mitchy continued; "for all he turns his back and will have nothing tosay to it. "

It was on the back Vanderbank turned that Mrs. Brook's eyes now rested. "That's precisely why he shouldn't be afraid of her. "

He faced straight about. "Oh I don't deny my part. "

He shone at them brightly enough, and Mrs. Brook, thoughtful, wistful, candid, took in for a moment the radiance. "And yet to think that afterall it has been mere TALK!"

Something in her tone again made her hearers laugh out; so it was stillwith the air of good humour that Vanderbank answered: "Mere, mere, mere. But perhaps it's exactly the 'mere' that has made us range so wide. "

Mrs. Brook's intelligence abounded. "You mean that we haven't had theexcuse of passion?"

Her companions once more gave way to mirth, but "There you are!"Vanderbank said after an instant less sociably. With it too he held outhis hand. 

"You ARE afraid, " she answered as she gave him her own; on which, ashe made no rejoinder, she held him before her. "Do you mean you REALLYdon't know if she gets it?"

"The money, if he DOESN'T go in?"--Mitchy broke almost with an airof responsibility into Vanderbank's silence. "Ah but, as we said, surely--!"

It was Mitchy's eyes that Vanderbank met. "Yes, I should suppose shegets it. "

"Perhaps then, as a compensation, she'll even get MORE--!"

"If I don't go in? Oh!" said Vanderbank. And he changed colour. 

He was by this time off, but Mrs. Brook kept Mitchy a moment. "Now--bythat suggestion--he has something to show. He won't go in. "

III

Her visitors had been gone half an hour, but she was still in thedrawing-room when Nanda came back. The girl found her, on the sofa, in aposture that might have represented restful oblivion, but that, aftera glance, our young lady appeared to interpret as mere intensity ofthought. It was a condition from which at all events Mrs. Brook wasquickly roused by her daughter's presence: she opened her eyes and putdown her feet, so that the two were confronted as closely as personsmay be when it is only one of them who looks at the other. Nanda, gazingvaguely about and not seeking a seat, slowly drew off her gloves whileher mother's sad eyes considered her from top to toe. "Tea's gone, "Mrs. Brook then said as if there were something in the loss peculiarlyirretrievable. "But I suppose, " she added, "he gave you all you want. "

"Oh dear yes, thank you--I've had lots. "

Nanda hovered there slim and charming, feathered and ribboned, dressedin thin fresh fabrics and faint colours, with something in the effectof it all to which the sweeter deeper melancholy in her mother's eyesseemed happily to testify. "Just turn round, dear. " The girl immediatelyobeyed, and Mrs. Brook once more took everything in. "The back'sbest--only she didn't do what she said she would. How they do lie!" shegently quavered. 

"Yes, but we lie so to THEM. " Nanda had swung round again, producingevidently on her mother's part, by the admirable "hang" of her lightskirts, a still deeper peace. "Do you mean the middle fold?--I knew shewouldn't. I don't want my back to be best--I don't walk backward. "

"Yes, " Mrs. Brook resignedly mused; "you dress for yourself. "

"Oh how can you say that, " the girl asked, "when I never stick in a pinbut what I think of YOU!"

"Well, " Mrs. Brook moralised, "one must always, I consider, think, as asort of point de repere, of some one good person. Only it's best if it'sa person one's afraid of. You do very well, but I'm not enough. Whatone really requires is a kind of salutary terror. I never stick in a pinwithout thinking of your Cousin Jane. What is it that some one quotessomewhere about some one's having said that 'Our antagonist is ourhelper--he prevents our being superficial'? The extent to which withmy poor clothes the Duchess prevents ME--!" It was a measure Mrs. Brookcould give only by the general soft wail of her submission to fate. 

"Yes, the Duchess isn't a woman, is she? She's a standard. "

The speech had for Nanda's companion, however, no effect of pleasantryor irony, and it was a mark of the special intercourse of these goodfriends that though they showed each other, in manner and tone, suchsustained consideration as might almost have given it the stamp ofdiplomacy, there was yet in it also something of that economy ofexpression which is the result of a common experience. The recurrenceof opportunity to observe them together would have taught a spectatorthat--on Mrs. Brook's side doubtless more particularly--their relationwas governed by two or three remarkably established and, as might havebeen said, refined laws, the spirit of which was to guard against thevulgarity so often coming to the surface between parent and child. Thatthey WERE as good friends as if Nanda had not been her daughter was atruth that no passage between them might fail in one way or another toillustrate. Nanda had gathered up, for that matter, early in life, aflower of maternal wisdom: "People talk about conscience, but it seemsto me one must just bring it up to a certain point and leave itthere. You can let your conscience alone if you're nice to the secondhousemaid. " Mrs. Brook was as "nice" to Nanda as she was to SarahCurd--which involved, as may easily be imagined, the happiest conditionsfor Sarah. "Well, " she resumed, reverting to the Duchess on a finalappraisement of the girl's air, "I really think I do well by you andthat Jane wouldn't have anything to say to-day. You look awfully likemamma, " she then threw off as if for the first time of mentioning it. 

"Oh Cousin Jane doesn't care for that, " Nanda returned. "What I don'tlook like is Aggie, for all I try. "

"Ah you shouldn't try--you can do nothing with it. One must be what oneis. "

Mrs. Brook was almost sententious, but Nanda, with civility, let itpass. "No one in London touches her. She's quite by herself. When onesees her one feels her to be the real thing. "

Mrs. Brook, without harshness, wondered. "What do you mean by the realthing?"

Even Nanda, however, had to think a moment. 

"Well, the real young one. That's what Lord Petherton calls her, " shemildly joked--"'the young 'un'"

Her mother's echo was not for the joke, but for something else. "I knowwhat you mean. What's the use of being good?"

"Oh I didn't mean that, " said Nanda. "Besides, isn't Aggie of agoodness--?"

"I wasn't talking of her. I was asking myself what's the use of MYbeing. "

"Well, you can't help it any more than the Duchess can help--!"

"Ah but she could if she would!" Mrs. Brook broke in with a sharperring than she had yet given. "We can't help being good perhaps, if thatburden's laid on us--but there are lengths in other directions we're notabsolutely obliged to go. And what I think of when I stick in the pins, "she went on, "is that Jane seems to me really never to have had to pay. "She appeared for a minute to brood on this till she could no longerbear it; after which she jerked out: "Why she has never had to pay forANYthing!"

Nanda had by this time seated herself, taking her place, under theinterest of their talk, on her mother's sofa, where, except for theremoval of her long soft gloves, which one of her hands again and againdrew caressingly through the other, she remained very much as if shewere some friendly yet circumspect young visitor to whom Mrs. Brook hadon some occasion dropped "DO come. " But there was something perhaps moreexpressly conciliatory in the way she had kept everything on: as if, inparticular serenity and to confirm kindly Mrs. Brook's sense of what hadbeen done for her, she had neither taken off her great feathered hat norlaid down her parasol of pale green silk, the "match" of hat and ribbonsand which had an expensive precious knob. Our spectator would possiblyhave found too much earnestness in her face to be sure if there was alsocandour. "And do you mean that YOU have had to pay--?"

"Oh yes--all the while. " With this Mrs. Brook was a little short, andalso as she added as if to banish a slight awkwardness: "But don't letit discourage you. "

Nanda seemed an instant to weigh the advice, and the whole thing wouldhave been striking as another touch in the picture of the odd want, onthe part of each, of any sense of levity in the other. Whatever escape, face to face, mother or daughter might ever seek would never be thehumorous one--a circumstance, notwithstanding, that would not in everycase have failed to make their interviews droll for a third person. Itwould always indeed for such a person have produced an impression oftension beneath the surface. "I could have done much better at the startand have lost less time, " the girl at last said, "if I hadn't had thedrawback of not really remembering Granny. "

"Oh well, _I_ remember her!" Mrs. Brook moaned with an accent thatevidently struck her the next moment as so much out of place that sheslightly deflected. She took Nanda's parasol and held it as if--a moredelicate thing much than any one of hers--she simply liked to have it. "Her clothes--at your age at least--must have been hideous. Was it atthe place he took you to that he gave you tea?" she then went on. 

"Yes, at the Museum. We had an orgy in the refreshment-room. But he tookme afterwards to Tishy's, where we had another. "

"He went IN with you?" Mrs. Brook had suddenly flashed into eagerness. 

"Oh yes--I made him. "

"He didn't want to?"

"On the contrary--very much. But he doesn't do everything he wants, "said Nanda. 

Mrs. Brook seemed to wonder. "You mean you've also to want it?"

"Oh no--THAT isn't enough. What I suppose I mean, " Nanda continued, "isthat he doesn't do anything he doesn't want. But he does quite enough, "she added. 

"And who then was at Tishy's?"

"Oh poor old Tish herself, naturally, and Carrie Donner. "

"And no one else?"

The girl just waited. "Yes, Mr. Cashmore came in. "

Her mother gave a groan of impatience. "Ah AGAIN?"

Nanda thought an instant. "How do you mean, 'again'? He just lives thereas much as he ever did, and Tishy can't prevent him. "

"I was thinking of Mr. Longdon--of THEIR meeting. When he met him herethat time he liked it so little. Did he like it any more to-day?" Mrs. Brook quavered. 

"Oh no, he hated it. "

"But hadn't he--if he should go in--known he WOULD?"

"Yes, perfectly. But he wanted to see. "

"To see--?" Mrs. Brook just threw out. 

"Well, where I go so much. And he knew I wished it. "

"I don't quite see why, " Mrs. Brook mildly observed. And then as herdaughter said nothing to help her: "At any rate he did loathe it?"

Nanda, for a reply, simply after an instant put a question. "Well, howcan he understand?"

"You mean, like me, why you do go there so much? How can he indeed?"

"I don't mean that, " the girl returned--"it's just that he understandsperfectly, because he saw them all, in such an extraordinary way--well, what can I ever call it?--clutch me and cling to me. "

Mrs. Brook, with full gravity, considered this picture. "And was Mr. Cashmore to-day so ridiculous?"

"Ah he's not ridiculous, mamma--he's very unhappy. He thinks now LadyFanny probably won't go, but he feels that may be after all only theworse for him. "

"She WILL go, " Mrs. Brook answered with one of her roundabout approachesto decision. "He IS too great an idiot. She was here an hour ago, and ifever a woman was packed--!"

"Well, " Nanda objected, "but doesn't she spend her time in packing andunpacking?"

This enquiry, however, scarce pulled up her mother. "No--though she HAS, no doubt, hitherto wasted plenty of labour. She has now a dozen boxes--Icould see them there in her wonderful eyes--just waiting to be calledfor. So if you're counting on her not going, my dear--!" Mrs. Brook gavea head-shake that was the warning of wisdom. 

"Oh I don't care what she does!" Nanda replied. "What I meant just nowwas that Mr. Longdon couldn't understand why, with so much to make themso, they couldn't be decently happy. "

"And did he wish you to explain?"

"I tried to, but I didn't make it any better. He doesn't like them. Hedoesn't even care for Tish. "

"He told you so--right out?"

"Oh, " Nanda said, "of course I asked him. I didn't press him, because Inever do--!"

"You never do?" Mrs. Brook broke in as with the glimpse of a new light. 

The girl showed an indulgence for this interest that was for a momentalmost elderly. "I enjoy awfully with him seeing just how to take him. "

Her tone and her face evidently put forth for her companion at thisjuncture something freshly, even quite supremely suggestive; and yet theeffect of them on Mrs. Brook's part was only a question so off-hand thatit might already often have been asked. The mother's eyes, to ask it, we may none the less add, attached themselves closely to the daughter's, and her face just glowed. "You like him so very awfully?"

It was as if the next instant Nanda felt herself on her guard. Yet shespoke with a certain surrender. "Well, it's rather intoxicating to beone's self--!" She had only a drop over the choice of her term. 

"So tremendously made up to, you mean--even by a little fussy ancientman? But DOESN'T he, my dear, " Mrs. Brook continued with encouragement, "make up to you?"

A supposititious spectator would certainly on this have imagined in thegirl's face the delicate dawn of a sense that her mother had suddenlybecome vulgar, together with a general consciousness that the wayto meet vulgarity was always to be frank and simple and above all toignore. "He makes one enjoy being liked so much--liked better, I dothink, than I've ever been liked by any one. "

If Mrs. Brook hesitated it was, however, clearly not because she hadnoticed. "Not better surely than by dear Mitchy? Or even if you come tothat by Tishy herself. "

Nanda's simplicity maintained itself. "Oh Mr. Longdon's different fromTishy. "

Her mother again hesitated. "You mean of course he knows more?"

The girl considered it. "He doesn't know MORE. But he knows otherthings. And he's pleasanter than Mitchy. "

"You mean because he doesn't want to marry you?"

It was as if she had not heard that Nanda continued: "Well, he's morebeautiful. "

"O-oh!" cried Mrs. Brook, with a drawn-out extravagance of comment thatamounted to an impugnment of her taste even by herself. 

It contributed to Nanda's quietness. "He's one of the most beautifulpeople in the world. "

Her companion at this, with a quick wonder, fixed her. "DOES he, mydear, want to marry you?"

"Yes--to all sorts of ridiculous people. "

"But I mean--would you take HIM?"

Nanda, rising, met the question with a short ironic "Yes!" that showedher first impatience. "It's so charming being liked without beingapproved. "

But Mrs. Brook only wanted to know. "He doesn't approve--?"

"No, but it makes no difference. It's all exactly right--it doesn'tmatter. "

Mrs. Brook seemed to wonder, however, exactly how these things couldbe. "He doesn't want you to give up anything?" She looked as if swiftlythinking what Nanda MIGHT give up. 

"Oh yes, everything. "

It was as if for an instant she found her daughter inscrutable; then shehad a strange smile. "Me?"

The girl was perfectly prompt. "Everything. But he wouldn't like menearly so much if I really did. "

Her mother had a further pause. "Does he want to ADOPT you?" Then morequickly and sadly, though also a little as if lacking nerve to push theresearch: "We couldn't give you up, Nanda. "

"Thank you so much, mamma. But we shan't be very much tried, " Nandasaid, "because what it comes to seems to be that I'm really what you maycall adopting HIM. I mean I'm little by little changing him--graduallyshowing him that, as I couldn't possibly have been different, and asalso of course one can't keep giving up, the only way is for him not tomind, and to take me just as I am. That, don't you see? is what he wouldnever have expected to do. "

Mrs. Brook recognised in a manner the explanation, but still had herwistfulness. "But--a--to take you, 'as you are, ' WHERE?"

"Well, to the South Kensington Museum. "

"Oh!" said Mrs. Brook. Then, however, in a more exemplary tone: "Do youenjoy so very much your long hours with him?"

Nanda appeared for an instant to think how to express it. "Well, we'regreat friends. "

"And always talking about Granny?"

"Oh no--really almost never now. "

"He doesn't think so awfully much of her?" There was an oddity ofeagerness in the question--a hope, a kind of dash, for something thatmight have been in Nanda's interest. 

The girl met these things only with obliging gravity. "I think he'slosing any sense of my likeness. He's too used to it--or too many thingsthat are too different now cover it up. "

"Well, " said Mrs. Brook as she took this in, "I think it's awfullyclever of you to get only the good of him and have none of the worry. "

Nanda wondered. "The worry?"

"You leave that all to ME, " her mother went on, but quite forgivingly. "I hope at any rate that the good, for you, will be real. "

"Real?" the girl, remaining vague, again echoed. 

Mrs. Brook showed for this not perhaps an irritation, but a flicker ofausterity. "You must remember we've a great many things to think about. There are things we must take for granted in each other--we must allhelp in our way to pull the coach. That's what I mean by worry, and ifyou don't have any so much the better for you. For me it's in the day'swork. Your father and I have most to think about always at this time, asyou perfectly know--when we have to turn things round and manage somehowor other to get out of town, have to provide and pinch, to meet all thenecessities, with money, money, money at every turn running away likewater. The children this year seem to fit into nothing, into nowhere, and Harold's more dreadful than he has ever been, doing nothing at allfor himself and requiring everything to be done for him. He talks abouthis American girl, with millions, who's so awfully taken with him, butI can't find out anything about her: the only one, just now, that peopleseem to have heard of is the one Booby Manger's engaged to. The Mangersliterally snap up everything, " Mrs. Brook quite wailingly now continued:"the Jew man, so gigantically rich--who is he? Baron Schack orSchmack--who has just taken Cumberland House and who has the awfulstammer--or what is it? no roof to his mouth--is to give that horridlittle Algie, to do his conversation for him, four hundred a year, whichHarold pretended to me that, of all the rush of young men--dozens!--HEwas most in the running for. Your father's settled gloom is terrible, and I bear all the brunt of it; we get literally nothing this year forthe Hovel, yet have to spend on it heaven knows what; and everybody, forthe next three months, in Scotland and everywhere, has asked us for thewrong time and nobody for the right: so that I assure you I don't knowwhere to turn--which doesn't however in the least prevent every onecoming to me with their own selfish troubles. " It was as if Mrs. Brookhad found the cup of her secret sorrows suddenly jostled by some touchof which the perversity, though not completely noted at the moment, proved, as she a little let herself go, sufficient to make it flow over;but she drew, the next thing, from her daughter's stillness a reflexionof the vanity of such heat and speedily recovered herself as if in orderwith more dignity to point the moral. "I can carry my burden and shalldo so to the end; but we must each remember that we shall fall to piecesif we don't manage to keep hold of some little idea of responsibility. Ipositively can't arrange without knowing when it is you go to him. "

"To Mr. Longdon? Oh whenever I like, " Nanda replied very gently andsimply. 

"And when shall you be so good as to like?"

"Well, he goes himself on Saturday, and if I want I can go a few dayslater. "

"And what day can you go if I want?" Mrs. Brook spoke as with a smallsharpness--just softened indeed in time--produced by the sight of afreedom in her daughter's life that suddenly loomed larger than anyfreedom of her own. It was still a part of the unsteadiness of thevessel of her anxieties; but she never after all remained publicly longsubject to the influence she often comprehensively designated to othersas well as to herself as "nastiness. " "What I mean is that you might gothe same day, mightn't you?"

"With him--in the train? I should think so if you wish it. "

"But would HE wish it? I mean would he hate it?"

"I don't think so at all, but I can easily ask him. "

Mrs. Brook's head inclined to the chimney and her eyes to the window. "Easily?"

Nanda looked for a moment mystified by her mother's insistence. "I canat any rate perfectly try it. "

"Remembering even that mamma would never have pushed so?"

Nanda's face seemed to concede even that condition. "Well, " she at allevents serenely replied, "I really think we're good friends enough foranything. "

It might have been, for the light it quickly produced, exactly what hermother had been working to make her say. "What do you call that then, Ishould like to know, but his adopting you?"

"Ah I don't know that it matters much what it's called. "

"So long as it brings with it, you mean, " Mrs. Brook asked, "all theadvantages?"

"Well yes, " said Nanda, who had now begun dimly to smile--"call themadvantages. "

Mrs. Brook had a pause. "One would be quite ready to do that if one onlyknew a little more exactly what they're to consist of. "

"Oh the great advantage, I feel, is doing something for HIM. "

Nanda's companion, at this, hesitated afresh. "But doesn't that, mydear, put the extravagance of your surrender to him on rather an oddfooting? Charity, love, begins at home, and if it's a question of merelyGIVING, you've objects enough for your bounty without going so far. "

The girl, as her stare showed, was held a moment by her surprise, whichpresently broke out. "Why, I thought you wanted me so to be nice tohim!"

"Well, I hope you won't think me very vulgar, " said Mrs. Brook, "if Itell you that I want you still more to have some idea of what you'll getby it. I've no wish, " she added, "to keep on boring you with Mitchy--"

"Don't, don't!" Nanda pleaded. 

Her mother stopped as short as if there had been something in her toneto set the limit the more utterly for being unstudied. Yet poor Mrs. Brook couldn't leave it there. "Then what do you get instead?"

"Instead of Mitchy? Oh, " said Nanda, "I shall never marry. "

Mrs. Brook at this turned away, moving over to the window with quickenedweariness. Nanda, on her side, as if their talk had ended, went acrossto the sofa to take up her parasol before leaving the room, an impulserather favoured than arrested by the arrival of her brother Harold, whocame in at the moment both his relatives had turned a back to the doorand who gave his sister, as she faced him, a greeting that made theirmother look round. "Hallo, Nan--you ARE lovely! Ain't she lovely, mother?"

"No!" Mrs. Brook answered, not, however, otherwise noticing him. Herdomestic despair centred at this instant all in her daughter. "Wellthen, we shall consider--your father and I--that he must take theconsequence. "

Nanda had now her hand on the door, while Harold had dropped on thesofa. "'He'?" she just sounded. 

"I mean Mr. Longdon. "

"And what do you mean by the consequence?"

"Well, it will do for the beginning of it that you'll please go downWITH him. "

"On Saturday then? Thanks, mamma, " the girl returned. 

She was instantly gone, on which Mrs. Brook had more attention for herson. This, after an instant, as she approached the sofa and raised hereyes from the little table beside it, came straight out. "Where in theworld is that five-pound note?"

Harold looked vacantly about him. "What five-pound note?"

BOOK SEVENTH. MITCHY

Mr. Longdon's garden took in three acres and, full of charming features, had for its greatest wonder the extent and colour of its old brick wall, in which the pink and purple surface was the fruit of the mild agesand the protective function, for a visitor strolling, sitting, talking, reading, that of a nurse of reverie. The air of the place, in the Augusttime, thrilled all the while with the bliss of birds, the hum of littlelives unseen and the flicker of white butterflies. It was on the largeflat enclosed lawn that Nanda spoke to Vanderbank of the three weeks shewould have completed there on the morrow--weeks that had been--she madeno secret of it--the happiest she had yet spent anywhere. The greyishday was soft and still and the sky faintly marbled, while the more newlyarrived of the visitors from London, who had come late on the Fridayafternoon, lounged away the morning in an attitude every relaxed lineof which referred to the holiday he had, as it were--at first merelylooking about and victualling--sat down in front of as a captain beforea city. There were sitting-places, just there, out of the full light, cushioned benches in the thick wide spread of old mulberry-boughs. Alarge book of facts lay in the young man's lap, and Nanda had come outto him, half an hour before luncheon, somewhat as Beatrice came out toBenedick: not to call him immediately indeed to the meal, but mentioningpromptly that she had come at a bidding. Mr. Longdon had rebuked her, itappeared, for her want of attention to their guest, showing her inthis way, to her pleasure, how far he had gone toward taking her, as hecalled it, into the house. 

"You've been thinking of yourself, " Vanderbank asked, "as a mere clerkat a salary, and you now find that you're a partner and have a share inthe concern?"

"It seems to be something like that. But doesn't a partner put insomething? What have I put in?"

"Well--ME, for one thing. Isn't it your being here that has brought medown?"

"Do you mean you wouldn't have come for him alone? Then don't you makeanything of his attraction? You ought to, " said Nanda, "when he likesyou so. "

Vanderbank, longing for a river, was in white flannels, and he tookher question with a happy laugh, a handsome face of good humour thatcompleted the effect of his long, cool fairness. "Do you mind my justsitting still, do you mind letting me smoke and staying with me a while?Perhaps after a little we'll walk about--shan't we? But face to facewith this dear old house, in this jolly old nook, one's too contentedto move, lest raising a finger even should break the spell. What WILL beperfect will be your just sitting down--DO sit down--and scolding me alittle. That, my dear Nanda, will deepen the peace. " Some minutes later, while, near him but in another chair, she fingered the impossible book, as she pronounced it, that she had taken from him, he came back to whatshe had last said. "Has he talked to you much about his 'liking' me?"

Nanda waited a minute, turning over the book. "No. "

"Then how are you just now so struck with it?"

"I'm not struck only with what I'm talked to about. I don't know, " shewent on, "only what people tell me. "

"Ah no--you're too much your mother's daughter for that!" Vanderbankleaned back and smoked, and though all his air seemed to say that whenone was so at ease for gossip almost any subject would do, he keptjogging his foot with the same small nervous motion as during thehalf-hour at Mertle that this record has commemorated. "You're toomuch one of us all, " he continued. "We've tremendous perceptions, "he laughed. "Of course I SHOULD have come for him. But after all, " headded, as if all sorts of nonsense would equally serve, "he mightn't, except for you, you know, have asked me. "

Nanda so far accepted this view as to reply: "That's awfully weak. He'sso modest that he might have been afraid of your boring yourself. "

"That's just what I mean. "

"Well, if you do, " Nanda returned, "the explanation's a littleconceited. "

"Oh I only made it, " Vanderbank said, "in reference to his modesty. "Beyond the lawn the house was before him, old, square, red-roofed, wellassured of its right to the place it took up in the world. This was aconsiderable space--in the little world at least of Suffolk--and thelook of possession had everywhere mixed with it, in the form of oldwindows and doors, the tone of old red surfaces, the style of old whitefacings, the age of old high creepers, the long confirmation of time. Suggestive of panelled rooms, of precious mahogany, of portraitsof women dead, of coloured china glimmering through glass doors anddelicate silver reflected on bared tables, the thing was one of thoseimpressions of a particular period that it takes two centuries toproduce. "Fancy, " the young man incoherently exclaimed, "his caring toleave anything so loveable as all this to come up and live with US!"

The girl also for a little lost herself. "Oh you don't know what itis--the charm comes out so as one stays. Little by little it grows andgrows. There are old things everywhere that are too delightful. Helets me explore so--he lets me rummage and rifle. Every day I makediscoveries. "

Vanderbank wondered as he smoked. "You mean he lets you take things--?"

"Oh yes--up to my room, to study or to copy. There are old patterns thatare too dear for anything. It's when you live with them, you see, thatyou know. Everything in the place is such good company. "

"Your mother ought to be here, " Vanderbank presently suggested. "She'sso fond of good company. " Then as Nanda answered nothing he went on:"Was your grandmother ever?"

"Never, " the girl promptly said. "Never, " she repeated in a tone quitedifferent. After which she added: "I'm the only one. "

"Oh, and I 'me and you, ' as they say, " her companion amended. 

"Yes, and Mr. Mitchy, who's to come down--please don't forget--thisafternoon. "

Vanderbank had another of his contemplative pauses. "Thank you forreminding me. I shall spread myself as much as possible before hecomes--try to produce so much of my effect that I shall be safe. Butwhat did Mr. Longdon ask him for?"

"Ah, " said Nanda gaily, "what did he ask YOU for?"

"Why, for the reason you just now mentioned--that his interest in me isso uncontrollable. "

"Then isn't his interest in Mitchy--"

"Of the same general order?" Vanderbank broke in. "Not in the least. "He seemed to look for a way to express the distinction--which suddenlyoccurred to him. "He wasn't in love with Mitchy's mother. "

"No"--Nanda turned it over. "Mitchy's mother, it appears, was awful. Mr. Cashmore knew her. "

Vanderbank's smoke-puffs were profuse and his pauses frequent. "Awfulto Mr. Cashmore? I'm glad to hear it--he must have deserved it. But Ibelieve in her all the same. Mitchy's often awful himself, " the youngman rambled on. "Just so I believe in HIM. "

"So do I, " said Nanda--"and that's why I asked him. "

"YOU asked him, my dear child? Have you the inviting?"

"Oh yes. "

The eyes he turned on her seemed really to try if she jested or wereserious. "So you arranged for me too?"

She turned over again a few leaves of his book and, closing it withsomething of a clap, transferred it to the bench beside him--a movementin which, as if through a drop into thought, he rendered her noassistance. "What I mean is that I proposed it to Mr. Longdon, Isuggested he should be asked. I've a reason for seeing him--I wantto talk to him. And do you know, " the girl went on, "what Mr. Longdonsaid?"

"Something splendid of course. "

"He asked if you wouldn't perhaps dislike his being here with you. "

Vanderbank, throwing back his head, laughed, smoked, jogged his footmore than ever. "Awfully nice. Dear old Mitch! How little afraid of himyou are!"

Nanda wondered. "Of Mitch?"

"Yes, of the tremendous pull he really has. It's all very well totalk--he HAS it. But of course I don't mean I don't know"--and aswith the effect of his nervous sociability he shifted his position. "Iperfectly see that you're NOT afraid. I perfectly know what you have inyour head. I should never in the least dream of accusing you--as far asHE is concerned--of the least disposition to flirt; any more indeed, "Vanderbank pleasantly pursued, "than even of any general tendency ofthat sort. No, my dear Nanda"--he kindly kept it up--"I WILL say foryou that, though a girl, thank heaven, and awfully MUCH a girl, you'rereally not on the whole more of a flirt than a respectable social idealprescribes. "

"Thank you most tremendously, " his companion quietly replied. 

Something in the tone of it made him laugh out, and the particular soundwent well with all the rest, with the August day and the charming spotand the young man's lounging figure and Nanda's own little hoveringhospitality. "Of course I strike you as patronising you with unconscioussublimity. Well, that's all right, for what's the most natural thing todo in these conditions but the most luxurious? Won't Mitchy be wonderfulfor feeling and enjoying them? I assure you I'm delighted he's coming. "Then in a different tone a moment later, "Do you expect to be herelong?" he asked. 

It took Nanda some time to say. "As long as Mr. Longdon will keep me, Isuppose--if that doesn't sound very horrible. "

"Oh he'll keep you! Only won't he himself, " Vanderbank went on, "becoming up to town in the course of the autumn?"

"Well, in that case I'd perfectly stay here without him. "

"And leave him in London without YOU? Ah that's not what we want:he wouldn't be at all the same thing without you. Least of all forhimself!" Vanderbank declared. 

Nanda again thought. "Yes, that's what makes him funny, I suppose--hiscurious infatuation. I set him off--what do you call it?--show himoff: by his going round and round me as the acrobat on the horse inthe circus goes round the clown. He has said a great deal to me of yourmother, " she irrelevantly added. 

"Ok everything that's kind of course, or you wouldn't mention it. "

"That's what I mean, " said Nanda. 

"I see, I see--most charming of him. " Vanderbank kept his high headthrown back as for the view, with a bright equal general interest, ofeverything that was before them, whether talked of or seen. "Who do youthink I yesterday had a letter from? An extraordinary funny one fromHarold. He gave me all the family news. "

"And what IS the family news?" the girl after a minute enquired. 

"Well, the first great item is that he himself--"

"Wanted, " Nanda broke in, "to borrow five pounds of you? I say that, "she added, "because if he wrote to you--"

"It couldn't have been in such a case for the simple pleasure of theintercourse?" Vanderbank hesitated, but continued not to look at her. "What do you know, pray, of poor Harold's borrowings?"

"Oh I know as I know other things. Don't I know everything?"

"DO you? I should rather ask, " the young man gaily enough replied. 

"Why should I not? How should I not? You know what I know. " Then as toexplain herself and attenuate a little the sudden emphasis with whichshe had spoken: "I remember your once telling me that I must take inthings at my pores. "

Her companion stared, but with his laugh again changed his posture. "That you' must--?"

"That I do--and you were quite right. "

"And when did I make this extraordinary charge?"

"Ah then, " said Nanda, "you admit it IS a charge. It was a long timeago--when I was a little girl. Which made it worse!" she dropped. 

It made it at all events now for Vanderbank more amusing. "Ah notworse--better!"

She thought a moment. "Because in that case I mightn't have understood?But that I do understand is just what you've always meant. "

"'Always, ' my dear Nanda? I feel somehow, " he rejoined very kindly, "asif you overwhelmed me!"

"You 'feel' as if I did--but the reality is just that I don't. The dayI overwhelm you, Mr. Van--!" She let that pass, however; there was toomuch to say about it and there was something else much simpler. "Girlsunderstand now. It has got to be faced, as Tishy says. "

"Oh well, " Vanderbank laughed, "we don't require Tishy to point that outto us. What are we all doing most of the time but trying to face it?"

"Doing? Aren't you doing rather something very different? You're justtrying to dodge it. You're trying to make believe--not perhaps toyourselves but to US--that it isn't so. "

"But surely you don't want us to be any worse!"

She shook her head with brisk gravity. "We don't care really what youare. "

His amusement now dropped to her straighter. "Your 'we' is awfullybeautiful. It's charming to hear you speak for the whole lovely lot. Only you speak, you know, as if you were just the class apart that youyet complain of our--by our scruples--implying you to be. "

She considered this objection with her eyes on his face. "Well then wedo care. Only--!"

"Only it's a big subject. "

"Oh yes--no doubt; it's a big subject. " She appeared to wish to meet himon everything reasonable. "Even Mr. Longdon admits that. "

Vanderbank wondered. "You mean you talk over with him--!"

"The subject of girls? Why we scarcely discuss anything else. "

"Oh no wonder then you're not bored. But you mean, " he asked, "that herecognises the inevitable change--?"

"He can't shut his eyes to the facts. He sees we're quite a differentthing. "

"I dare say"--her friend was fully appreciative. "Yet the oldthing--what do YOU know of it?"

"I personally? Well, I've seen some change even in MY short life. Andaren't the old books full of us? Then Mr. Longdon himself has told me. "

Vanderbank smoked and smoked. "You've gone into it with him?"

"As far as a man and a woman can together. "

As he took her in at this with a turn of his eye he might have had inhis ears the echo of all the times it had been dropped in BuckinghamCrescent that Nanda was "wonderful. " She WAS indeed. "Oh he's of courseon certain sides shy. "

"Awfully--too beautifully. And then there's Aggie, " the girl pursued. "Imean for the real old thing. "

"Yes, no doubt--if she BE the real old thing. But what the deuce reallyIS Aggie?"

"Well, " said Nanda with the frankest interest, "she's a miracle. Ifone could be her exactly, absolutely, without the least little mite ofchange, one would probably be wise to close with it. Otherwise--exceptfor anything BUT that--I'd rather brazen it out as myself. "

There fell between them on this a silence of some minutes, after whichit would probably not have been possible for either to say if their eyeshad met while it lasted. This was at any rate not the case as Vanderbankat last remarked: "Your brass, my dear young lady, is pure gold!"

"Then it's of me, I think, that Harold ought to borrow. "

"You mean therefore that mine isn't?" Vanderbank went on. 

"Well, you really haven't any natural 'cheek'--not like SOME of them. You're in yourself as uneasy, if anything's said and every one gigglesor makes some face, as Mr. Longdon, and if Lord Petherton hadn't oncetold me that a man hates almost as much to be called modest as a womandoes, I'd say that very often in London now you must pass some badmoments. "

The present might precisely have been one of them, we should doubtlesshave gathered, had we seen fully recorded in Vanderbank's face thedegree to which this prompt response embarrassed or at least stupefiedhim. But he could always provisionally laugh. "I like your 'in Londonnow'!"

"It's the tone and the current and the effect of all the others thatpush you along, " she went on as if she hadn't heard him. "If such thingsare contagious, as every one says, you prove it perhaps as much as anyone. But you don't begin"--she continued blandly enough to work it outfor him; "or you can't at least originally have begun. Any one wouldknow that now--from the terrific effect I see I produce on you--bytalking this way. There it is--it's all out before one knows it, isn'tit, and I can't help it any more than you can, can I?" So she appearedto put it to him, with something in her lucidity that would have beeninfinitely touching; a strange grave calm consciousness of their commondoom and of what in especial in it would be worst for herself. He sprangup indeed after an instant as if he had been infinitely touched; heturned away, taking just near her a few steps to and fro, gazed aboutthe place again, but this time without the air of particularly seeingit, and then came back to her as if from a greater distance. An observerat all initiated would, at the juncture, fairly have hung on hislips, and there was in fact on Vanderbank's part quite the look of theman--though it lasted but just while we seize it--in suspense abouthimself. The most initiated observer of all would have been poor Mr. Longdon, in that case destined, however, to be also the most defeated, with the sign of his tension a smothered "Ah if he doesn't do it NOW!"Well, Vanderbank didn't do it "now, " and the odd slow irrelevant sigh hegave out might have sufficed as the record of his recovery from a perillasting just long enough to be measured. Had there been any measure ofit meanwhile for Nanda? There was nothing at least to show either thepresence or the relief of anxiety in the way in which, by a prompttransition, she left her last appeal to him simply to take care ofitself. "You haven't denied that Harold does borrow. "

He gave a sound as of cheer for this luckily firmer ground. "My dearchild, I never lent the silly boy five pounds in my life. In fact I likethe way you talk of that. I don't know quite for what you take me, butthe number of persons to whom I HAVE lent five pounds--!"

"Is so awfully small"--she took him up on it--"as not to look so verywell for you?" She held him an instant as with the fine intelligenceof his meaning in this, and then, though not with sharpness, broke out:"Why are you trying to make out that you're nasty and stingy? Why do youmisrepresent--?"

"My natural generosity? I don't misrepresent anything, but I take, Ithink, rather markedly good care of money. " She had remained in herplace and he was before her on the grass, his hands in his pockets andhis manner perhaps a little awkward. "The way you young things talk ofit!"

"Harold talks of it--but I don't think _I_ do. I'm not a bitexpensive--ask mother, or even ask father. I do with awfully little--forclothes and things, and I could easily do with still less. Harold's aborn consumer, as Mitchy says; he says also he's one of those people whowill never really want. "

"Ah for that, Mitchy himself will never let him. "

"Well then, with every one helping us all round, aren't we a lovelyfamily? I don't speak of it to tell tales, but when you mention hearingfrom Harold all sorts of things immediately come over me. We seem to beall living more or less on other people, all immensely 'beholden. ' Youcan easily say of course that I'm worst of all. The children and theirpeople, at Bognor, are in borrowed quarters--mother got them lenther--as to which, no doubt, I'm perfectly aware that I ought to be theresharing them, taking care of my little brother and sister, insteadof sitting here at Mr. Longdon's expense to expose everything andcriticise. Father and mother, in Scotland, are on a grand campaign. Well"--she pulled herself up--"I'm not in THAT at any rate. Say you'velent Harold only five shillings, " she went on. 

Vanderbank stood smiling. "Well, say I have. I never lend any onewhatever more. "

"It only adds to my conviction, " Nanda explained, "that he writes to Mr. Longdon. "

"But if Mr. Longdon doesn't say so--?" Vanderbank objected. 

"Oh that proves nothing. " She got up as she spoke. "Harold also worksGranny. " He only laughed out at first for this, while she went on:"You'll think I make myself out fearfully deep--I mean in the way ofknowing everything without having to be told. That IS, as you say, mamma's great accomplishment, so it must be hereditary. Besides, thereseem to me only too many things one IS told. Only Mr. Longdon has infact said nothing. "

She had looked about responsibly--not to leave in disorder thegarden-nook they had occupied; picking up a newspaper and changingthe place of a cushion. "I do think that with him you're remarkable, "Vanderbank observed--"putting on one side all you seem to know and onthe other all he holds his tongue about. What then DOES he say?" theyoung man asked after a slight pause and perhaps even with a slightirritation. 

Nanda glanced round again--she was folding, rather carefully, her paper. Presently her glance met their friend, who, having come out of one ofthe long windows that opened to the lawn, had stopped there to watchthem. "He says just now that luncheon's ready. "

II

"I've made him, " she said in the drawing-room to Mitchy, "make Mr. Vango with him. "

Mr. Longdon, in the rain, which had come on since the morning, hadbetaken himself to church, and his other guest, with sufficiently markedgood humour, had borne him company. The windows of the drawing-roomlooked at the wet garden, all vivid and rich in the summer shower, andMitchy, after seeing Vanderbank turn up his trousers and fling backa last answer to the not quite sincere chaff his submission hadengendered, adopted freely and familiarly the prospect not only of agrateful freshened lawn, but of a good hour in the very pick, as hecalled it, of his actual happy conditions. The favouring rain, the dearold place, the charming serious house, the large inimitable room, theabsence of the others, the present vision of what his young friend hadgiven him to count on--the sense of these delights was expressed in hisfixed generous glare. He was at first too pleased even to sit down; hemeasured the great space from end to end, admiring again everything hehad admired before and protesting afresh that no modern ingenuity--noteven his own, to which he did justice--could create effects of suchpurity. The final touch in the picture before them was just thecomposer's ignorance. Mr. Longdon had not made his house, he had simplylived it, and the "taste" of the place--Mitchy in certain connexionsabominated the word--was just nothing more than the beauty of his life. Everything on every side had dropped straight from heaven, with nowherea bargaining thumb-mark, a single sign of the shop. All this would havebeen a wonderful theme for discourse in Buckingham Crescent--so happy anexercise for the votaries of that temple of analysis that he repeatedlyspoke of their experience of it as crying aloud for Mrs. Brook. Thequestions it set in motion for the perceptive mind were exactly thosethat, as he said, most made them feel themselves. Vanderbank's plea forhis morning had been a pile of letters to work off, and Mitchy--thencoming down, as he announced from the first, ready for anything--hadgone to church with Mr. Longdon and Nanda in the finest spirit ofcuriosity. He now--after the girl's remark--turned away from his viewof the rain, which he found different somehow from other rain, aseverything else was different, and replied that he knew well enough whatshe could make Mr. Longdon do, but only wondered at Mr. Longdon's secretfor acting on their friend. He was there before her with his hands inhis pockets and appreciation winking from every yellow spot in his rednecktie. "Afternoon service of a wet Sunday in a small country town is alarge order. Does Van do everything the governor wants?"

"He may perhaps have had a suspicion of what I want, " Nanda explained. "If I want particularly to talk to you--!"

"He has got out of the way to give me a chance? Well then he's asusual simply magnificent. How can I express the bliss of finding myselfenclosed with you in this sweet old security, this really unimaginedsanctity? Nothing's more charming than suddenly to come across somethingsharp and fresh after we've thought there was nothing more that coulddraw from us a groan. We've supposed we've had it all, have squeezed thelast impression out of the last disappointment, penetrated to the lastfamiliarity in the last surprise; then some fine day we find that wehaven't done justice to life. There are little things that pop up andmake us feel again. What MAY happen is after all incalculable. There'sjust a little chuck of the dice, and for three minutes we win. These, my dear young lady, are my three minutes. You wouldn't believe theamusement I get from them, and how can I possibly tell you? There's afaint divine old fragrance here in the room--or doesn't it perhaps reachyou? I shan't have lived without it, but I see now I had been afraidI should. You, on your side, won't have lived without some touch ofgreatness. This moment's great and you've produced it. You were greatwhen you felt all you COULD produce. Therefore, " Mitchy went on, pausingonce more, as he walked, before a picture, "I won't pull the whole thingdown by the vulgarity of wishing I too only had a first-rate Cotman. "

"Have you given up some VERY big thing to come?" Nanda replied to this. 

"What in the world is very big, my child, but the beauty of this hour?I haven't the least idea WHAT, when I got Mr. Longdon's note, I gaveup. Don't ask me for an account of anything; everything went--becameimperceptible. I WILL say that for myself: I shed my badness, I doforget people, with a facility that makes me, for bits, for littlepatches, so far as they're concerned, cease to BE; so that my life isspotted all over with momentary states in which I'm as the dead of whomnothing's said but good. " He had strolled toward her again while shesmiled at him. "I've died for this, Nanda. "

"The only difficulty I see, " she presently replied, "is that you oughtto marry a woman really clever and that I'm not quite sure what theremay be of that in Aggie. "

"In Aggie?" her friend echoed very gently. "Is THAT what you've sent forme for--to talk about Aggie?"

"Didn't it occur to you it might be?"

"That it couldn't possibly, you mean, be anything else?" He looked aboutfor the place in which it would express the deepest surrender to thescene to sit--then sank down with a beautiful prompt submission. "I'veno idea of what occurred to me--nothing at least but the sense that Ihad occurred to YOU. The occurrence is clay in the hands of the potter. Do with me what you will. "

"You appreciate everything so wonderfully, " Nanda said, "that itoughtn't to be hard for you to appreciate HER. I do dream so you maysave her. That's why I haven't waited. "

"The only thing that remains to me in life, " he answered, "is a certainaccessibility to the thought of what I may still do to figure a littlein your eye; but that's precisely a thought you may assist to becomeclearer. You may for instance give me some pledge or sign that if I dofigure--prance and caracole and sufficiently kick up the dust--youreye won't suffer itself to be distracted from me. I think there's noadventure I'm not ready to undertake for you; yet my passion--chastened, through all this, purified, austere--is still enough of this world notwholly to have renounced the fancy of some small reward. "

"How small?" the girl asked. 

She spoke as if feeling she must take from him in common kindnessat least as much as she would make him take, and the serious anxiouspatience such a consciousness gave her tone was met by Mitchy witha charmed reasonableness that his habit of hyperbole did nothing tomisrepresent. He glowed at her with the fullest recognition that therewas something he was there to discuss with her, but with the assurancein every soft sound of him that no height to which she might lift thediscussion would be too great for him to reach. His every cadenceand every motion was an implication, as from one to the other, of theexquisite. Oh he could sustain it! "Well, I mean the establishment ofsomething between us. I mean your arranging somehow that we shall bedrawn more together--know together something nobody else knows. I shouldlike so terrifically to have a RELATION that is a secret, with you. "

"Oh if that's all you want you can be easily gratified. Rien de plusfacile, as mamma says. I'm full of secrets--I think I'm really mostsecretive. I'll share almost any one of them with you--if it's only agood one. "

Mitchy debated. "You mean you'll choose it yourself? You won't let it beone of mine?"

Nanda wondered. "But what's the difference?"

Her companion jumped up again and for a moment pervaded the place. "Whenyou say such things as that, you're of a beauty--! MAY it, " he asked ashe stopped before her, "be one of mine--a perfectly awful one?"

She showed her clearest interest. "As I suppose the most awful secretsare the best--yes, certainly. "

"I'm hideously tempted. " But he hung fire; then dropping into his chairagain: "It would be too bad. I'm afraid I can't. "

"Then why won't THIS do, just as it is?"

"'This'?" He looked over the big bland room. "Which?"

"Why what you're here for?"

"My dear child I'm here--most of all--to love you more than ever; andthere's an absence of favouring mystery about THAT--!" She looked athim as if seeing what he meant and only asking to remedy it. "There's acertain amount of mystery we can now MAKE--that it strikes me in fact weMUST make. Dear Mitchy, " she continued almost with eagerness, "I don'tthink we CAN really tell. "

He had fallen back in his chair, not looking at her now, and with hishands, from his supported elbows, clasped to keep himself more quiet. "Are you still talking about Aggie?"

"Why I've scarcely begun!"

"Oh!" It was not irritation he appeared to express, but the slightstrain of an effort to get into relation with the subject. Better tofocus the image he closed his eyes a while. 

"You speak of something that may draw us together, and I simply replythat if you don't feel how near together we are--in this I shouldn'timagine you ever would. You must have wonderful notions, " she presentlywent on, "of the ideal state of union. I pack every one off for you--Ibanish everything that can interfere, and I don't in the least mind yourknowing that I find the consequence delightful. YOU may talk, if youlike, of what will have passed between us, but I shall never mentionit to a soul; literally not to a living creature. What do you want morethan that?" He opened his eyes in deference to the question, but repliedonly with a gaze as unassisted as if it had come through a hole ina curtain. "You say you're ready for an adventure, and it's just anadventure that I propose. If I can make you feel for yourself as I feelfor you the beauty of your chance to go in and save her--!"

"Well, if you can--?" Mitchy at last broke in. "I don't think, youknow, " he said after a moment, "you'll find it easy to make your twoends meet. "

She thought a little longer. "One of the ends is yours, so that you'llact WITH me. If I wind you up so that you go--!"

"You'll just happily sit and watch me spin? Thank you! THAT will be myreward?"

Nanda rose on this from her chair as with the impulse of protest. "Shan't you care for my gratitude, my admiration?"

"Oh yes"--Mitchy seemed to muse. "I shall care for THEM. Yet I don'tquite see, you know, what you OWE to Aggie. It isn't as if--!" But withthis he faltered. 

"As if she cared particularly for ME? Ah that has nothing to do withit; that's a thing without which surely it's but too possible to beexquisite. There are beautiful, quite beautiful people who don't carefor me. The thing that's important to one is the thing one sees one'sself, and it's quite enough if _I_ see what can be made of that child. Marry her, Mitchy, and you'll see who she'll care for!"

Mitchy kept his position; he was for the moment--his image of shortlybefore reversed--the one who appeared to sit happily and watch. "It'stoo awfully pleasant your asking of me anything whatever!"

"Well then, as I say, beautifully, grandly save her. "

"As you say, yes"--he sympathetically inclined his head. "But withoutmaking me feel exactly what you mean by it. "

"Keep her, " Nanda returned, "from becoming like the Duchess. "

"But she isn't a bit like the Duchess in any of her elements. She's atotally different thing. "

It was only for an instant, however, that this objection seemed totell. "That's exactly why she'll be so perfect for you. You'll get heraway--take her out of her aunt's life. "

Mitchy met it all now in a sort of spellbound stillness. "What do youknow about her aunt's life?"

"Oh I know everything!" She spoke with her first faint shade ofimpatience. 

It produced for a little a hush between them, at the end of which hercompanion said with extraordinary gentleness and tenderness: "Dearold Nanda!" Her own silence appeared consciously to continue, and thesuggestion of it might have been that for intelligent ears there wasnothing to add to the declaration she had just made and which Mitchysat there taking in as with a new light. What he drew from it indeedhe presently went on to show. "You're too awfully interesting. Ofcourse--you know a lot. How shouldn't you--and why?"

"'Why'? Oh that's another affair! But you don't imagine what I know; I'msure it's much more than you've a notion of. That's the kind of thingnow one IS--just except the little marvel of Aggie. What on earth, " thegirl pursued, "do you take us for?"

"Oh it's all right!" breathed Mitchy, divinely pacific. 

"I'm sure I don't know whether it is; I shouldn't wonder if it were infact all wrong. But what at least is certainly right is for one not topretend anything else. There I am for you at any rate. Now the beauty ofAggie is that she knows nothing--but absolutely, utterly: not the leastlittle tittle of anything. "

It was barely visible that Mitchy hesitated, and he spoke quite gravely. "Have you tried her?"

"Oh yes. And Tishy has. " His gravity had been less than Nanda's. "Nothing, nothing. " The memory of some scene or some passage might havecome back to her with a charm. "Ah say what you will--it IS the way weought to be!"

Mitchy, after a minute of much intensity, had stopped watching her;changing his posture and with his elbows on his knees he dropped fora while his face into his hands. Then he jerked himself to his feet. "There's something I wish awfully I could say to you. But I can't. "

Nanda, after a slow headshake, covered him with one of the dimmest ofher smiles. "You needn't say it. I know perfectly which it is. " She heldhim an instant, after which she went on: "It's simply that you wish mefully to understand that you're one who, in perfect sincerity, doesn'tmind one straw how awful--!"

"Yes, how awful?" He had kindled, as he paused, with his new eagerness. 

"Well, one's knowledge may be. It doesn't shock in you a singlehereditary prejudice. "

"Oh 'hereditary'--!" Mitchy ecstatically murmured. 

"You even rather like me the better for it; so that one of the reasonswhy you couldn't have told me--though not of course, I know, the onlyone--is that you would have been literally almost ashamed. Because, youknow, " she went on, "it IS strange. "

"My lack of hereditary--?"

"Yes, discomfort in presence of the fact I speak of. There's a kind ofsense you don't possess. "

His appreciation again fairly goggled at her. "Oh you do knoweverything!"

"You're so good that nothing shocks you, " she lucidly persisted. "There's a kind of delicacy you haven't got. "

He was more and more struck. "I've only that--as it were--of the skinand the fingers?" he appealed. 

"Oh and that of the mind. And that of the soul. And some other kindscertainly. But not THE kind. "

"Yes"--he wondered--"I suppose that's the only way one can name it. " Itappeared to rise there before him. "THE kind!"

"The kind that would make me painful to you. Or rather not me perhaps, "she added as if to create between them the fullest possible light; "butmy situation, my exposure--all the results of them I show. Doesn't onebecome a sort of a little drain-pipe with everything flowing through?"

"Why don't you call it more gracefully, " Mitchy asked, freshly struck, "a little aeolian-harp set in the drawing-room window and vibrating inthe breeze of conversation?"

"Oh because the harp gives out a sound, and WE--at least we try to--giveout none. "

"What you take, you mean, you keep?"

"Well, it sticks to us. And that's what you don't mind!"

Their eyes met long on it. "Yes--I see. I DON'T mind. I've the mostextraordinary lacunae. "

"Oh I don't know about others, " Nanda replied; "I haven't noticed them. But you've that one, and it's enough. "

He continued to face her with his queer mixture of assent andspeculation. "Enough for what, my dear? To have made me impossible foryou because the only man you could, as they say, have 'respected' wouldbe a man who WOULD have minded?" Then as under the cool soft pressure ofthe question she looked at last away from him: "The man with 'THE kind, 'as you call it, happens to be just the type you CAN love? But what's theuse, " he persisted as she answered nothing, "in loving a person with theprejudice--hereditary or other--to which you're precisely obnoxious? Doyou positively LIKE to love in vain?"

It was a question, the way she turned back to him seemed to say, thatdeserved a responsible answer. "Yes. "

But she had moved off after speaking, and Mitchy's eyes followed her todifferent parts of the room as, with small pretexts of present attentionto it, small bestowed touches for symmetry, she slowly measured it. "What's extraordinary then is your idea of my finding any charm inAggie's ignorance. "

She immediately put down an old snuff-box. "Why--it's the one sort ofthing you don't know. You can't imagine, " she said as she returned tohim, "the effect it will produce on you. You must get really near it andsee it all come out to feel all its beauty. You'll like it, Mitchy"--andNanda's gravity was wonderful--"better than anything you HAVE known. "

The clear sincerity of this, even had there been nothing else, imposeda consideration that Mitchy now flagrantly could give, and the deferenceof his suggestion of difficulty only grew more deep. "I'm to do then, with this happy condition of hers, what you say YOU'VE done--to 'try'it?" And then as her assent, so directly challenged, failed an instant:"But won't my approach to it, however cautious, be just what will breakit up and spoil it?"

Nanda thought. "Why so--if mine wasn't?"

"Oh you're not me!"

"But I'm just as bad. "

"Thank you, my dear!" Mitchy rang out. 

"Without, " Nanda pursued, "being as good. " She had on this, in adifferent key, her own sudden explosion. "Don't you see, Mitchydear--for the very heart of it all--how good I BELIEVE you?"

She had spoken as with a flare of impatience at some justice he failedto do her, and this brought him after a startled instant close enoughto her to take up her hand. She let him have it, and in mute solemnreassurance he raised it to his lips, saying to her thus more thingsthan he could say in any other way; which yet just after, when he hadreleased it and a motionless pause had ensued, didn't prevent his addingthree words. "Oh Nanda, Nanda!"

The tone of them made her again extraordinarily gentle. "Don't 'try'anything then. Take everything for granted. "

He had turned away from her and walked mechanically, with his air ofblind emotion, to the window, where for a minute he looked out. "It hasstopped raining, " he said at last; "it's going to brighten. "

The place had three windows, and Nanda went to the next. "Not quiteyet--but I think it will. "

Mitchy soon faced back into the room, where after a brief hesitation hemoved, as quietly, almost as cautiously, as if on tiptoe, to the seatoccupied by his companion at the beginning of their talk. Here he sankdown watching the girl, who stood a while longer with her eyes on thegarden. "You want me, you say, to take her out of the Duchess'slife; but where am I myself, if we come to that, but even more IN theDuchess's life than Aggie is? I'm in it by my contacts, my associations, my indifferences--all my acceptances, knowledges, amusements. I'm in itby my cynicisms--those that circumstances somehow from the first, whenI began for myself to look at life and the world, committed me to andsteeped me in; I'm in it by a kind of desperation that I shouldn't havefelt perhaps if you had got hold of me sooner with just this touch withwhich you've got hold of me to-day; and I'm in it more than all--you'llyourself admit--by the very fact that her aunt desires, as you know, much more even than you do, to bring the thing about. Then we SHOULDbe--the Duchess and I--shoulder to shoulder!"

Nanda heard him motionless to the end, taking also another minute toturn over what he had said. "What is it you like so in Lord Petherton?"she asked as she came to him. 

"My dear child, if you only could tell me! It would be, wouldn't it?--itmust have been--the subject of some fairy-tale, if fairy-tales were madenow, or better still of some Christmas pantomime: 'The Gnome and theGiant. '"

Nanda appeared to try--not with much success--to see it. "Do you findLord Petherton a Gnome?"

Mitchy at first, for all reward, only glared at her. "Charming, Nanda--charming!"

"A man's giant enough for Lord Petherton, " she went on, "when hisfortune's gigantic. He preys upon you. "

His hands in his pockets and his legs much apart, Mitchy sat there as ina posture adapted to her simplicity. "You're adorable. YOU don't. But itIS rather horrid, isn't it?" he presently went on. 

Her momentary silence would have been by itself enough of an answer. "Nothing--of all you speak of, " she nevertheless returned, "will matterthen. She'll so simplify your life. " He remained just as he was, onlywith his eyes on her; and meanwhile she had turned again to her window, through which a faint sun-streak began to glimmer and play. At sight ofit she opened the casement to let in the warm freshness. "The rain HASstopped. "

"You say you want me to save her. But what you really mean, " Mitchyresumed from the sofa, "isn't at all exactly that. "

Nanda, without heeding the remark, took in the sunshine. "It will becharming now in the garden. "

Her friend got up, found his wonderful crossbarred cap, after a glance, on a neighbouring chair, and with it came toward her. "Your hope isthat--as I'm good enough to be worth it--she'll save ME. "

Nanda looked at him now. "She will, Mitchy--she WILL!"

They stood a moment in the recovered brightness; after which hemechanically--as with the pressure of quite another consciousness--puton his cap. "Well then, shall that hope between us be the thing--?"

"The thing?"--she just wondered. 

"Why that will have drawn us together--to hold us so, you know--thisafternoon. I mean the secret we spoke of. "

She put out to him on this the hand he had taken a few minutes before, and he clasped it now only with the firmness it seemed to give and toask for. "Oh it will do for that!" she said as they went out together. 

III

It had been understood that he was to take his leave on the morrow, though Vanderbank was to stay another day. Mr. Longdon had for theSunday dinner invited three or four of his neighbours to "meet" the twogentlemen from town, so that it was not till the company had departed, or in other words till near bedtime, that our four friends could againhave become aware, as between themselves, of that directness of mutualrelation which forms the subject of our picture. It had not, however, prevented Nanda's slipping upstairs as soon as the doctor and his wifehad gone, and the manner indeed in which, on the stroke of eleven, Mr. Longdon conformed to his tradition of appropriating a particular candlewas as positive an expression of it as any other. Nothing in himwas more amiable than the terms maintained between the rigour of hispersonal habits and his free imagination of the habits of others. Hedeprecated as regards the former, it might have been seen, most signs oflikeness, and no one had ever dared to learn how he would have handleda show of imitation. "The way to flatter him, " Mitchy threw off fiveminutes later, "is not to make him think you resemble or agree with him, but to let him see how different you perceive he can bear to think you. I mean of course without hating you. "

"But what interest have YOU, " Vanderbank asked, "in the way to flatterhim?"

"My dear fellow, more interest than you. I haven't been here all daywithout arriving at conclusions on the credit he has opened to you--!"

"Do you mean the amount he'll settle?"

"You have it in your power, " said Mitchy, "to make it anything youlike. "

"And is he then--so bloated?"

Mitchy was on his feet in the apartment in which their host had leftthem, and he had at first for this question but an expressive motion ofthe shoulders in respect to everything in the room. "See, judge, guess, feel!"

But it was as if Vanderbank, before the fire, consciously controlled hisown attention. "Oh I don't care a hang!"

This passage took place in the library and as a consequence of theirhaving confessed, as their friend faced them with his bedroom light, that a brief discreet vigil and a box of cigars would fix better thananything else the fine impression of the day. Mitchy might at thatmoment, on the evidence of the eyes Mr. Longdon turned to them and ofwhich his innocent candle-flame betrayed the secret, have found matterfor a measure of the almost extreme allowances he wanted them to want ofhim. They had only to see that the greater window was fast and to turnout the library lamp. It might really have amused them to stand a momentat the open door that, apart from this, was to testify to his conceptionof those who were not, in the smaller hours, as HE was. He had in factby his retreat--and but too sensibly--left them there with a deal ofmidnight company. If one of these presences was the mystery he hadhimself mixed the manner of our young men showed a due expectation ofthe others. Mitchy, on hearing how little Vanderbank "cared, " only keptup a while longer that observant revolution in which he had spent muchof his day, to which any fresh sense of any exhibition always promptlycommitted him, and which, had it not been controlled by infinite tact, might have affected the nerves of those in whom enjoyment was lessrotary. He was silent long enough to suggest his fearing that almostanything he might say would appear too allusive; then at last once morehe took his risk. "Awfully jolly old place!"

"It is indeed, " Van only said; but his posture in the large chair hehad pushed toward the open window was of itself almost an opinion. The August night was hot and the air that came in charged and sweet. Vanderbank smoked with his face to the dusky garden and the dim stars;at the end of a few moments more of which he glanced round. "Don'tyou think it rather stuffy with that big lamp? As those candles on thechimney are going we might put it out. "

"Like this?" The amiable Mitchy had straightway obliged his companionand he as promptly took in the effect of the diminished light on thecharacter of the room, which he commended as if the depth of shadowproduced were all this companion had sought. He might freshly havebrought home to Vanderbank that a man sensitive to so many differentthings, and thereby always sure of something or other, could neverreally be incommoded; though that personage presently indeed showedhimself occupied with another thought. 

"I think I ought to mention to you that I've told him how you andMrs. Brook now both know. I did so this afternoon on our way back fromchurch--I hadn't done it before. He took me a walk round to show memore of the place, and that gave me my chance. But he doesn't mind, "Vanderbank continued. "The only thing is that I've thought it maypossibly make him speak to you, so that it's better you should know heknows. But he told me definitely Nanda doesn't. "

Mitchy took this in with an attention that spoke of his alreadyrecognising how the less tempered darkness favoured talk. "And is thatall that passed between you?"

"Well, practically; except of course that I made him understand, Ithink, how it happened that I haven't kept my own counsel. "

"Oh but you HAVE--didn't he at least feel?--or perhaps even have donebetter, when you've two such excellent persons to keep it FOR you. Can'the easily believe how we feel with you?"

Vanderbank appeared for a minute to leave this appeal unheeded; hecontinued to stare into the garden while he smoked and swung the longleg he had thrown over the arm of the chair. When he at last spoke, however, it was with some emphasis--perhaps even with some vulgarity. "Oh rot!"

Mitchy hovered without an arrest. "You mean he CAN'T feel?"

"I mean it isn't true. I've no illusions about you. I know how you'reboth affected, though I of course perfectly trust you. "

Mitchy had a short silence. "Trust us not to speak?"

"Not to speak to Nanda herself--though of course too if you spoke toothers, " Vanderbank went on, "they'd immediately rush and tell her. "

"I've spoken to no one, " said Mitchy. "I'm sure of it. And neither hasMrs. Brook. "

"I'm glad you're sure of that also, " Mitchy returned, "for it's onlydoing her justice. "

"Oh I'm quite confident of it, " said Vanderbank. "And without askingher?"

"Perfectly. "

"And you're equally sure, without asking, that _I_ haven't betrayedyou?" After which, while, as if to let the question lie there in itsfolly, Vanderbank said nothing, his friend pursued: "I came, I must tellyou, terribly near it to-day. "

"Why must you tell me? Your coming 'near' doesn't concern me, and I takeit you don't suppose I'm watching or sounding you. Mrs. Brook will havecome terribly near, " Vanderbank continued as if to make the matterfree; "but she won't have done it either. She'll have been distinctlytempted--!"

"But she won't have fallen?" Mitchy broke in. "Exactly--there we are. _I_ was distinctly tempted and I didn't fall. I think your certaintyabout Mrs. Brook, " he added, "shows you do know her. She's incapable ofanything deliberately nasty. "

"Oh of anything nasty in any way, " Vanderbank said musingly and kindly. 

"Yes; one knows on the whole what she WON'T do. " After which, for aperiod, Mitchy roamed and reflected. "But in spite of the assurancegiven you by Mr. Longdon--or perhaps indeed just because of your havingtaken it--I think I ought to mention to you my belief that Nanda doesknow of his offer to you. I mean by having guessed it. "

"Oh!" said Vanderbank. 

"There's in fact more still, " his companion pursued--"that I feel Ishould like to mention to you. "

"Oh!" Vanderbank at first only repeated. But after a moment he said: "Mydear fellow, I'm much obliged. "

"The thing I speak of is something I should at any rate have said, andI should have looked out for some chance if we had not had this one. "Mitchy spoke as if his friend's last words were not of consequence, andhe continued as Vanderbank got up and, moving rather aimlessly, came andstood with his back to the chimney. "My only hesitation would have beencaused by its entailing our going down into things in a way that, faceto face--given the private nature of the things--I dare say most mendon't particularly enjoy. But if you don't mind--!"

"Oh I don't mind. In fact, as I tell you, I recognise an obligation toyou. " Vanderbank, with his shoulders against the high mantel, utteredthis without a direct look; he smoked and smoked, then considered thetip of his cigar. "You feel convinced she knows?" he threw out. 

"Well, it's my impression. "

"Ah any impression of yours--of that sort--is sure to be right. If youthink I ought to have it from you I'm really grateful. Is that--a--whatyou wanted to say to me?" Vanderbank after a slight pause demanded. 

Mitchy, watching him more than he watched Mitchy, shook a mildlydecisive head. "No. "

Vanderbank, his eyes on his smoke-puffs, seemed to wonder. "What youwanted is--something else?"

"Something else. "

"Oh!" said Vanderbank for the third time. 

The ejaculation had been vague, but the movement that followed it wasdefinite; the young man, turning away, found himself again near thechair he had quitted, and resumed possession of it as a sign of beingat his friend's service. This friend, however, not only hung fire butfinally went back to take a shot from a quarter they might have beensupposed to have left. "It strikes me as odd his imagining--awfullyacute as he is--that she has NOT guessed. One wouldn't have thought hecould live with her here in such an intimacy--seeing her every day andpretty much all day--and make such a mistake. "

Vanderbank, his great length all of a lounge again, turned it over. "Andyet I do thoroughly feel the mistake's not yours. "

Mitchy had a new serenity of affirmation. "Oh it's not mine. "

"Perhaps then"--it occurred to his friend--"he doesn't really believeit. "

"And only says so to make you feel more easy?"

"So that one may--in fairness to one's self--keep one's head, as itwere, and decide quite on one's own grounds. "

"Then you HAVE still to decide?"

Vanderbank took time to answer. "I've still to decide. " Mitchy becameagain on this, in the sociable dusk, a slow-circling vaguely-agitatedelement, and his companion continued: "Is your idea very generously andhandsomely to help that by letting me know--?"

"That I do definitely renounce"--Mitchy took him up--"any pretension andany hope? Well, I'm ready with a proof of it. I've passed my word thatI'll apply elsewhere. "

Vanderbank turned more round to him. "Apply to the Duchess for herniece?"

"It's practically settled. "

"But since when?"

Mitchy barely faltered. "Since this afternoon. "

"Ah then not with the Duchess herself. "

"With Nanda--whose plan from the first, you won't have forgotten, thething has so charmingly been. "

Vanderbank could show that his not having in the least forgotten was yetnot a bar to his being now mystified. "But, my dear man, what can Nanda'settle'?"

"My fate, " Mitchy said, pausing well before him. 

Vanderbank sat now a minute with raised eyes, catching theindistinctness of the other's strange expression. "You're both beyondme!" he exclaimed at last. "I don't see what you in particular gain. "

"I didn't either till she made it all out to me. One sees then, in sucha matter, for one's self. And as everything's gain that isn't loss, there was nothing I COULD lose. It gets me, " Mitchy further explained, "out of the way. "

"Out of the way of what?"

This, Mitchy frankly showed, was more difficult to say, but he in timebrought it out. "Well, of appearing to suggest to you that my existence, in a prolonged state of singleness, may ever represent for her any realalternative. "

"But alternative to what?"

"Why to being YOUR wife, damn you!" Mitchy, on these words turned awayagain, and his companion, in the presence of his renewed dim gyrations, sat for a minute dumb. Before Van had spoken indeed he was back again. "Excuse my violence, but of course you really see. "

"I'm not pretending anything, " Vanderbank said--"but a man MUSTunderstand. What I catch hold of is that you offer me--in the fact thatyou're thus at any rate disposed of--a proof that I, by the same token, shan't, if I hesitate to 'go in, ' have a pretext for saying to myselfthat I MAY deprive her--!"

"Yes, precisely, " Mitchy now urbanely assented: "of something--in theshape of a man with MY amount of money--that she may live to regretand to languish for. My amount of money, don't you see?" he very simplyadded, "is nothing to her. "

"And you want me to be sure that--so far as I may ever have had ascruple--she has had her chance and got rid of it. "

"Completely, " Mitchy smiled. 

"Because"--Vanderbank with the aid of his cigar thoughtfully pieced itout--"that may possibly bring me to the point. "

"Possibly!" Mitchy laughed. 

He had stood a moment longer, almost as if to see the possibilitydevelop before his eyes, and had even started at the next sound of hisfriend's voice. What Vanderbank in fact brought out, however, only madehim turn his back. "Do you like so very much little Aggie?"

"Well, " said Mitchy, "Nanda does. And I like Nanda. "

"You're too amazing, " Vanderbank mused. His musing had presently theeffect of making him rise; meditation indeed beset him after he wason his feet. "I can't help its coming over me then that on such anextraordinary system you must also rather like ME. "

"What will you have, my dear Van?" Mitchy frankly asked. "It's thesort of thing you must be most used to. For at the presentmoment--look!--aren't we all at you at once?"

It was as if his dear Van had managed to appear to wonder. "'All'?"

"Nanda, Mrs. Brook, Mr. Longdon--!"

"And you. I see. "

"Names of distinction. And all the others, " Mitchy pursued, "that Idon't count. "

"Oh you're the best. "

"I?"

"You're the best, " Vanderbank simply repeated. "It's at all events mostextraordinary, " he declared. "But I make you out on the whole betterthan I do Mr. Longdon. "

"Ah aren't we very much the same--simple lovers of life? That is of thatfiner essence of it which appeals to the consciousness--"

"The consciousness?"--his companion took up his hesitation. 

"Well, enlarged and improved. "

The words had made on Mitchy's lips an image by which his friendappeared for a moment held. "One doesn't really know quite what to sayor to do. "

"Oh you must take it all quietly. You're of a special class; one ofthose who, as we said the other day--don't you remember?--are asource of the sacred terror. People made in such a way must take theconsequences; just as people must take them, " Mitchy went on, "who aremade as _I_ am. So cheer up!"

Mitchy, uttering this incitement, had moved to the empty chair bythe window, in which he presently was sunk; and it might have been inemulation of his previous strolling and straying that Vanderbank himselfnow began to revolve. The meditation he next threw out, however, showeda certain resistance to Mitchy's advice. "I'm glad at any rate I don'tdeprive her of a fortune. "

"You don't deprive her of mine of course, " Mitchy answered from thechair; "but isn't her enjoyment of Mr. Longdon's at least a good dealstaked after all on your action?"

Vanderbank stopped short. "It's his idea to settle it ALL?"

Mitchy gave out his glare. "I thought you didn't 'care a hang. ' Ihaven't been here so long, " he went on as his companion at firstretorted nothing, "without making up my mind for myself about his means. He IS distinctly bloated. "

It sent Vanderbank off again. "Oh well, she'll no more get all in theone event than she'll get nothing in the other. She'll only get a sortof provision. But she'll get that whatever happens. "

"Oh if you're sure--!" Mitchy simply commented. 

"I'm not sure, confound it!" Then--for his voice had been irritated--Vanspoke more quietly. "Only I see her here--though on his wish ofcourse--handling things quite as if they were her own and paying him avisit without, apparently, any calculable end. What's that on HIS partbut a pledge?"

Oh Mitchy could show off-hand that he knew what it was. "It's a pledge, quite as much, to you. He shows you the whole thing. He likes you not awhit less than he likes her. "

"Oh thunder!" Van impatiently sighed. 

"It's as 'rum' as you please, but there it is, " said the inexorableMitchy. 

"Then does he think I'll do it for THIS?"

"For 'this'?"

"For the place, the whole thing, as you call it, that he shows me. "

Mitchy had a short silence that might have represented a change ofcolour. "It isn't good enough?" But he instantly took himself up. "Ofcourse he wants--as I do--to treat you with tact!"

"Oh it's all right, " Vanderbank immediately said. "Your 'tact'--yoursand his--is marvellous, and Nanda's greatest of all. "

Mitchy's momentary renewal of stillness was addressed, he somehowmanaged not obscurely to convey, to the last clause of his friend'sspeech. "If you're not sure, " he presently resumed, "why can't youfrankly ask him?"

Vanderbank again, as the phrase is, "mooned" about a little. "Because Idon't know that it would do. "

"What do you mean by 'do'?"

"Well, that it would be exactly--what do you call it?--'square. ' Or evenquite delicate or decent. To take from him, in the way of an assuranceso handsomely offered, so much, and then to ask for more: I don't feel Ican do it. Besides, I've my little conviction. To the question itself hemight easily reply that it's none of my business. "

"I see, " Mitchy dropped. "Such pressure might suggest to him moreoverthat you're hesitating more than you perhaps really are. "

"Oh as to THAT" said Vanderbank, "I think he practically knows howmuch. "

"And how little?" He met this, however, with no more form than if it hadbeen a poor joke, so that Mitchy also smoked for a moment in silence. "It's your coming down here, you mean, for these three or four days, that will have fixed it?"

The question this time was one to which the speaker might have expectedan answer, but Vanderbank's only immediate answer was to walk and walk. "I want so awfully to be kind to her, " he at last said. 

"I should think so!" Then with irrelevance Mitchy harked back. "Shall_I_ find out?"

But Vanderbank, with another thought, had lost the thread. "Find outwhat?"

"Why if she does get anything--!"

"If I'm not kind ENOUGH?"--Van had caught up again. "Dear no; I'd ratheryou shouldn't speak unless first spoken to. "

"Well, HE may speak--since he knows we know. "

"It isn't likely, for he can't make out why I told you. "

"You didn't tell ME, you know, " said Mitchy. "You told Mrs. Brook. "

"Well, SHE told you, and her talking about it is the unpleasant idea. Hecan't get her down anyhow. "

"Poor Mrs. Brook!" Mitchy meditated. 

"Poor Mrs. Brook!" his companion echoed. 

"But I thought you said, " he went on, "that he doesn't mind. "

"YOUR knowing? Well, I dare say he doesn't. But he doesn't want a lot ofgossip and chatter. "

"Oh!" said Mitchy with meekness. 

"I may absolutely take it from you then, " Vanderbank presently resumed, "that Nanda has her idea?"

"Oh she didn't tell me so. But it's none the less my belief. "

"Well, " Vanderbank at last threw off, "I feel it for myself. If onlybecause she always knows everything, " he pursued without looking atMitchy. "She always knows everything, everything. "

"Everything, everything. " Mitchy got up. 

"She told me so herself yesterday, " said Van. 

"And she told ME so to-day. "

Vanderbank's hesitation might have shown he was struck with this. "Well, I don't think it's information that either of us required. But of courseshe--can't help it, " he added. "Everything, literally everything, inLondon, in the world she lives in, is in the air she breathes--so thatthe longer SHE'S in it the more she'll know. "

"The more she'll know, certainly, " Mitchy acknowledged. "But she isn'tin it, you see, down here. "

"No. Only she appears to have come down with such accumulations. And shewon't be here for ever, " Vanderbank hastened to mention. "Certainly notif you marry her. "

"But isn't that at the same time, " Vanderbank asked, "just thedifficulty?"

Mitchy looked vague. "The difficulty?"

"Why as a married woman she'll be steeped in it again. "

"Surely"--oh Mitchy could be candid! "But the difference will be thatfor a married woman it won't matter. It only matters for girls, " heplausibly continued--"and then only for those on whom no one takespity. "

"The trouble is, " said Vanderbank--but quite as if uttering only ageneral truth--"that it's just a thing that may sometimes operate asa bar to pity. Isn't it for the non-marrying girls that it doesn'tparticularly matter? For the others it's such an odd preparation. "

"Oh I don't mind it!" Mitchy declared. 

Vanderbank visibly demurred. "Ah but your choice--!"

"Is such a different sort of thing?" Mitchy, for the half-hour, in theambiguous dusk, had never looked more droll. "The young lady I namedisn't my CHOICE. "

"Well then, that's only a sign the more that you do these things moreeasily. "

"Oh 'easily'!" Mitchy murmured. 

"We oughtn't at any rate to keep it up, " said Vanderbank, who had lookedat his watch. "Twelve twenty-five--good-night. Shall I blow out thecandles?"

"Do, please. I'll close the window"--and Mitchy went to it. "I'll followyou--good-night. " The candles after a minute were out and his friendhad gone, but Mitchy, left in darkness face to face with the vague quietgarden, still stood there. 

BOOK EIGHTH. TISHY GRENDON

I

The footman, opening the door, mumbled his name without sincerity, and Vanderbank, passing in, found in fact--for he had caught thesymptom--the chairs and tables, the lighted lamps and the flowers alonein possession. He looked at his watch, which exactly marked eight, thenturned to speak again to the servant, who had, however, without anothersound and as if blushing for the house, already closed him in. There wasnothing indeed but Mrs. Grendon's want of promptness that failed of awelcome: her drawing-room, on the January night, showed its elegancethrough a suffusion of pink electricity which melted, at the end ofthe vista, into the faintly golden glow of a retreat still more sacred. Vanderbank walked after a moment into the second room, which also provedempty and which had its little globes of white fire--discreetly limitedin number--coated with lemon-coloured silk. The walls, covered withdelicate French mouldings, were so fair that they seemed vaguelysilvered; the low French chimney had a French fire. There was alemon-coloured stuff on the sofa and chairs, a wonderful polish on thefloor that was largely exposed, and a copy of a French novel in bluepaper on one of the spindle-legged tables. Vanderbank looked about himan instant as if generally struck, then gave himself to something thathad particularly caught his eye. This was simply his own name writtenrather large on the cover of the French book and endowed, after hehad taken the volume up, with the power to hold his attention themore closely the longer he looked at it. He uttered, for a privatesatisfaction, before letting the matter pass, a low confused sound;after which, flinging the book down with some emphasis in another place, he moved to the chimney-piece, where his eyes for a little intentlyfixed the small ashy wood-fire. When he raised them again it was, on theobservation that the beautiful clock on the mantel was wrong, to consultonce more his watch and then give a glance, in the chimney-glass, at thestate of his moustache, the ends of which he twisted for a momentwith due care. While so engaged he became aware of something else and, quickly facing about, recognised in the doorway of the room the otherfigure the glass had just reflected. 

"Oh YOU?" he said with a quick handshake. "Mrs. Grendon's down?" But hehad already passed with Nanda, on their greeting, back into the firstroom, which contained only themselves, and she had mentioned that shebelieved Tishy to have said 8. 15, which meant of course anything peopleliked. 

"Oh then there'll be nobody till nine. I didn't, I suppose, sufficientlystudy my note; which didn't mention to me, by the way, " Vanderbankadded, "that you were to be here. "

"Ah but why SHOULD it?" Nanda spoke again, however, before he couldreply. "I dare say that when she wrote to you she didn't know. "

"Know you'd come bang up to meet me?" Vanderbank laughed. "Jolly at anyrate, thanks to my mistake, to have in this way a quiet moment with you. You came on ahead of your mother?"

"Oh no--I'm staying here. "

"Oh!" said Vanderbank. 

"Mr. Longdon came up with me--I came here, Friday last, straight. "

"You parted at the door?" he asked with marked gaiety. 

She thought a moment--she was more serious. "Yes--but only for a day ortwo. He's coming tonight. "

"Good. How delightful!"

"He'll be glad to see you, " Nanda said, looking at the flowers. 

"Awfully kind of him when I've been such a brute. "

"How--a brute?"

"Well, I mean not writing--nor going back. "

"Oh I see, " Nanda simply returned. 

It was a simplicity that, clearly enough, made her friend a littleawkward. "Has he--a--minded? Hut he can't have complained!" he quicklyadded. 

"Oh he never complains. "

"No, no--it isn't in him. But it's just that, " said Vanderbank, "thatmakes one feel so base. I've been ferociously busy. "

"He knows that--he likes it, " Nanda returned. "He delights in your work. And I've done what I can for him. "

"Ah, " said her companion, "you've evidently brought him round. I mean tothis lady. "

"To Tishy? Oh of course I can't leave her--with nobody. "

"No"--Vanderbank became jocose again--"that's a London necessity. Youcan't leave anybody with nobody--exposed to everybody. "

Mild as it was, however, Nanda missed the pleasantry. "Mr. Grendon's nothere. "

"Where is he then?"

"Yachting--but she doesn't know. "

"Then she and you are just doing this together?"

"Well, " said Nanda, "she's dreadfully frightened. "

"Oh she mustn't allow herself, " he returned, "to be too much carriedaway by it. But we're to have your mother?"

"Yes, and papa. It's really for Mitchy and Aggie, " the girl wenton--"before they go abroad. "

"Ah then I see what you've come up for! Tishy and I aren't in it. It'sall for Mitchy. "

"If you mean there's nothing I wouldn't do for him you're quite right. He has always been of a kindness to me--!"

"That culminated in marrying your friend?" Vanderbank asked. "It wascharming certainly, and I don't mean to diminish the merit of it. ButAggie herself, I gather, is of a charm now--!"

"Isn't she?"--Nanda was eager. "Hasn't she come out?"

"With a bound--into the arena. But when a young person's out withMitchy--!"

"Oh you mustn't say anything against that. I've been out with himmyself. "

"Ah but my dear child--!" Van frankly argued. 

It was not, however, a thing to notice. "I knew it would be just so. Italways is when they've been like that. "

"Do you mean as she apparently WAS? But doesn't it make one wonder alittle IF she was?"

"Oh she was--I know she was. And we're also to have Harold, " Nandacontinued--"another of Mitchy's beneficiaries. It WOULD be a banquet, wouldn't it? if we were to have them all. "

Vanderbank hesitated, and the look he fixed on the door might havesuggested a certain open attention to the arrival of their hostess orthe announcement of other guests. "If you haven't got them all, thebeneficiaries, you've got, in having me, I should suppose, about thebiggest. "

"Ah what has he done for you?" Nanda asked. 

Again her friend hung fire. "Do you remember something you said to medown there in August?"

She looked vague but quite unembarrassed. "I remember but too well thatI chattered. "

"You declared to me that you knew everything. "

"Oh yes--and I said so to Mitchy too. "

"Well, my dear child, you don't. "

"Because I don't know--?"

"Yes, what makes ME the victim of his insatiable benevolence. "

"Ah well, if you've no doubt of it yourself that's all that's required. I'm quite GLAD to hear of something I don't know, " Nanda pursued. "Andwe're to have Harold too, " she repeated. 

"As a beneficiary? Then we SHALL fill up! Harold will give us a stamp. "

"Won't he? I hear of nothing but his success. Mother wrote me thatpeople are frantic for him; and, " said the girl after an instant, "doyou know what Cousin Jane wrote me?"

"What WOULD she now? I'm trying to think. "

Nanda relieved him of this effort. "Why that mother has transferred tohim all the scruples she felt--'even to excess'--in MY time, about whatwe might pick up among you all that wouldn't be good for us. "

"That's a neat one for ME!" Vanderbank declared. "And I like your talkabout your antediluvian 'time. '"

"Oh it's all over. "

"What exactly is it, " Vanderbank presently demanded, "that you describein that manner?"

"Well, my little hour. And the danger of picking up. "

"There's none of it here?"

Nanda appeared frankly to judge. "No--because, really, Tishy, don't yousee? is natural. We just talk. "

Vanderbank showed his interest. "Whereas at your mother's--?"

"Well, you were all afraid. "

Vanderbank laughed straight out. "Do you mind my telling her that?"

"Oh she knows it. I've heard her say herself you were. "

"Ah _I_ was, " he concurred. "You know we've spoken of that before. "

"I'm speaking now of all of you, " said Nanda. "But it was she who wasmost so, for she tried--I know she did, she told me so--to control you. And it was when, you were most controlled--!"

Van's amusement took it up. "That we were most detrimental?"

"Yes, because of course what's so awfully unutterable is just what wemost notice. Tishy knows that, " Nanda wonderfully observed. 

As the reflexion of her tone might have been caught by an observerin Vanderbank's face it was in all probability caught by hisinterlocutress, who superficially, however, need have recognisedthere--what was all she showed--but the right manner of waiting fordinner. "The better way then is to dash right in? That's what our friendhere does?"

"Oh you know what she does!" the girl replied as with a sudden drop ofinterest in the question. She turned at the moment to the opening of thedoor. 

It was Tishy who at last appeared, and her guest had his greeting ready. "We're talking of the delicate matters as to which you think it's betterto dash right in; but I'm bound to say your inviting a hungry man todinner doesn't appear to be one of them. "

The sign of Tishy Grendon--as it had been often called in a society inwhich variety of reference had brought to high perfection, for usualsafety, the sense of signs--was a retarded facial glimmer that, inrespect to any subject, closed up the rear of the procession. It hadbeen said of her indeed that when processions were at all rapid she wasusually to be found, on a false impression of her whereabouts, mixed upwith the next; so that now, for instance, by the time she had reachedthe point of saying to Vanderbank "Are you REALLY hungry?" Nanda hadbegun to appeal to him for some praise of their hostess's appearance. This was of course with soft looks up and down at her clothes. "Isn'tshe too nice? Did you ever see anything so lovely?"

"I'm so faint with inanition, " Van replied to Mrs. Grendon, "that--likethe traveller in the desert, isn't it?--I only make out, as an oasis ora mirage, a sweet green rustling blur. I don't trust you. "

"I don't trust YOU, " Nanda said on her friend's behalf. "She isn't'green'--men are amazing: they don't know the dearest old blue that everwas seen. "

"IS it your 'OLD blue'?" Vanderbank, monocular, very earnestly asked. "Ican imagine it was 'dear, ' but I should have thought--!"

"It was yellow"--Nanda helped him out--"if I hadn't kindly toldyou. " Tishy's figure showed the confidence of objects consecrated bypublicity; bodily speaking a beautiful human plant, it might have takenthe last November gale to account for the completeness with which, in some quarters, she had shed her leaves. Her companions couldonly emphasise by the direction of their eyes the nature of theresponsibility with which a spectator would have seen them saddled--achoice, as to consciousness, between the effect of her being and theeffect of her not being dressed. "Oh I'm hideous--of course I know it, "said Tishy. "I'm only just clean. Here's Nanda now, who's beautiful, "she vaguely continued, "and Nanda--"

"Oh but, darling, Nanda's clean too!" the young lady in questioninterrupted; on which her fellow guest could only laugh with her as inrelief from the antithesis of which her presence of mind had avertedthe completion, little indeed as in Mrs. Grendon's talk that element ofstyle was usually involved. 

"There's nothing in such a matter, " Vanderbank observed as if it werethe least he could decently say, "like challenging enquiry; and here'sHarold, precisely, " he went on in the next breath, "as clear and crispand undefiled as a fresh five-pound note. "

"A fresh one?"--Harold had passed in a flash from his hostess. "A manwho like me hasn't seen one for six months could perfectly do, I assureyou, with one that has lost its what-do-you-call it. " He kissed Nandawith a friendly peck, then, more completely aware, had a straighterapprehension for Tishy. "My dear child, YOU seem to have lost something, though I'll say for you that one doesn't miss it. "

Mrs. Grendon looked from him to Nanda. "Does he mean anything verynasty? I can only understand you when Nanda explains, " she returnedto Harold. "In fact there's scarcely anything I understand exceptwhen Nanda explains. It's too dreadful her being away so much now withstrange people, whom I'm sure she can't begin to do for what she doesfor me; it makes me miss her all round. And the only thing I've comeacross that she CAN'T explain, " Tishy bunched straight at her friend, "is what on earth she's doing there. "

"Why she's working Mr. Longdon, like a good fine girl, " Harold said;"like a good true daughter and even, though she doesn't love me nearlyso much as I love HER, I will say, like a good true sister. I'm boundto tell you, my dear Tishy, " he went on, "that I think it awfully happy, with the trend of manners, for any really nice young thing to be a bitlost to sight. London, upon my honour, is quite too awful for girls, andany big house in the country is as much worse--with the promiscuitiesand opportunities and all that--as you know for yourselves. _I_ knowsome places, " Harold declared, "where, if I had any girls, I'd see 'emshot before I'd take 'em. "

"Oh you know too much, my dear boy!" Vanderbank remarked withcommiseration. 

"Ah my brave old Van, " the youth returned, "don't speak as if YOU hadillusions. I know, " he pursued to the ladies, "just where some of Van'smust have perished, and some of the places I've in mind are just wherehe has left his tracks. A man must be wedded to sweet superstitionsnot nowadays to HAVE to open his eyes. Nanda love, " he benevolentlyconcluded, "stay where you are. So at least I shan't blush for you. Thatyou've the good fortune to have reached your time of life with so littleinjury to your innocence makes you a case by yourself, of which wemust recognise the claims. If Tishy can't make you gasp, that's nothingagainst you nor against HER--Tishy comes of one of the few innocentEnglish families that are left. Yes, you may all cry 'Oho!'--but I defyyou to name me say five, or at most seven, in which some awful thing orother hasn't happened. Of course ours is one, and Tishy's is one, andVan's is one, and Mr. Longdon's is one, and that makes you, bang off, four. So there you are!" Harold gaily wound up. 

"I see now why he's the rage!" Vanderbank observed to Nanda. 

But Mrs. Grendon expressed to their young friend a lingering wonder. "Doyou mean you go in for the adoption--?"

"Oh Tishy!" Nanda mildly murmured. 

Harold, however, had his own tact. "The dear man's taking her quiteover? Not altogether unreservedly. I'm with the governor: I think weought to GET something. 'Oh yes, dear man, but what do you GIVE us forher?'--that's what _I_ should say to him. I mean, don't you know, that Idon't think she's making quite the bargain she might. If he were towant ME I don't say he mightn't have me, but I should have it on myconscience to make it in one way or another a good thing for my parents. You ARE nice, old woman"--he turned to his sister--"and one can stillfeel for the flower of your youth something of the wonderful 'reverence'that we were all brought up on. For God's sake therefore--all themore--don't really close with him till you've had another word or twowith me. I'll be hanged"--he appealed to the company again--"if he shallhave her for nothing!"

"See rather, " Vanderbank said to Mrs. Grendon, "how little it's likeyour really losing her that she should be able this evening fairly tobring the dear man to you. At this rate we don't lose her--we simply gethim as well. "

"Ah but is it quite the dear man's COMPANY we want?"--and Harold lookedanxious and acute. "If that's the best arrangement Nanda can make--!"

"If he hears us talking in this way, which strikes me as very horrible, "Nanda interposed very simply and gravely, "I don't think we're likely toget anything. "

"Oh Harold's talk, " Vanderbank protested, "offers, I think, anextraordinary interest; only I'm bound to say it crushes me to theearth. I've to make at least, as I listen to him, a big effort to bearup. It doesn't seem long ago, " he pursued to his young friend, "thatI used to feel I was in it; but the way you bring home to me, dreadfulyouth, that I'm already NOT--!"

Harold looked earnest to understand. "The hungry generations tread youdown--is that it?"

Vanderbank gave a pleasant tragic headshake. "We speak a differentlanguage. "

"Ah but I think I perfectly understand yours!"

"That's just my anguish--and your advantage. It's awfully curious, "Vanderbank went on to Nanda, "but I feel as if I must figure to him, you know, very much as Mr. Longdon figures to me. Mr. Longdon doesn'tsomehow get into me. Yet I do, I think, into him. But we don't matter!"

"'We'?"--Nanda, with her eyes on him, echoed it. 

"Mr. Longdon and I. It can't be helped, I suppose, " he went on, forTishy, with sociable sadness, "but it IS short innings. "

Mrs. Grendon, who was clearly credulous, looked positively frightened. "Ah but, my dear, thank you! I haven't begun to LIVE. "

"Well, _I_ have--that's just where it is, " said Harold. "Thank you allthe more, old Van, for the tip. "

There was an announcement just now at the door, and Tishy turned to meetthe Duchess, with Harold, almost as if he had been master of the house, figuring but a step behind her. "Don't mind HER, " Vanderbank immediatelysaid to the companion with whom he was left, "but tell me, while I stillhave hold of you, who wrote my name on the French novel that I noticed afew minutes since in the other room?"

Nanda at first only wondered. "If it's there--didn't YOU?"

He just hesitated. "If it were here you'd see if it's my hand. "

Nanda faltered, and for somewhat longer. "How should I see? What do Iknow of your hand?"

He looked at her hard. "You HAVE seen it. "

"Oh--so little!" she replied with a faint smile. 

"Do you mean I've not written to you for so long? Surely I did in--whenwas it?"

"Yes, when? But why SHOULD you?" she asked in quite a different tone. 

He was not prepared on this with the right statement, and what he didafter a moment bring out had for the occasion a little the sound of thewrong. "The beauty of YOU is that you're too good; which for me is butanother way of saying you're too clever. You make no demands. You letthings go. You don't allow in particular for the human weakness thatenjoys an occasional glimpse of the weakness of others. "

She had deeply attended to him. "You mean perhaps one doesn't showenough what one wants?"

"I think that must be it. You're so fiendishly proud. "

She appeared again to wonder. "Not too much so, at any rate, only towant from YOU--"

"Well, what?"

"Why, what's pleasant for yourself, " she simply said. 

"Oh dear, that's poor bliss!" he returned. "How does it come then, " henext said, "that with this barrenness of our intercourse I know so wellYOUR hand?"

A series of announcements had meanwhile been made, with guests arrivingto match them, and Nanda's eyes at this moment engaged themselves withMr. Longdon and her mother, who entered the room together. When shelooked back to her companion she had had time to drop a consciousnessof his question. "If I'm proud, to you, I'm not good, " she said, "and ifI'm good--always to you--I'm not proud. I know at all events perfectlyhow immensely you're occupied, what a quantity of work you get throughand how every minute counts for you. Don't make it a crime to me thatI'm reasonable. "

"No, that would show, wouldn't it? that there isn't much else. But how itall comes back--!"

"Well, to what?" she asked. 

"To the old story. You know how I'm occupied. You know how I work. Youknow how I manage my time. "

"Oh I see, " said Nanda. "It IS my knowing, after all, everything. "

"Everything. The book I just mentioned is one that, months ago---Iremember now--I lent your mother. "

"Oh a thing in a blue cover? I remember then too. " Nanda's face clearedup. "I had forgotten it was lying about here, but I must have broughtit--in fact I remember I did--for Tishy. And I wrote your name on it sothat we might know--"

"That I hadn't lent it to either of you? It didn't occur to you to writeyour own?" Vanderbank went on. 

"Well, but if it isn't mine? It ISN'T mine, I'm sure. "

"Therefore also if it can't be Tishy's--"

"The thing's simple enough--it's mother's. "

"'Simple'?" Vanderbank laughed. "I like you! And may I ask if you'veread the remarkable work?"

"Oh yes. " Then she wonderfully said: "For Tishy. "

"To see if it would do?"

"I've often done that, " the girl returned. 

"And she takes your word?"

"Generally. I think I remember she did that time. "

"And read the confounded thing?"

"Oh no!" said Nanda. 

He looked at her a moment longer. "You're too particular!" he ratheroddly sounded, turning away with it to meet Mr. Longdon. 

II

When after dinner the company was restored to the upper rooms theDuchess was on her feet as soon as the door opened for the entrance ofthe gentlemen. Then it might have been seen that she had a purpose, for as soon as the elements had again, with a due amount of the usualshuffling and mismatching, been mixed, her case proved the first to havebeen settled. She had got Mr. Longdon beside her on a sofa that was justright for two. "I've seized you without a scruple, " she frankly said, "for there are things I want to say to you as well as very particularlyto ask. More than anything else of course I want again to thank you. "

No collapse of Mr. Longdon's was ever incompatible with his sitting wellforward. "'Again'?"

"Do you look so blank, " she demanded, "because you've really forgottenthe gratitude I expressed to you when you were so good as to bringNanda up for Aggie's marriage?--or because you don't think it a matterI should trouble myself to return to? How can I help it, " she went onwithout waiting for his answer, "if I see your hand in everything thathas happened since the so interesting talk I had with you last summerat Mertle? There have been times when I've really thought of writingto you; I've even had a bold bad idea of proposing myself to you for aSunday. Then the crisis, my momentary alarm, has struck me as blowingover, and I've felt I could wait for some luck like this, which wouldsooner or later come. " Her companion, however, appeared to leave theluck so on her hands that she could only snatch up, to cover its nudity, the next handsomest assumption. "I see you cleverly guess that what I'vebeen worried about is the effect on Mrs. Brook of the loss of her dearMitchy. If you've not at all events had your own impression of thiseffect, isn't that only because these last months you've seen so littleof her? I'VE seen, " said the Duchess, "enough and to spare. " She waitedas if for her vision, on this, to be flashed back at her, but the onlyresult of her speech was that her friend looked hard at somebody else. It was just this symptom indeed that perhaps sufficed her, for in aminute she was again afloat. "Things have turned out so much as Idesire them that I should really feel wicked not to have a humble heart. There's a quarter indeed, " she added with a noble unction, "to which Idon't fear to say for myself that no day and no night pass without myshowing it. However, you English, I know, don't like one to speak ofone's religion. I'm just as simply thankful for mine--I mean with aslittle sense of indecency or agony about it--as I am for my health ormy carriage. My point is at any rate that I say in no cruel spirit oftriumph, yet do none the less very distinctly say, that the person Mr. Mitchett's marriage has inevitably pleased least may be now rather to befeared. " These words had the sound of a climax, and she had brought themout as if, with her duty done, to leave them; but something that tookplace, for her eye, in the face Mr. Longdon had half-averted gave herafter an instant what he might have called her second wind. "Oh I knowyou think she always HAS been! But you've exaggerated--as to that; andI don't say that even at present it's anything we shan't get the betterof. Only we must keep our heads. We must remember that from her ownpoint of view she has her grievance, and we must at least look as if wetrusted her. That, you know, is what you've never quite done. "

He gave out a murmur of discomfort which produced in him a change ofposition, and the sequel to the change was that he presently acceptedfrom his cushioned angle of the sofa the definite support it couldoffer. If his eyes moreover had not met his companion's they had beenbrought by the hand he repeatedly and somewhat distressfully passed overthem closer to the question of which of the alien objects presented tohis choice it would cost him least to profess to handle. What he hadalready paid, a spectator would easily have gathered from the long, the suppressed wriggle that had ended in his falling back, was somesacrifice of his habit of not privately depreciating those to whom hewas publicly civil. It was plain, however, that when he presently spokehis thought had taken a stretch. "I'm sure I've fully intended to beeverything that's proper. But I don't think Mr. Vanderbank cares forher. "

It kindled in the Duchess an immediate light. "Vous avez bien del'esprit. You put one at one's ease. I've been vaguely groping whileyou're already there. It's really only for Nanda he cares?"

"Yes--really. "

The Duchess debated. "And yet exactly how much?"

"I haven't asked him. "

She had another, a briefer pause. "Don't you think it about time youSHOULD?" Once more she waited, then seemed to feel her opportunitywouldn't. "We've worked a bit together, but you don't take me into yourconfidence. I dare say you don't believe I'm quite straight. Don't youreally see how I MUST be?" She had a pleading note which made him atlast more consentingly face her. "Don't you see, " she went on with theadvantage of it, "that, having got all I want for myself, I haven't amotive in the world for spoiling the fun of another? I don't want in theleast, I assure you, to spoil even Mrs. Brook's; for how will she get abit less out of him--I mean than she does now--if what you desire SHOULDtake place? Honestly, my dear man, that's quite what _I_ desire, and Ionly want, over and above, to help you. What I feel for Nanda, believeme, is pure pity. I won't say I'm frantically grateful to her, becausein the long run--one way or another--she'll have found her account. Itnevertheless worries me to see her; and all the more because of thisvery certitude, which you've so kindly just settled for me, that ouryoung man hasn't really with her mother--"

Whatever the certitude Mr. Longdon had kindly settled, it was in anotherinterest that he at this moment broke in. "Is he YOUR young man too?"

She was not too much amused to cast about her. 

"Aren't such marked ornaments of life a little the property of all whoadmire and enjoy them?"

"You 'enjoy' him?" Mr. Longdon asked in the same straightforward way. 

"Immensely. "

His silence for a little seemed the sign of a plan. "What is it hehasn't done with Mrs. Brook?"

"Well, the thing that WOULD be the complication. He hasn't gone beyonda certain point. You may ask how one knows such matters, but I'm afraidI've not quite a receipt for it. A woman knows, but she can't tell. Theyhaven't done, as it's called, anything wrong. "

Mr. Longdon frowned. "It would be extremely horrid if they had. "

"Ah but, for you and me who know life, it isn't THAT that--if otherthings had made for it--would have prevented! As it happens, however, we've got off easily. She doesn't speak to him--!"

She had forms he could only take up. "'Speak' to him--?"

"Why as much as she would have liked to be able to believe. "

"Then where's the danger of which you appear to wish to warn me?"

"Just in her feeling in the case as most women would feel. You see shedid what she could for her daughter. She did, I'm bound to say, as thatsort of thing goes among you people, a good deal. She treasured up, shenursed along Mitchy, whom she would also, though of course not so much, have liked herself. Nanda could have kept him on with a word, becomingthereby so much the less accessible for YOUR plan. That would havethoroughly obliged her mother, but your little English girls, inthese altered times--oh I know how you feel them!--don't stand on suchtrifles; and--even if you think it odd of me--I can't defend myself, though I've so directly profited, against a certain compassion also forMrs. Brook's upset. As a good-natured woman I feel in short for both ofthem. I deplore all round what's after all a rather sad relation. Only, as I tell you, Nanda's the one, I naturally say to myself, for me nowmost to think of; if I don't assume too much, that is, that you don'tsuffer by my freedom. "

Mr. Longdon put by with a mere drop of his eyes the question of hissuffering: there was so clearly for him an issue more relevant. "What doyou know of my 'plan'?"

"Why, my dear man, haven't I told you that ever since Mertle I've madeout your hand? What on earth for other people can your action look likebut an adoption?"

"Of--a--HIM?"

"You're delightful. Of--a--HER! If it does come to the same thing foryou, so much the better. That at any rate is what we're all takingit for, and Mrs. Brook herself en tete. She sees--through yourgenerosity--Nanda's life more or less, at the worst, arranged for, andthat's just what gives her a good conscience. "

If Mr. Longdon breathed rather hard it seemed to show at least that hefollowed. "What does she want of a good conscience?"

From under her high tiara an instant she almost looked down at him. "Ahyou do hate her!"

He coloured, but held his ground. "Don't you tell me yourself she's tobe feared?"

"Yes, and watched. But--if possible--with amusement. "

"Amusement?" Mr. Longdon faintly gasped. 

"Look at her now, " his friend went on with an indication that was indeedeasy to embrace. Separated from them by the width of the room, Mrs. Brook was, though placed in profile, fully presented; the satisfactionwith which she had lately sunk upon a light gilt chair marked itselfas superficial and was moreover visibly not confirmed by the fact thatVanderbank's high-perched head, arrested before her in a general surveyof opportunity, kept her eyes too far above the level of talk. Theircompanions were dispersed, some in the other room, and for the occupantsof the Duchess's sofa they made, as a couple in communion, a picture, framed and detached, vaguely reduplicated in the high polish of theFrench floor. "She IS tremendously pretty. " The Duchess appeared todrop this as a plea for indulgence and to be impelled in fact by theinterlocutor's silence to carry it further. "I've never at all thought, you know, that Nanda touches her. "

Mr. Longdon demurred. "Do you mean for beauty?"

His friend, for his simplicity, discriminated. "Ah they've neither ofthem 'beauty. ' That's not a word to make free with. But the mother hasgrace. "

"And the daughter hasn't

"Not a line. You answer me of course, when I say THAT, you answer mewith your adored Lady Julia, and will want to know what then becomes ofthe lucky resemblance. I quite grant you that Lady Julia must have hadthe thing we speak of. But that dear sweet blessed thing is very muchthe same lost secret as the dear sweet blessed OTHER thing that wentaway with it--the decent leisure that, for the most part, we've alsoseen the last of. It's the thing at any rate that poor Nanda and allher kind have most effectually got rid of. Oh if you'd trust me a littlemore you'd see that I'm quite at one with you on all the changes for theworse. I bear up, but I'm old enough to have known. All the same Mrs. Brook has something--say what you like--when she bends that little brownhead. Dieu sait comme elle se coiffe, but what she gets out of it! Onlylook. "

Mr. Longdon conveyed in an indescribable manner that he had retired toa great distance; yet even from this position he must have launched aglance that arrived at a middle way. "They both know you're watchingthem. "

"And don't they know YOU are? Poor Mr. Van has a consciousness!"

"So should I if two terrible women--"

"Were admiring you both at once?" The Duchess folded the big featheredfan that had partly protected their vision. "Well, SHE, poor dear, can'thelp it. She wants him herself. "

At the drop of the Duchess's fan he restored his nippers. "And hedoesn't--not a bit--want HER!"

"There it is. She has put down her money, as it were, without a return. She has given Mitchy up and got nothing instead. "

There was delicacy, yet there was distinctness, in Mr. Longdon'sreserve. "Do you call ME nothing?"

The Duchess, at this, fairly swelled with her happy stare. "Then it ISan adoption?" She forbore to press, however; she only went on: "It isn'ta question, my dear man, of what _I_ call it. YOU don't make love toher. "

"Dear me, " said Mr. Longdon, "what would she have had?"

"That could be more charming, you mean, than your famous 'loyalty'?Oh, caro mio, she wants it straighter! But I shock you, " his companionquickly added. 

The manner in which he firmly rose was scarce a denial; yet he stood fora moment in place. "What after all can she do?"

"She can KEEP Mr. Van. "

Mr. Longdon wondered. "Where?"

"I mean till it's too late. She can work on him. "

"But how?"

Covertly again the Duchess had followed the effect of her friend'sperceived movement on Mrs. Brook, who also got up. She gave a rap withher fan on his leg. "Sit down--you'll see. "

III

He mechanically obeyed her although it happened to lend him the air oftaking Mrs. Brook's approach for a signal to resume his seat. She cameover to them, Vanderbank followed, and it was without again moving, witha vague upward gape in fact from his place, that Mr. Longdon receivedas she stood before him a challenge of a sort to flash a point into whatthe Duchess had just said. "Why do you hate me so?"

Vanderbank, who, beside Mrs. Brook, looked at him with attention, mighthave suspected him of turning a trifle pale; though even Vanderbank, with reasons of his own for an observation of the sharpest, could scarcehave read into the matter the particular dim vision that would haveaccounted for it--the flicker of fear of what Mrs. Brook, whether asdaughter or as mother, was at last so strangely and differently to showherself. 

"I should warn you, sir, " the young man threw off, "how little weconsider that--in Buckingham Crescent certainly--a fair question. Itisn't playing the game--it's hitting below the belt. We hate and welove--the latter especially; but to tell each other why is to break thatlittle tacit rule of finding out for ourselves which is the delight ofour lives and the source of our triumphs. You can say, you know, if youlike, but you're not obliged. "

Mr. Longdon transferred to him something of the same colderapprehension, looking at him manifestly harder than ever before andfinding in his eyes also no doubt a consciousness more charged. Hepresently got up, but, without answering Vanderbank, fixed again Mrs. Brook, to whom he echoed without expression: "Hate you?"

The next moment, while he remained in presence with Vanderbank, Mrs. Brook was pointing out her meaning to him from the cushioned corner hehad quitted. "Why, when you come back to town you come straight, as itwere, here. "

"Ah what's that, " the Duchess asked in his interest, "but to followNanda as closely as possible, or at any rate to keep well with her?"

Mrs. Brook, however, had no ear for this plea. "And when I, coming heretoo and thinking only of my chance to 'meet' you, do my very sweetest tocatch your eye, you're entirely given up--!"

"To trying of course, " the Duchess broke in afresh, "to keep well withME!"

Mrs. Brook now had a smile for her. "Ah that takes precautions then thatI shall perhaps fail of if I too much interrupt your conversation. "

"Isn't she nice to me, " the Duchess asked of Mr. Longdon, "when I was inthe very act of praising her to the skies?"

Their interlocutor's reply was not too rapid to anticipate Mrs. Brookherself. "My dear Jane, that only proves his having reached someextravagance in the other sense that you had in mere decency tomatch. The truth is probably in the 'mean'--isn't that what theycall it?--between you. Don't YOU now take him away, " she went on toVanderbank, who had glanced about for some better accommodation. 

He immediately pushed forward the nearest chair, which happened to be bythe Duchess's side of the sofa. "Will you sit here, sir?"

"If you'll stay to protect me. "

"That was really what I brought him over to you for, " Mrs. Brook saidwhile Mr. Longdon took his place and Vanderbank looked out for anotherseat. "But I didn't know, " she observed with her sweet free curiosity, "that he called you 'sir. '" She often made discoveries that were fairlychildlike. "He has done it twice. "

"Isn't that only your inevitable English surprise, " the Duchessdemanded, "at the civility quite the commonest in other societies?--sothat one has to come here to find it regarded, in the way of ceremony, as the very end of the world!"

"Oh, " Mr. Longdon remarked, "it's a word I rather like myself even toemploy to others. "

"I always ask here, " the Duchess continued to him, "what word they'vegot instead. And do you know what they tell me?"

Mrs. Brook wondered, then again, before he was ready, charminglysuggested: "Our pretty manner?" Quickly too she appealed to Mr. Longdon. "Is THAT what you miss from me?"

He wondered, however, more than Mrs. Brook. "Your 'pretty manner'?"

"Well, these grand old forms that the Duchess is such a mistress of. "Mrs. Brook had with this one of her eagerest visions. "Did mamma say'sir' to you? Ought _I_? Do you really get it, in private, out of Nanda?SHE has such depths of discretion, " she explained to the Duchess and toVanderbank, who had come back with his chair, "that it's just the kindof racy anecdote she never in the world gives me. "

Mr. Longdon looked across at Van, placed now, after a moment's talkwith Tishy in sight of them all, by Mrs. Brook's arm of the sofa. "Youhaven't protected--you've only exposed me. "

"Oh there's no joy without danger"--Mrs. Brook took it up with spirit. "Perhaps one should even say there's no danger without joy. "

Vanderbank's eyes had followed Mrs. Grendon after his brief passage withher, terminated by some need of her listless presence on the other sideof the room. "What do you say then, on that theory, to the extraordinarygloom of our hostess? Her safety, by such a rule, must be deep. "

The Duchess was this time the first to know what they said. "Theexpression of Tishy's face comes precisely from our comparing it sounfavourably with that of her poor sister Carrie, who, though she isn'there to-night with the Cashmores--amazing enough even as coming WITHOUTthat!--has so often shown us that an ame en peine, constantly tottering, but, as Nanda guarantees us, usually recovering, may look after all asbeatific as a Dutch doll. "

Mrs. Brook's eyes had, on Tishy's passing away, taken the same course asVanderbank's, whom she had visibly not neglected moreover while the pairstood there. "I give you Carrie, as you know, and I throw Mr. Cashmorein; but I'm lost in admiration to-night, as I always have been, ofthe way Tishy makes her ugliness serve. I should call it, if the wordweren't so for ladies'-maids, the most 'elegant' thing I know. "

"My dear child, " the Duchess objected, "what you describe as makingher ugliness serve is what I should describe as concealing none of herbeauty. There's nothing the matter surely with 'elegant' as appliedto Tishy save that as commonly used it refers rather to a charm that'sartificial than to a state of pure nature. There should be for elegancea basis of clothing. Nanda rather stints her. "

Mrs. Brook, perhaps more than usually thoughtful, just discriminated. "There IS, I think, one little place. I'll speak to her. "

"To Tishy?" Vanderbank asked. 

"Oh THAT would do no good. To Nanda. All the same, " she continued, "it'san awfully superficial thing of you not to see that her dreariness--onwhich moreover I've set you right before--is a mere facial accident anddoesn't correspond or, as they say, 'rhyme' to anything within her thatmight make it a little interesting. What I like it for is just that it'sso funny in itself. Her low spirits are nothing more than her features. Her gloom, as you call it, is merely her broken nose. "

"HAS she a broken nose?" Mr. Longdon demanded with an accent that forsome reason touched in the others the spring of laughter. 

"Has Nanda never mentioned it?" Mrs. Brook profited by this gaiety toask. 

"That's the discretion you just spoke of, " said the Duchess. "OnlyI should have expected from the cause you refer to rather the comiceffect. "

"Mrs. Grendon's broken nose, sir, " Vanderbank explained to Mr. Longdon, "is only the kinder way taken by these ladies to speak of Mrs. Grendon'sbroken heart. You must know all about that. "

"Oh yes--ALL. " Mr. Longdon spoke very simply, with the consequence thistime, on the part of his companions, of a silence of some minutes, whichhe himself had at last to break. "Mr. Grendon doesn't like her. " Theaddition of these words apparently made the difference--as if theyconstituted a fresh link with the irresistible comedy of things. Thathe was unexpectedly diverting was, however, no check to Mr. Longdon'sdelivering his full thought. "Very horrid of two sisters to be both, intheir marriages, so wretched. "

"Ah but Tishy, I maintain, " Mrs. Brook returned, "ISN'T wretched at all. If I were satisfied that she's really so I'd never let Nanda come toher. "

"That's the most extraordinary doctrine, love, " the Duchess interposed. "When you're satisfied a woman's 'really' poor you never give her acrust?"

"Do you call Nanda a crust, Duchess?" Vanderbank amusedly asked. 

"She's all at any rate, apparently, just now, that poor Tishy has tolive on. "

"You're severe then, " the young man said, "on our dinner of to-night. "

"Oh Jane, " Mrs. Brook declared, "is never severe: she's onlyuncontrollably witty. It's only Tishy moreover who gives out that herhusband doesn't like her. HE, poor man, doesn't say anything of thesort. "

"Yes, but, after all, you know"--Vanderbank just put it to her--"wherethe deuce, all the while, IS he?"

"Heaven forbid, " the Duchess remarked, "that we should too rashlyascertain. "

"There it is--exactly, " Mr. Longdon subjoined. 

He had once more his success of hilarity, though not indeed to theinjury of the Duchess's next word. "It's Nanda, you know, who speaks, and loud enough, for Harry Grendon's dislikes. "

"That's easy for her, " Mrs. Brook declared, "when she herself isn't oneof them. "

"She isn't surely one of anybody's, " Mr. Longdon gravely observed. 

Mrs. Brook gazed across at him. "You ARE too dear! But I've none theless a crow to pick with you. "

Mr. Longdon returned her look, but returned it somehow to Van. "Youfrighten me, you know, out of my wits. "

"_I_ do?" said Vanderbank. 

Mr. Longdon just hesitated. "Yes. "

"It must be the sacred terror, " Mrs. Brook suggested to Van, "thatMitchy so often speaks of. I'M not trying with you, " she went on to Mr. Longdon, "for anything of that kind, but only for the short half-hourin private that I think you won't for the world grant me. Nothing willinduce you to find yourself alone with me. "

"Why what on earth, " Vanderbank asked, "do you suspect him of supposingyou want to do?"

"Oh it isn't THAT, " Mrs. Brook sadly said. 

"It isn't what?" laughed the Duchess. 

"That he fears I may want in any way to--what do you call it?--make upto him. " She spoke as if she only wished it had been. "He has a deeperthought. "

"Well then what in goodness is it?" the Duchess pressed. 

Mr. Longdon had said nothing more, but Mrs. Brook preferred none theless to treat the question as between themselves. She WAS, as theothers said, wonderful. "You can't help thinking me"--she spoke to himstraight--"rather tortuous. " The pause she thus momentarily produced wasso intense as to give a sharpness that was almost vulgar to the little"Oh!" by which it was presently broken and the source of which neitherof her three companions could afterwards in the least have named. Neither would have endeavoured to fix an infelicity of which eachdoubtless had been but too capable. "It's only as a mother, " she added, "that I want my chance. "

But the Duchess was at this again in the breach. "Take it, for mercy'ssake then, my dear, over Harold, who's an example to Nanda herselfin the way that, behind the piano there, he's keeping it up with LadyFanny. "

If this had been a herring that, in the interest of peace, the Duchesshad wished to draw across the scent, it could scarce have been moreeffective. Mrs. Brook, whose position had made just the difference thatshe lost the view of the other side of the piano, took a slight butimmediate stretch. "IS Harold with Lady Fanny?"

"You ask it, my dear child, " said the Duchess, "as if it were toogrand to be believed. It's the note of eagerness, " she went on for Mr. Longdon's benefit--"it's almost the note of hope: one of those that cesmessieurs, that we all in fact delight in and find so matchless. Shedesires for Harold the highest advantages. "

"Well then, " declared Vanderbank, who had achieved a glimpse, "he'sclearly having them. It brings home to one his success. "

"His success is true, " Mrs. Brook insisted. "How he does it I don'tknow. "

"Oh DON'T you?" trumpeted the Duchess. 

"He's amazing, " Mrs. Brook pursued. "I watch--I hold my breath. But I'mbound to say also I rather admire. He somehow amuses them. "

"She's as pleased as Punch, " said the Duchess. 

"Those great calm women--they like slighter creatures. "

"The great calm whales, " the Duchess laughed, "swallow the littlefishes. "

"Oh my dear, " Mrs. Brook returned, "Harold can be tasted, if you like--"

"If _I_ like?" the Duchess parenthetically jeered. "Thank you, love!"

"But he can't, I think, be eaten. It all works out, " Mrs. Brookexpounded, "to the highest end. If Lady Fanny's amused she'll be quiet. "

"Bless me, " cried the Duchess, "of all the immoral speeches--! I put itto you, Longdon. Does she mean"--she appealed to their friend--"that ifshe commits murder she won't commit anything else?"

"Oh it won't be murder, " said Mrs. Brook. "I mean that if Harold, in oneway and another, keeps her along, she won't get off. "

"Off where?" Mr. Longdon risked. 

Vanderbank immediately informed him. "To one of the smaller Italiantowns. Don't you know?"

"Oh yes. Like--who is it? I forget. "

"Anna Karenine? You know about Anna?"

"Nanda, " said the Duchess, "has told him. But I thought, " she went on toMrs. Brook, "that Lady Fanny, by this time, MUST have gone. "

"Petherton then, " Mrs. Brook returned, "doesn't keep you au courant?"

The Duchess blandly wondered. "I seem to remember he had positively saidso. And that she had come back. "

"Because this looks so like a fresh start? No. WE know. You assumebesides, " Mrs. Brook asked, "that Mr. Cashmore would have received heragain?"

The Duchess fixed a little that gentleman and his actual companion. "What will you have? He mightn't have noticed. "

"Oh you're out of step, Duchess, " Vanderbank said. "We used all to marchabreast, but we're falling to pieces. It's all, saving your presence, Mitchy's marriage. "

"Ah, " Mrs. Brook concurred, "how thoroughly I feel that! Oh I knew. Thespell's broken; the harp has lost a string. We're not the same thing. HE'S not the same thing. "

"Frankly, my dear, " the Duchess answered, "I don't think that youpersonally are either. "

"Oh as for that--which is what matters least--we shall perhaps see. "With which Mrs. Brook turned again to Mr. Longdon. "I haven't explainedto you what I meant just now. We want Nanda. "

Mr. Longdon stared. "At home again?"

"In her little old nook. You must give her back. "

"Do you mean altogether?"

"Ah that will be for you in a manner to arrange. But you've had herpractically these five months, and with no desire to be unreasonable weyet have our natural feelings. "

This interchange, to which circumstances somehow gave a high effect ofsuddenness and strangeness, was listened to by the others in a quicksilence that was like the sense of a blast of cold air, though with thedifference between the spectators that Vanderbank attached his eyes hardto Mrs. Brook and that the Duchess looked as straight at Mr. Longdon, towhom clearly she wished to convey that if he had wondered a short timebefore how Mrs. Brook would do it he must now be quite at his ease. Heindulged in fact, after this lady's last words, in a pause that mighthave signified some of the fulness of a new light. He only said veryquietly: "I thought you liked it. "

At this his neighbour broke in. "The care you take of the child? TheyDO!" The Duchess, as she spoke, became aware of the nearer presence ofEdward Brookenham, who within a minute had come in from the other room;and her decision of character leaped forth in her quick signal to him. "Edward will tell you. " He was already before their semicircle. "DO you, dear, " she appealed, "want Nanda back from Mr. Longdon?"

Edward plainly could be trusted to feel in his quiet way that the oraclemust be a match for the priestess. "'Want' her, Jane? We wouldn't TAKEher. " And as if knowing quite what he was about he looked at his wifeonly after he had spoken. 

IV

His reply had complete success, to which there could scarce haveafterwards been a positive denial that some sound of amusement even fromMr. Longdon himself had in its degree contributed. Certain it wasthat Mrs. Brook found, as she exclaimed that her husband was always soawfully civil, just the right note of resigned understanding; whereuponhe for a minute presented to them blankly enough his fine dead face. "'Civil' is just what I was afraid I wasn't. I mean, you know, " hecontinued to Mr. Longdon, "that you really mustn't look to us to let youoff--!"

"From a week or a day"--Mr. Longdon took him up--"of the time to whichyou consider I've pledged myself? My dear sir, please don't imagine it'sfor ME the Duchess appeals. "

"It's from your wife, you delicious dull man, " that lady elucidated. "Ifyou wished to be stiff with our friend here you've really been so withHER; which comes, no doubt, from the absence between you of properpreconcerted action. You spoke without your cue. "

"Oh!" said Edward Brookenham. 

"That's it, Jane"--Mrs. Brook continued to take it beautifully. "Wedressed to-day in a hurry and hadn't time for our usual rehearsal. Edward, when we dine out, generally brings three pocket-handkerchiefsand six jokes. I leave the management of the handkerchiefs to his owntaste, but we mostly try together in advance to arrange a career for theother things. It's some charming light thing of my own that's supposedto give him the sign. "

"Only sometimes he confounds"--Vanderbank helped her out--"your lightand your heavy!" He had got up to make room for his host of so manyoccasions and, having forced him into the empty chair, now moved vaguelyoff to the quarter of the room occupied by Nanda and Mr. Cashmore. 

"That's very well, " the Duchess resumed, "but it doesn't at all clearyou, cara mia, of the misdemeanour of setting up as a felt domesticneed something of which Edward proves deeply unconscious. He has put hisfinger on Nanda's true interest. He doesn't care a bit how it would LOOKfor you to want her. "

"Don't you mean rather, Jane, how it looks for us NOT to want her?"Mrs. Brook amended with a detachment now complete. "Of course, dear oldfriend, " she continued to Mr. Longdon, "she quite puts me with my backto the wall when she helps you to see--what you otherwise mightn'tguess--that Edward and I work it out between us to show off as tenderparents and yet to get from you everything you'll give. I do thesentimental and he the practical; so that we, after one fashion andanother, deck ourselves in the glory of our sacrifice without forfeitingthe 'keep' of our daughter. This must appeal to you as another usefulillustration of what London manners have come to; unless indeed, " Mrs. Brook prattled on, "it only strikes you still more--and to a degree thatblinds you to its other possible bearings--as the last proof that I'mtoo tortuous for you to know what I'd be at!"

Mr. Longdon faced her, across his interval, with his original terrorrepresented now only by such a lingering flush as might have formed anatural tribute to a brilliant scene. "I haven't the glimmering of anidea of what you'd be at. But please understand, " he added, "that Idon't at all refuse you the private half-hour you referred to a whilesince. "

"Are you really willing to put the child up for the rest of the year?"Edward placidly demanded, speaking as if quite unaware that anythingelse had taken place. 

His wife fixed her eyes on him. "The ingenuity of your companions, love, plays in the air like the lightning, but flashes round your head only, by good fortune, to leave it unscathed. Still, you have after all yourown strange wit, and I'm not sure that any of ours ever compares withit. Only, confronted also with ours, how can poor Mr. Longdon reallychoose which of the two he'll meet?"

Poor Mr. Longdon now looked hard at Edward. "Oh Mr. Brookenham's, Ifeel, any day. It's even with YOU, I confess, " he said to him, "that I'drather have that private half-hour. "

"Done!" Mrs. Brook declared. "I'll send him to you. But we HAVE, youknow, as Van says, gone to pieces, " she went on, twisting her prettyhead and tossing it back over her shoulder to an auditor of whoseapproach to her from behind, though it was impossible she should haveseen him, she had visibly within a minute become aware. "It's yourmarriage, Mitchy, that has darkened our old bright air, changed usmore than we even yet know, and most grossly and horribly, my dear man, changed YOU. You steal up in a way that gives one the creeps, whereasin the good time that's gone you always burst in with music and song. Go round where I can see you: I mayn't love you now, but at least, Isuppose, I may look at you. Direct your energies, " she pursued whileMitchy obeyed her, "as much as possible, please, against our uncannychill. Pile on the fire and close up the ranks; this WAS our best hour, you know--and all the more that Tishy, I see, is getting rid of hersuperfluities. Here comes back old Van, " she wound up, "vanquished, Ijudge, in the attempt to divert Nanda from her prey. Won't Nanda sitwith poor US?" she asked of Vanderbank, who now, meeting Mitchy in rangeof the others, remained standing with him and as at her commands. 

"I didn't of course ask her, " the young man replied. 

"Then what did you do?"

"I only took a little walk. "

Mrs. Brook, on this, was woeful at Mitchy. "See then what we've cometo. When did we ever 'walk' in YOUR time save as a distinct part ofthe effect of our good things? Please return to Nanda, " she said toVanderbank, "and tell her I particularly wish her to come in for thisdelightful evening's end. "

"She's joining us of herself now, " the Duchess noted, "and so's Mr. Cashmore and so's Tishy--VOYEZ!--who has kept on--(bless her little bareback!)--no one she oughtn't to keep. As nobody else will now arrive itwould be quite cosey if she locked the door. "

"But what on earth, my dear Jane, " Mrs. Brook plaintively wondered, "areyou proposing we should do?"

Mrs. Brook, in her apprehension, had looked expressively at theirfriends, but the eye of the Duchess wandered no further than Harold andLady Fanny. "It would perhaps serve to keep that pair a little longerfrom escaping together. "

Mrs. Brook took a pause no greater. "But wouldn't it be, as regardsanother pair, locking the stable-door after--what do you call it? Don'tPetherton and Aggie appear already to have escaped together? Mitchy, man, where in the world's your wife?"

"I quite grant you, " said the Duchess gaily, "that my niece is whereverPetherton is. This I'm sure of, for THERE'S a friendship, if you please, that has not been interrupted. Petherton's not gone, is he?" she askedin her turn of Mitchy. 

But again before he could speak it was taken up. "Mitchy's silent, Mitchy's altered, Mitchy's queer!" Mrs. Brook proclaimed, while the newrecruits to the circle, Tishy and Nanda and Mr. Cashmore, Lady Fanny andHarold too after a minute and on perceiving the movement of the others, ended by enlarging it, with mutual accommodation and aid, to a pleasanttalkative ring in which the subject of their companion's demonstration, on a low ottoman and glaring in his odd way in almost all directions atonce, formed the conspicuous attractive centre. Tishy was nearestMr. Longdon, and Nanda, still flanked by Mr. Cashmore, between thatgentleman and his wife, who had Harold on her other side. EdwardBrookenham was neighboured by his son and by Vanderbank, who mighteasily have felt himself, in spite of their separation and given, as ithappened, their places in the group, rather publicly confronted with Mr. Longdon. "Is his wife in the other room?" Mrs. Brook now put to Tishy. 

Tishy, after a stare about, recovered the acuter consciousness toaccount for this guest. "Oh yes--she's playing with him. "

"But with whom, dear?"

"Why, with Petherton. I thought you knew. "

"Knew they're playing---?" Mrs. Brook was almost Socratic. 

"The Missus is regularly wound up, " her husband meanwhile, withoutresonance, observed to Vanderbank. 

"Brilliant indeed!" Vanderbank replied. 

"But she's rather naughty, you know, " Edward after a pause continued. 

"Oh fiendish!" his interlocutor said with a short smothered laugh thatmight have represented for a spectator a sudden start at such a flash ofanalysis from such a quarter. 

When Vanderbank's attention at any rate was free again their hostess, assisted to the transition, was describing the play, as she had calledit, of the absentees. "She has hidden a book and he's trying to findit. "

"Hide and seek? Why, isn't it innocent, Mitch!" Mrs. Brook exclaimed. 

Mitchy, speaking for the first time, faced her with extravagant gloom. "Do you really think so?"

"That's HER innocence!" the Duchess laughed to him. 

"And don't you suppose he has found it YET?" Mrs. Brook pursuedearnestly to Tishy. "Isn't it something we might ALL play at if--?" Onwhich however, abruptly checking herself, she changed her note. "Nandalove, please go and invite them to join us. "

Mitchy, at this, on his ottoman, wheeled straight round to the girl, wholooked at him before speaking. "I'll go if Mitchy tells me. "

"But if he does fear, " said her mother, "that there may be something init--?"

Mitchy jerked back to Mrs. Brook. "Well, you see, I don't want to giveway to my fear. Suppose there SHOULD be something! Let me not know. "

She dealt with him tenderly. "I see. You couldn't--so soon--bear it. "

"Ah but, savez-vous, " the Duchess interposed with some majesty, "you'rehorrid!"

"Let them alone, " Mitchy continued. "We don't want at all events ageneral romp. "

"Oh I thought just that, " said Mrs. Brook, "was what the Duchess wishedthe door locked for! Perhaps moreover"--she returned to Tishy--"hehasn't yet found the book. "

"He can't, " Tishy said with simplicity. 

"But why in the world--?"

"You see she's sitting on it"--Tishy felt, it was plain, theresponsibility of explanation. "So that unless he pulls her off--"

"He can't compass his desperate end? Ah I hope he won't pull her off!"Mrs. Brook wonderfully murmured. It was said in a manner that stirredthe circle, and unanimous laughter seemed already to have crowned herinvocation, lately uttered, to the social spirit. "But what in theworld, " she pursued, "is the book selected for such a position? I hopeit's not a very big one. "

"Oh aren't the books that are sat upon, " Mr. Cashmore freely speculated, "as a matter of course the bad ones?"

"Not a bit as a matter of course, " Harold as freely replied to him. "They sit, all round, nowadays--I mean in the papers and places--on someawfully good stuff. Why I myself read books that I couldn't--upon myhonour I wouldn't risk it!--read out to you here. "

"What a pity, " his father dropped with the special shade of drynessthat was all Edward's own, "what a pity you haven't got one of yourfavourites to try on us!"

Harold looked about as if it might have been after all a happy thought. "Well, Nanda's the only girl. "

"And one's sister doesn't count, " said the Duchess. 

"It's just because the thing's bad, " Tishy resumed for Mrs. Brook's moreparticular benefit, "that Lord Petherton's trying to wrest it. "

Mrs. Brook's pale interest deepened. "Then it's a real hand-to-handstruggle?"

"He says she shan't read it--she says she will. "

"Ah that's because--isn't it, Jane?" Mrs. Brook appealed--"he so longoverlooked and advised her in those matters. Doesn't he feel by thistime--so awfully clever as he is--the extraordinary way she has comeout?"

"'By this time'?" Harold echoed. "Dearest mummy, you're too sweet. It'sonly about ten weeks--isn't it, Mitch? You don't mind my saying that, Ihope, " he solicitously added. 

Mitchy had his back to him and, bending it a little, sat with headdropped and knees pressing his hands together. "I don't mind any one'ssaying anything. "

"Lord, are you already past that?" Harold sociably laughed. 

"He used to vibrate to everything. My dear man, what IS the matter?"Mrs. Brook demanded. "Does it all move too fast for you?"

"Mercy on us, what ARE you talking about? That's what _I_ want to know!"Mr. Cashmore vivaciously declared. 

"Well, she HAS gone at a pace--if Mitchy doesn't mind, " Haroldinterposed in the tone of tact and taste. "But then don't they always--Imean when they're like Aggie and they once get loose--go at a pace?That's what _I_ want to know. I don't suppose mother did, nor Tishy, northe Duchess, " he communicated to the rest; "but mother and Tishy and theDuchess, it strikes me, must either have been of the school that knew, don't you know? a deuce of a deal before, or of the type that takes itall more quietly after. "

"I think a woman can only speak for herself. I took it all quietlyenough both before and after, " said Mrs. Brook. Then she addressed toMr. Cashmore with a small formal nod one of her lovely wan smiles. "WhatI'm talking about, s'il vous plait, is marriage. "

"I wonder if you know, " the Duchess broke out on this, "how silly youall sound! When did it ever, in any society that could call itselfdecently 'good, ' NOT make a difference that an innocent young creature, a flower tended and guarded, should find from one day to the other herwhole consciousness changed? People pull long faces and look wonderfullooks and punch each other, in your English fashion, in the sides, andsay to each other in corners that my poor darling has 'come out. ' Jecrois bien, she has come out! I married her--I don't mind saying itnow--exactly that she SHOULD come out, and I should be mightily ashamedof every one concerned if she hadn't. I didn't marry her, I give you tobelieve, that she should stay 'in, ' and if any of you think to frightenMitchy with it I imagine you'll do so as little as you frighten ME. Ifit has taken her a very short time--as Harold so vividly puts it--towhich of you did I ever pretend, I should like to know, that it wouldtake her a very long one? I dare say there are girls it would have takenlonger, just as there are certainly others who wouldn't have required somuch as an hour. It surely isn't news to you that if some young personsamong us all are very stupid and others very wise, MY dear childwas never either, but only perfectly bred and deliciously clever. AhTHAT--rather! If she's so clever that you don't know what to do with herit's scarcely HER fault. But add to it that Mitchy's very kind, and youhave the whole thing. What more do you want?"

Mrs. Brook, who looked immensely struck, replied with the promptestsympathy, yet as if there might have been an alternative. "I don'tthink"--and her eyes appealed to the others--"that we want ANY more, dowe? than the whole thing. "

"Gracious, I should hope not!" her husband remarked as privately asbefore to Vanderbank. "Jane--for a mixed company--does go into it. "

Vanderbank, for a minute and with a special short arrest, took in thecircle. "Should you call us 'mixed'? There's only ONE girl. "

Edward Brookenham glanced at his daughter. "Yes, but I wish there weremore. "

"DO you?" And Vanderbank's laugh at this odd view covered, for a little, the rest of the talk. But when he again began to follow no victory hadyet been snatched. 

It was Mrs. Brook naturally who rattled the standard. "When you say, dearest, that we don't know what to 'do' with Aggie's cleverness, do youquite allow for the way we bow down before it and worship it? I don'tquite see what else we--in here--can do with it, even though we HAVEgathered that, just over there, Petherton's finding for it a differentapplication. We can only each in our way do our best. Don't thereforesuccumb, Jane, to the delusive harm of a grievance. There would benothing in it. You haven't got one. The beauty of the life that so manyof us have so long led together"--and she showed that it was for Mr. Longdon she more particularly brought this out--"is precisely thatnobody has ever had one. Nobody has dreamed of it--it would have beensuch a rough false note, a note of violence out of all keeping. DidYOU ever hear of one, Van? Did you, my poor Mitchy? But you see foryourselves, " she wound up with a sigh and before either could answer, "how inferior we've become when we have even in our defence to assertsuch things. "

Mitchy, who for a while past had sat gazing at the floor, now raised hisgood natural goggles and stretched his closed mouth to its widest. "Oh Ithink we're pretty good still!" he then replied. 

Mrs. Brook indeed appeared, after a pause and addressing herself againto Tishy, to give a reluctant illustration of it, coming back as froman excursion of the shortest to the question momentarily dropped. "I'mbound to say--all the more you know--that I don't quite see what Aggiemayn't now read. " Suddenly, however, her look at their informant took onan anxiety. "Is the book you speak of something VERY awful?"

Mrs. Grendon, with so much these past minutes to have made her so, wasat last visibly more present. "That's what Lord Petherton says of it. From what he knows of the author. "

"So that he wants to keep her--?"

"Well, from trying it first. I think he wants to see if it's good forher. "

"That's one of the most charming soins, I think, " the Duchess said, "that a gentleman may render a young woman to whom he desires to beuseful. I won't say that Petherton always knows how good a book may be, but I'd trust him any day to say how bad. "

Mr. Longdon, who had sat throughout silent and still, quitted his seatat this and evidently in so doing gave Mrs. Brook as much occasion asshe required. She also got up and her movement brought to her viewat the door of the further room something that drew from her a quickexclamation. "He can tell us now then--for here they come!" LordPetherton, arriving with animation and followed so swiftly by his youngcompanion that she presented herself as pursuing him, shook triumphantlyover his head a small volume in blue paper. There was a general movementat the sight of them, and by the time they had rejoined their friendsthe company, pushing back seats and causing a variety of mute expressionsmoothly to circulate, was pretty well on its feet. "See--he HAS pulledher off!" said Mrs. Brook. "Little Aggie, to whom plenty of pearls weresingularly becoming, met it as pleasant sympathy. Yes, and it was a REALpull. But of course, " she continued with the prettiest humour and as ifMrs. Brook would quite understand, "from the moment one has a person'snails, and almost his teeth, in one's flesh--!"

Mrs. Brook's sympathy passed, however, with no great ease from Aggie'spearls to her other charms; fixing the former indeed so markedly thatHarold had a quick word about it for Lady Fanny. "When poor mummythinks, you know, that Nanda might have had them--!"

Lady Fanny's attention, for that matter, had resisted them as little. "Well, I dare say that if I had wanted _I_ might!"

"Lord--COULD you have stood him?" the young man returned. "But Ibelieve women can stand anything!" he profoundly concluded. His mothermeanwhile, recovering herself, had begun to ejaculate on the printsin Aggie's arms, and he was then diverted from the sense of what he"personally, " as he would have said, couldn't have stood, by a glance atLord Petherton's trophy, for which he made a prompt grab. "The bone ofcontention?" Lord Petherton had let it go and Harold remained arrestedby the cover. "Why blest if it hasn't Van's name!"

"Van's?"--his mother was near enough to effect her own snatch, afterwhich she swiftly faced the proprietor of the volume. "Dear man, it'sthe last thing you lent me! But I don't think, " she added, turning toTishy, "that I ever passed such a production on to YOU. "

"It was just seeing Mr. Van's hand, " Aggie conscientiously explained, "that made me think one was free--!"

"But it isn't Mr. Van's hand!"--Mrs. Brook quite smiled at the error. She thrust the book straight at Mr. Longdon. "IS that Mr. Van's hand?"

Holding the disputed object, which he had put on his nippers to glanceat, he presently, without speaking, looked over these aids straight atNanda, who looked as straight back at him. "It was I who wrote Mr. Van'sname. " The girl's eyes were on Mr. Longdon, but her words as for thecompany. "I brought the book here from Buckingham Crescent and left itby accident in the other room. "

"By accident, my dear, " her mother replied, "I do quite hope. But whaton earth did you bring it for? It's too hideous. "

Nanda seemed to wonder. "Is it?" she murmured. 

"Then you haven't read it?"

She just hesitated. "One hardly knows now, I think, what is and whatisn't. "

"She brought it only for ME to read, " Tishy gravely interposed. 

Mrs. Brook looked strange. "Nanda RECOMMENDED it?"

"Oh no--the contrary. " Tishy, as if scared by so much publicity, floundered a little. "She only told me--"

"The awful subject?" Mrs. Brook wailed. 

There was so deepening an echo of the drollery of this last passagethat it was a minute before Vanderbank could be heard saying: "Theresponsibility's wholly mine for setting the beastly thing in motion. Still, " he added good-humouredly and as to minimise if not the cause atleast the consequence, "I think I agree with Nanda that it's no worsethan anything else. "

Mrs. Brook had recovered the volume from Mr. Longdon's relaxed hand andnow, without another glance at it, held it behind her with an unusualair of firmness. "Oh how can you say that, my dear man, of anything sorevolting?"

The discussion kept them for the instant well face to face. "Then didYOU read it?"

She debated, jerking the book into the nearest empty chair, where Mr. Cashmore quickly pounced on it. "Wasn't it for that you brought it me?"she demanded. Yet before he could answer she again challenged her child. "Have you read this work, Nanda?"

"Yes mamma. "

"Oh I say!" cried Mr. Cashmore, hilarious and turning the leaves. 

Mr. Longdon had by this time ceremoniously approached Tishy. "Good-night. "

BOOK NINTH. VANDERBANK

I

"I think you had better wait, " Mrs. Brook said, "till I see if he hasgone;" and on the arrival the next moment of the servants with thetea she was able to put her question. "Is Mr. Cashmore still with MissBrookenham?"

"No, ma'am, " the footman replied. "I let Mr. Cashmore out five minutesago. "

Vanderbank showed for the next short time by his behaviour what he feltat not yet being free to act on this; moving pointlessly about the roomwhile the servants arranged the tea-table and taking no trouble to make, for appearance, any other talk. Mrs. Brook, on her side, took so littlethat the silence--which their temporary companions had all the effect ofkeeping up by conscious dawdling--became precisely one of those preciouslights for the circle belowstairs which people fondly fancy they havenot kindled when they have not spoken. But Vanderbank spoke again assoon as the door was closed. "Does he run in and out that way withouteven speaking to YOU?"

Mrs. Brook turned away from the fire that, late in May, was the onlycharm of the crude cold afternoon. "One would like to draw the curtains, wouldn't one? and gossip in the glow of the hearth. "

"Oh 'gossip'!" Vanderbank wearily said as he came to her pretty table. 

In the act of serving him she checked herself. "You wouldn't rather haveit with HER?"

He balanced a moment. "Does she have a tea of her own?"

"Do you mean to say you don't know?"--Mrs. Brook asked it with surprise. "Such ignorance of what I do for her does tell, I think, the tale of howyou've lately treated us. "

"In not coming for so long?"

"For more weeks, for more months than I can count. Scarcely since--whenwas it?--the end of January, that night of Tishy's dinner. "

"Yes, that awful night. "

"Awful, you call it?"

"Awful. "

"Well, the time without you, " Mrs. Brook returned, "has been so badthat I'm afraid I've lost the impression of anything before. " Then sheoffered the tea to his choice. "WILL you have it upstairs?"

He received the cup. "Yes, and here too. " After which he said nothingagain till, first pouring in milk to cool it, he had drunk his tea down. "That's not literally true, you know. I HAVE been in. "

"Yes, but always with other people--you managed it somehow; the wrongones. It hasn't counted. "

"Ah in one way and another I think everything counts. And you forgetI've dined. "

"Oh--for once!"

"The once you asked me. So don't spoil the beauty of your own behaviourby mistimed reflexions. You've been, as usual, superior. "

"Ah but there has been no beauty in it. There has been nothing, " Mrs. Brook went on, "but bare bleak recognition, the curse of my hideousintelligence. We've fallen to pieces, and at least I'm not such a foolas not to have felt it in time. From the moment one did feel it whyshould one insist on vain forms? If YOU felt it, and were so readyto drop them, my part was what it has always been--to accept theinevitable. We shall never grow together again. The smash was toogreat. "

Vanderbank for a little said nothing; then at last: "You ought to knowhow great!"

Whatever had happened her lovely look here survived it. "I?"

"The smash, " he replied, "was indeed as complete, I think, as yourintention. Each of the 'pieces' testifies to your success. Five minutesdid it. "

She appeared to wonder where he was going. "But surely not MY minutes. Where have you discovered that I made Mitchy's marriage?"

"Mitchy's marriage has nothing to do with it. "

"I see. " She had the old interest at least still at their service. "You think we might have survived that. " A new thought of it seemed toglimmer. "I'm bound to say Mitchy's marriage promises elements. "

"You did it that night at Mrs. Grendon's. " He spoke as if he had notheard her. "It was a wonderful performance. You pulled us down--justclosing with each of the great columns in its turn--as Samson pulleddown the temple. I was at the time more or less bruised and buriedand didn't in the agitation and confusion fully understand what hadhappened. But I understand now. "

"Are you very sure?" Mrs. Brook earnestly asked. 

"Well, I'm stupid compared with you, but you see I've taken my time. I've puzzled it out. I've lain awake on it: all the more that I've hadto do it all myself--with the Mitchys in Italy and Greece. I've missedhis aid. "

"You'll have it now, " Mrs. Brook kindly said. "They're coming back. "

"And when do they arrive?"

"Any day, I believe. "

"Has he written you?"

"No, " said Mrs. Brook--"there it is. That's just the way we've fallen topieces. But you'll of course have heard something. "

"Never a word. "

"Ah then it's complete. "

Vanderbank thought a moment. "Not quite, is it?--I mean it won't bealtogether unless he hasn't written to Nanda. "

"Then HAS he?"--she was keen again. 

"Oh I'm assuming. Don't YOU know?"

"How should I?"

This too he turned over. "Just as a consequence of your having, atTishy's, so abruptly and wonderfully tackled the question that a fewdays later, as I afterwards gathered, was to be crowned with a measureof success not yet exhausted. Why, in other words--if it was to knowso little about her and to get no nearer to her--did you bring aboutNanda's return?"

There was a clear reason, her face said, if she could only remember it. "Why did I--?" Then as catching a light: "Fancy your asking me--at thistime of day!"

"Ah you HAVE noticed that I haven't asked before? However, " Van promptlyadded, "I know well enough what you notice. Nanda hasn't mentioned toyou whether or no she has heard?"

"Absolutely not. But you don't suppose, I take it, that it was to pryinto her affairs I called her in. "

Vanderbank, on this, lighted for the first time with a laugh. "'Calledher in'? How I like your expressions!"

"I do then, in spite of all, " she eagerly asked, "remind you a little ofthe bon temps? Ah, " she sighed, "I don't say anything good now. But ofcourse I see Jane--though not so often either. It's from Jane I've heardof what she calls her 'young things. ' It seems so odd to think of Mitchyas a young thing. He's as old as all time, and his wife, who the otherday was about six, is now practically about forty. And I also sawPetherton, " Mrs. Brook added, "on his return. "

"His return from where?"

"Why he was with them at Corfu, Malta, Cyprus--I don't know where;yachting, spending Mitchy's money, 'larking, ' he called it--I don't knowwhat. He was with them for weeks. "

"Till Jane, you mean, called him in?"

"I think it must have been that. "

"Well, that's better, " said Van, "than if Mitchy had had to call himout. "

"Oh Mitchy--!" Mrs. Brook comprehensively sounded. 

Her visitor quite assented. "Isn't he amazing?"

"Unique. "

He had a short pause. "But what's she up to?"

It was apparently for Mrs. Brook a question of such variety ofapplication that she brought out experimentally: "Jane?"

"Dear no. I think we've fathomed 'Jane, ' haven't we?"

"Well, " mused Mrs. Brook, "I'm by no means sure I have. Just of lateI've had a new sense!"

"Yes, of what now?" Van amusedly put it as she held the note. 

"Oh of depths below depths. But poor Jane--of course after all she'shuman. She's beside herself with one thing and another, but she can'tin any consistency show it. She took her stand so on having withPetherton's aid formed Aggie for a femme charmante--"

"That it's too late to cry out that Petherton's aid can now be dispensedwith? Do you mean then that he IS such a brute that after all Mitchyhas done for him--?" Vanderbank, at the rising image, pulled up in easydisgust. 

"I think him quite capable of considering with a magnificent insolenceof selfishness that what Mitchy has MOST done will have been to makeAggie accessible in a way that--for decency and delicacy of course, things on which Petherton highly prides himself--she could naturally notbe as a girl. Her marriage has simplified it. "

Vanderbank took it all in. "'Accessible' is good!"

"Then--which was what I intended just now--Aggie has already becomeso--?"

Mrs. Brook, however, could as yet in fairness only wonder. "That's justwhat I'm dying to see. "

Her companion smiled at it. "'Even in our ashes live their wontedfires'! But what do you make, in such a box, of poor Mitchy himself? Hismarriage can scarcely to such an extent have simplified HIM. "

It was something, none the less, that Mrs. Brook had to weigh. "I don'tknow. I give it up. The thing was of a strangeness!"

Her friend also paused, and it was as if for a little, on either side ofa gate on which they might have had their elbows, they remained lookingat each other over it and over what was unsaid between them. "It WAS'rum'!" he at last merely dropped. 

It was scarce for Mrs. Brook, all the same--she seemed to feel after amoment--to surround the matter with an excess of silence. 

"He did what a man does--especially in that business--when he doesn't dowhat he wants. "

"Do you mean what somebody else wanted?"

"Well, what he himself DIDN'T. And if he's unhappy, " she went on, "he'llknow whom to pitch into. "

"Ah, " said Vanderbank, "even if he is he won't be the man to what youmight call 'vent' it on her. He'll seek compensations elsewhere andwon't mind any ridicule--!"

"Whom are you speaking of as 'her'?" Mrs. Brook asked as on feelingthat something in her face had made him stop. "I wasn't referring, " sheexplained, "to his wife. "

"Oh!" said Vanderbank. 

"Aggie doesn't matter, " she went on. 

"Oh!" he repeated. "You meant the Duchess?" he then threw off. 

"Don't be silly!" she rejoined. "He MAY not become unhappy--God grantNOT!" she developed. "But if he does he'll take it out of Nanda. "

Van appeared to challenge this. "'Take it out' of her?"

"Well, want to know, as some American asked me the other day ofsomebody, what she's 'going to do' about it. "

Vanderbank, who had remained on his feet, stood still at this for alonger time than at anything yet. "But what CAN she 'do'--?"

"That's again just what I'm curious to see. " Mrs. Brook then spoke witha glance at the clock. "But if you don't go up to her--!"

"My notion of seeing her alone may be defeated by her coming down onlearning that I'm here?" He had taken out his watch. "I'll go in amoment. But, as a light on that danger, would YOU, in the circumstances, come down?"

Mrs. Brook, however, could for light only look darkness. "Oh you don'tlove ME!"

Vanderbank, still with his watch, stared then as an alternative at thefire. "You haven't yet told me you know, if Mr. Cashmore now comes EVERYday. "

"My dear man, how can I say? You've just your occasion to find out. "

"From HER, you mean?"

Mrs. Brook hesitated. "Unless you prefer the footman. Must I againremind you that, with her own sitting-room and one of the men, inaddition to her maid, wholly at her orders, her independence is ideal?"

Vanderbank, who appeared to have been timing himself, put up his watch. "I'm bound to say then that with separations so established I understandless than ever your unforgettable explosion. "

"Ah you come back to that?" she wearily asked. "And you find it, withall you've to think about, unforgettable?"

"Oh but there was a wild light in your eye--!"

"Well, " Mrs. Brook said, "you see it now quite gone out. " She hadspoken more sadly than sharply, but her impatience had the next moment aflicker. "I called Nanda in because I wanted to. "

"Precisely; but what I don't make out, you see, is what you've sincegained by it. "

"You mean she only hates me the more?"

Van's impatience, in the movement with which he turned from her, had aflare still sharper. "You know I'm incapable of meaning anything of thesort. "

She waited a minute while his back was presented. "I sometimes think ineffect that you're incapable of anything straightforward. "

Vanderbank's movement had not been to the door, but he almost reached itafter giving her, on this, a hard look. He then stopped short, however, to stare an instant still more fixedly into the hat he held in his hand;the consequence of which in turn was that he the next minute stood againbefore her chair. "Don't you call it straightforward of me just not tohave come for so long?"

She had again to take time to say. "Is that an allusion to what--by theloss of your beautiful presence--I've failed to 'gain'? I dare say atany rate"--she gave him no time to reply--"that you feel you're quite asstraightforward as I and that we're neither of us creatures of mere rashimpulse. There was a time in fact, wasn't there? when we rather enjoyedeach other's dim depths. If I wanted to fawn on you, " she went on, "Imight say that, with such a comrade in obliquity to wind and doubleabout with, I'd risk losing myself in the mine. But why retort orrecriminate? Let us not, for God's sake, be vulgar--we haven't yet, badas it is, come to THAT. I CAN be, no doubt--I some day MUST be: I feelit looming at me out of the awful future as an inevitable fate. But letit be for when I'm old and horrible; not an hour before. I do want tolive a little even yet. So you ought to let me off easily--even as I letyou. "

"Oh I know, " said Vanderbank handsomely, "that there are things youdon't put to me! You show a tact!"

"There it is. And I like much better, " Mrs. Brook went on, "our speakingof it as delicacy than as duplicity. If you understand, it's so muchsaved. "

"What I always understand more than anything else, " he returned, "is thegeneral truth that you're prodigious. "

It was perhaps a little as relapse from tension that she had nothingagainst that. "As for instance when it WOULD be so easy--!"

"Yes, to take up what lies there, you yet so splendidly abstain. "

"You literally press upon me my opportunity? It's YOU who are splendid!"she rather strangely laughed. 

"Don't you at least want to say, " he went on with a slight flush, "whatyou MOST obviously and naturally might?"

Appealed to on the question of underlying desire, Mrs. Brook wentthrough the decent form of appearing to try to give it the benefit ofany doubt. "Don't I want, you mean, to find out before you go up whatYOU want? Shall you be too disappointed, " she asked, "if I say that, since I shall probably learn, as we used to be told as children, 'all ingood time, ' I can wait till the light comes out of itself?"

Vanderbank still lingered. "You ARE deep!"

"You've only to be deeper. "

"That's easy to say. I'm afraid at any rate you won't think I am, " hepursued after a pause, "if I ask you what in the world--since Harolddoes keep Lady Fanny so quiet--Cashmore still requires Nanda's directionfor. "

"Ah find out!" said Mrs. Brook. 

"Isn't Mrs. Donner quite shelved?"

"Find out, " she repeated. 

Vanderbank had reached the door and had his hand on the latch, but therewas still something else. "You scarce suppose, I imagine, that she hascome to like him 'for himself?"

"Find out!" And Mrs. Brook, who was now on her feet, turned away. Hewatched her a moment more, then checked himself and left her. 

II

She remained alone ten minutes, at the end of which her reflexionswould have been seen to be deep--were interrupted by the entrance of herhusband. The interruption was indeed not so great as if the couple hadnot met, as they almost invariably met, in silence: she took at allevents, to begin with, no more account of his presence than to hand hima cup of tea accompanied with nothing but cream and sugar. Her havingno word for him, however, committed her no more to implying that he hadcome in only for his refreshment than it would have committed her tosay: "Here it is, Edward dear--just as you like it; so take it and sitdown and be quiet. " No spectator worth his salt could have seen themmore than a little together without feeling how everything that, under his eyes or not, she either did or omitted, rested on a profoundacquaintance with his ways. They formed, Edward's ways, a chapter bythemselves, of which Mrs. Brook was completely mistress and in respectto which the only drawback was that a part of her credit was by thenature of the case predestined to remain obscure. So many of them wereso queer that no one but she COULD know them, and know thereby into whatcrannies her reckoning had to penetrate. It was one of them for instancethat if he was often most silent when most primed with matter, sowhen he had nothing to say he was always silent too--a peculiaritymisleading, until mastered, for a lady who could have allowed in thelatter case for almost any variety of remark. "What do you think, " hesaid at last, "of his turning up to-day?"

"Of old Van's?"

"Oh has HE turned up?"

"Half an hour ago, and asking almost in his first breath for Nanda. Isent him up to her and he's with her now. " If Edward had his ways shehad also some of her own; one of which, in talk with him, if talk itcould be called, was never to produce anything till the need was marked. She had thus a card or two always in reserve, for it was her theorythat she never knew what might happen. It nevertheless did occur that hesometimes went, as she would have called it, one better. 

"He's not with her now. I've just been with her. "

"Then he didn't go up?" Mrs. Brook was immensely interested. "He leftme, you know, to do so. "

"Know--how should I know? I left her five minutes ago. "

"Then he went out without seeing her. " Mrs. Brook took it in. "Hechanged his mind out there on the stairs. "

"Well, " said Edward, "it won't be the first mind that has been changedthere. It's about the only thing a man can change. "

"Do you refer particularly to MY stairs?" she asked with her whimsicalwoe. But meanwhile she had taken it in. "Then whom were you speakingof?"

"Mr. Longdon's coming to tea with her. She has had a note. "

"But when did he come to town?"

"Last night, I believe. The note, an hour or two ago, announcedhim--brought by hand and hoping she'd be at home. "

Mrs. Brook thought again. "I'm glad she is. He's too sweet. By hand!--itmust have been so he sent them to mamma. He wouldn't for the worldwire. "

"Oh Nanda has often wired to HIM, " her father returned. 

"Then she ought to be ashamed of herself. But how, " said Mrs. Brook, "doyou know?"

"Oh I know when we're in a thing like this. "

"Yet you complain of her want of intimacy with you! It turns out thatyou're as thick as thieves. "

Edward looked at this charge as he looked at all old friends, withouta sign--to call a sign--of recognition. "I don't know of whose want ofintimacy with me I've ever complained. There isn't much more of it, thatI can see, that any of them could put on. What do you suppose I'd havethem do? If I on my side don't get very far I may have alluded to THAT. "

"Oh but you do, " Mrs. Brook declared. "You think you don't, but youget very far indeed. You're always, as I said just now, bringing outsomething that you've got somewhere. "

"Yes, and seeing you flare up at it. What I bring out is only what theytell me. "

This limitation offered, however, for Mrs. Brook no difficulty. "Ah butit seems to me that with the things people nowadays tell one--! Whatmore do you want?"

"Well"--and Edward from his chair regarded the fire a while--"thedifference must be in what they tell YOU. "

"Things that are better?"

"Yes--worse. I dare say, " he went on, "what I give them--"

"Isn't as bad as what I do? Oh we must each do our best. But when I hearfrom you, " Mrs. Brook pursued, "that Nanda had ever permitted herselfanything so dreadful as to wire to him, it comes over me afresh that _I_would have been the perfect one to deal with him if his detestation ofme hadn't prevented. " She was by this time also--but on her feet--beforethe fire, into which, like her husband, she gazed. "_I_ would never havewired. I'd have gone in for little delicacies and odd things she hasnever thought of. "

"Oh she doesn't go in for what you do, " Edward assented. 

"She's as bleak as a chimney-top when the fire's out, and if it hadn'tbeen after all for mamma--!" And she lost herself again in the reasonsof things. 

Her husband's silence seemed to mark for an instant a deference to herallusion, but there was a limit even to this combination. "You make yourmother, I think, keep it up pretty well. But if she HADN'T as you say, done so--?"

"Why we shouldn't have been anywhere. "

"Well, where are we now? That's what _I_ want to know. "

Following her own train she had at first no heed for his question. "Without his hatred he would have liked me. " But she came back with asigh to the actual. "No matter. We must deal with what we've got. "

"What HAVE we got?" Edward continued. 

Again with no ear for his question his wife turned away, only however, after taking a few vague steps, to approach him with new decision. "If Mr. Longdon's due will you do me a favour? Will you go back toNanda--before he arrives--and let her know, though not of course as fromME, that Van has been here half an hour, has had it put well beforehim that she's up there and at liberty, and has left the house withoutseeing her?"

Edward Brookenham made no motion. "You don't like better to do ityourself?"

"If I liked better, " said Mrs. Brook, "I'd have already done it. Theway to make it not come from me is surely not for me to give it to her. Besides, I want to be here to receive him first. "

"Then can't she know it afterwards?"

"After Mr. Longdon has gone? The whole point is that she should know itin time to let HIM know it. "

Edward still communed with the fire. "And what's the point of THAT?" Herimpatience, which visibly increased, carried her away again, and by thetime she reached the window he had launched another question. "Are youin such a hurry she should know that Van doesn't want her?"

"What do you call a hurry when I've waited nearly a year? Nanda may knowor not as she likes--may know whenever: if she doesn't know pretty wellby this time she's too stupid for it to matter. My only pressure's forMr. Longdon. She'll have it there for him when he arrives. "

"You mean she'll make haste to tell him?"

Mrs. Brook raised her eyes a moment to some upper immensity. "She'llmention it. "

Her husband on the other hand, his legs outstretched, looked straight atthe toes of his boots. "Are you very sure?" Then as he remained withoutan answer: "Why should she if he hasn't told HER?"

"Of the way I so long ago let you know that he had put the matter toVan? It's not out between them in words, no doubt; but I fancy that forthings to pass they've not to dot their i's quite so much, my dear, aswe two. Without a syllable said to her she's yet aware in every fibre ofher little being of what has taken place. "

Edward gave a still longer space to taking this in. "Poor little thing!"

"Does she strike you as so poor, " Mrs. Brook asked, "with so awfullymuch done for her?"

"Done by whom?"

It was as if she had not heard the question that she spoke again. "Shehas got what every woman, young or old, wants. "

"Really?"

Edward's tone was of wonder, but she simply went on: "She has got a manof her own. "

"Well, but if he's the wrong one?"

"Do you call Mr. Longdon so very wrong? I wish, " she declared with astrange sigh, "that _I_ had had a Mr. Longdon!"

"I wish very much you had. I wouldn't have taken it like Van. "

"Oh it took Van, " Mrs. Brook replied, "to put THEM where they are. "

"But where ARE they? That's exactly it. In these three months, forinstance, " Edward demanded, "how has their connexion profited?"

Mrs. Brook turned it over. "Profited which?"

"Well, one cares most for one's child. "

"Then she has become for him what we've most hoped her to be--an objectof compassion still more marked. "

"Is that what you've hoped her to be?" Mrs. Brook was obviously so lucidfor herself that her renewed expression of impatience had plenty ofpoint. "How can you ask after seeing what I did--"

"That night at Mrs. Grendon's? Well, it's the first time I HAVE askedit. "

Mrs. Brook had a silence more pregnant. "It's for being with US that hepities her. "

Edward thought. "With me too?"

"Not so much--but still you help. "

"I thought you thought I didn't--that night. "

"At Tishy's? Oh you didn't matter, " said Mrs. Brook. "Everything, everyone helps. Harold distinctly"--she seemed to figure it all out--"andeven the poor children, I dare say, a little. Oh but every one"--shewarmed to the vision--"it's perfect. Jane immensely, par example. Almost all the others who come to the house. Cashmore, Carrie, Tishy, Fanny--bless their hearts all!--each in their degree. "

Edward Brookenham had under the influence of this demonstrationgradually risen from his seat, and as his wife approached that partof her process which might be expected to furnish the proof he placedhimself before her with his back to the fire. "And Mitchy, I suppose?"

But he was out. "No. Mitchy's different. "

He wondered. "Different?"

"Not a help. Quite a drawback. " Then as his face told how these WEREinvolutions, "You needn't understand, but you can believe me, " sheadded. "The one who does most is of course Van himself. " It was astatement by which his failure to apprehend was not diminished, and shecompleted her operation. "By not liking her. "

Edward's gloom, on this, was not quite blankness, yet it was dense. "Doyou like his not liking her?"

"Dear no. No better than HE does. "

"And he doesn't--?"

"Oh he hates it. "

"Of course I haven't asked him, " Edward appeared to say more to himselfthan to his wife. 

"And of course I haven't, " she returned--not at all in this case, plainly, for herself. "But I know it. He'd like her if he could, but hecan't. That, " Mrs. Brook wound up, "is what makes it sure. "

There was at last in Edward's gravity a positive pathos. "Sure he won'tpropose?"

"Sure Mr. Longdon won't now throw her over. "

"Of course if it IS sure--"

"Well?"

"Why, it is. But of course if it isn't--"

"Well?"

"Why, she won't have anything. Anything but US, " he continued toreflect. "Unless, you know, you're working it on a certainty--!"

"That's just what I AM working it on. I did nothing till I knew I wassafe. "

"'Safe'?" he ambiguously echoed while on this their eyes met longer. 

"Safe. I knew he'd stick. "

"But how did you know Van wouldn't?"

"No matter 'how'--but better still. He hasn't stuck. " She said it verysimply, but she turned away from him. 

His eyes for a little followed her. "We don't KNOW, after all, the oldboy's means. "

"I don't know what you mean by 'we' don't. Nanda does. "

"But where's the support if she doesn't tell us?"

Mrs. Brook, who had faced about, again turned from him. "I hope youdon't forget, " she remarked with superiority, "that we don't ask her. "

"YOU don't?" Edward gloomed. 

"Never. But I trust her. "

"Yes, " he mused afresh, "one must trust one's child. Does Van?" he thenenquired. 

"Does he trust her?"

"Does he know anything of the general figure?"

She hesitated. "Everything. It's high. "

"He has told you so?"

Mrs. Brook, supremely impatient now, seemed to demur even to thequestion. "We ask HIM even less. "

"Then how do we know?"

She was weary of explaining. "Because that's just why he hates it. "

There was no end however, apparently, to what Edward could take. "Buthates what?"

"Why, not liking her. "

Edward kept his back to the fire and his dead eyes on the cornice andthe ceiling. "I shouldn't think it would be so difficult. "

"Well, you see it isn't. Mr. Longdon can manage it. "

"I don't see what the devil's the matter with her, " he coldly continued. 

"Ah that may not prevent--! It's fortunately the source at any rate ofhalf Mr. Longdon's interest. "

"But what the hell IS it?" he drearily demanded. 

She faltered a little, but she brought it out. "It's ME. "

"And what's the matter with 'you'?"

She made, at this, a movement that drew his eyes to her own, and for amoment she dimly smiled at him. "That's the nicest thing you ever saidto me. But ever, EVER, you know. "

"Is it?" She had her hand on his sleeve, and he looked almost awkward. 

"Quite the very nicest. Consider that fact well and even if you onlysaid it by accident don't be funny--as you know you sometimes CANbe--and take it back. It's all right. It's charming, isn't it? when ourtroubles bring us more together. Now go up to her. "

Edward kept a queer face, into which this succession of remarksintroduced no light, but he finally moved, and it was only when he hadalmost reached the door that he stopped again. "Of course you know hehas sent her no end of books. "

"Mr. Longdon--of late? Oh yes, a deluge, so that her room looks likea bookseller's back shop; and all, in the loveliest bindings, the moststandard English works. I not only know it, naturally, but I know--whatyou don't--why. "

"'Why'?" Edward echoed. "Why but that--unless he should send hermoney--it's about the only kindness he can show her at a distance?"

Mrs. Brook hesitated; then with a little suppressed sigh: "That's it!"

But it still held him. "And perhaps he does send her money. "

"No. Not now. "

Edward lingered. "Then is he taking it out--?"

"In books only?" It was wonderful--with its effect on him nowvisible--how she possessed her subject. "Yes, that's his delicacy--forthe present. "

"And you're not afraid for the future--?"

"Of his considering that the books will have worked it off? No. They'rethrown in. "

Just perceptibly cheered he reached the door, where, however, he hadanother pause. "You don't think I had better see Van?"

She stared. "What for?"

"Why, to ask what the devil he means. "

"If you should do anything so hideously vulgar, " she instantly replied, "I'd leave your house the next hour. Do you expect, " she asked, "to beable to force your child down his throat?"

He was clearly not prepared with an account of his expectations, but hehad a general memory that imposed itself. "Then why in the world did hemake up to us?"

"He didn't. We made up to HIM. "

"But why in the world--?"

"Well, " said Mrs. Brook, really to finish, "we were in love with him. "

"Oh!" Edward jerked. He had by this time opened the door, and thesound was partly the effect of the disclosure of a servant preceding avisitor. His greeting of the visitor before edging past and away was, however, of the briefest; it might have implied that they had met butyesterday. "How d'ye do, Mitchy?--At home? Oh rather!"

III

Very different was Mrs. Brook's welcome of the restored wanderer towhom, in a brief space, she addressed every expression of surprise anddelight, though marking indeed at last, as a qualification of thesethings, her regret that he declined to partake of her tea or to allowher to make him what she called "snug for a talk" in his customarycorner of her sofa. He pleaded frankly agitation and embarrassment, reminded her even that he was awfully shy and that after separations, complications, whatever might at any time happen, he was conscious ofthe dust that had settled on intercourse and that he couldn't blow awayin a single breath. She was only, according to her nature, to indulgehim if, while he walked about and changed his place, he came to thesurface but in patches and pieces. There was so much he wanted to knowthat--well, as they had arrived only the night before, she could judge. There was knowledge, it became clear, that Mrs. Brook almost equallycraved, so that it even looked at first as if, on either side, confidence might be choked by curiosity. This disaster was finallybarred by the fact that the spirit of enquiry found for Mitchy materialthat was comparatively plastic. That was after all apparent enough whenat the end of a few vain passes he brought out sociably: "Well, has hedone it?"

Still indeed there was something in Mrs. Brook's face that seemed toreply "Oh come--don't rush it, you know!" and something in the movementwith which she turned away that described the state of their questionas by no means so simple as that. On his refusal of tea she had rung forthe removal of the table, and the bell was at this moment answered bythe two men. Little ensued then, for some minutes, while the servantswere present; she spoke only as the butler was about to close the door. "If Mr. Longdon presently comes show him into Mr. Brookenham's room ifMr. Brookenham isn't there. If he is show him into the dining-room andin either case let me immediately know. "

The man waited expressionless. "And in case of his asking for MissBrookenham--?"

"He won't!" she replied with a sharpness before which her interlocutorretired. "He will!" she then added in quite another tone to Mitchy. "That is, you know, he perfectly MAY. But oh the subtlety of servants!"she sighed. 

Mitchy was now all there. "Mr. Longdon's in town then?"

"For the first time since you went away. He's to call this afternoon. "

"And you want to see him alone?"

Mrs. Brook thought. "I don't think I want to see him at all. "

"Then your keeping him below--?"

"Is so that he shan't burst in till I know. It's YOU, my dear, I want tosee. "

Mitchy glared about. "Well, don't take it ill if, in return for that, Isay I myself want to see every one. I could have done even just now witha little more of Edward. "

Mrs. Brook, in her own manner and with a slow headshake, looked lovely. "_I_ couldn't. " Then she puzzled it out with a pause. "It even does comeover me that if you don't mind--!"

"What, my dear woman, " said Mitchy encouragingly, "did I EVER mind? Iassure you, " he laughed, "I haven't come back to begin!"

At this, suddenly dropping everything else, she laid her hand on him. "Mitchy love, ARE you happy?"

So for a moment they stood confronted. "Not perhaps as YOU would havetried to make me. "

"Well, you've still GOT me, you know. "

"Oh, " said Mitchy, "I've got a great deal. How, if I really look at it, can a man of my peculiar nature--it IS, you know, awfully peculiar--NOTbe happy? Think, if one is driven to it for instance, of the breadth ofmy sympathies. "

Mrs. Brook, as a result of thinking, appeared for a little to demur. "Yes--but one mustn't be too much driven to it. It's by one's sympathiesthat one suffers. If you should do that I couldn't bear it. "

She clearly evoked for Mitchy a definite image. "It WOULD be funny, wouldn't it? But you wouldn't have to. I'd go off and do it alonesomewhere--in a dark room, I think, or on a desert island; at any ratewhere nobody should see. Where's the harm moreover, " he went on, "ofany suffering that doesn't bore one, as I'm sure, however much its outeraspect might amuse some others, mine wouldn't bore me? What I shoulddo in my desert island or my dark room, I feel, would be just todance about with the thrill of it--which is exactly the exhibition ofludicrous gambols that I would fain have arranged to spare you. I assureyou, dear Mrs. Brook, " he wound up, "that I'm not in the least borednow. Everything's so interesting. "

"You're beautiful!" she vaguely interposed. 

But he pursued without heeding: "Was perhaps what you had in your headthat _I_ should see him--?"

She came back but slowly, however, to the moment. "Mr. Longdon? Well, yes. You know he can't bear ME--"

"Yes, yes"--Mitchy was almost eager. 

It had already sent her off again. "You're too lovely. You HAVE comeback the same. It seemed to me, " she after an instant explained, "that Iwanted him to be seen--"

"Without inconvenience, as it were, either to himself or to you? Then, "said Mitchy, who visibly felt that he had taken her up successfully, "itstrikes me that I'm absolutely your man. It's delicious to come back toa use. "

But she was much more dim about it. "Oh what you've come back to--!"

"It's just what I'm trying to get at. Van is still then where I lefthim?"

She was just silent. "Did you really believe he would move?"

Mitchy took a few turns, speaking almost with his back presented. "Well, with all the reasons--!" After which, while she watched him, he wasbefore her again with a question. "It's utterly off?"

"When was it ever really on?"

"Oh I know your view, and that, I think, " said Mitchy, "is the mostextraordinary part of it. I can tell you it would have put ME on. "

"My view?" Mrs. Brook thought. "Have you forgotten that I had for youtoo a view that didn't?"

"Ah but we didn't differ, you and I. It wasn't a defiance and aprophecy. You wanted ME. "

"I did indeed!" Mrs. Brook said simply. 

"And you didn't want him. For HER, I mean. So you risked showing it. "

She looked surprised. "DID I?"

Again they were face to face. "Your candour's divine!"

She wondered. "Do you mean it was even then?"

Mitchy smiled at her till he was red. "It's exquisite now. "

"Well, " she presently returned, "I knew my Van!"

"_I_ thought I knew 'yours' too, " Mitchy said. Their eyes met a minuteand he added: "But I didn't. " Then he exclaimed: "How you've worked it!"

She looked barely conscious. "'Worked it'?" After which, with a slightlysharper note: "How do you know--while you've been amusing yourself inplaces that I'd give my head to see again but never shall--what I'vebeen doing?"

"Well, I saw, you know, that night at Tishy's, just before we leftEngland, your wonderful start. I got a look at your attitude, as itwere, and your system. "

Her eyes were now far away, and she spoke after an instant withoutmoving them. "And didn't I by the same token get a look at yours?"

"Mine?" Mitchy thought, but seemed to doubt. "My dear child, I hadn'tany then. "

"You mean that it has formed itself--your system--since?"

He shook his head with decision. "I assure you I'm quite at sea. I'venever had, and I have as little as ever now, anything but my generalphilosophy, which I won't attempt at present to go into and of whichmoreover I think you've had first and last your glimpses. What I madeout in you that night was a perfect policy. "

Mrs. Brook had another of her infantine stares. "Every one that nightseems to have made out something! All I can say is at any rate, " shewent on, "that in that case you were all far deeper than I was. "

"It was just a blind instinct, without a programme or a scheme? Perhapsthen, since it has so perfectly succeeded, the name doesn't matter. I'mlost, as I tell you, " Mitchy declared, "in admiration of its success. "

She looked, as before, so young, yet so grave. "What do you call itssuccess?"

"Let me ask you rather--mayn't I?--what YOU call its failure. "

Mrs. Brook, who had been standing for some minutes, seated herself atthis as if to respond to his idea. But the next moment she had fallenback into thought. "Have you often heard from him?"

"Never once. "

"And have you written?"

"Not a word either. I left it, you see, " Mitchy smiled, "all, to YOU. "After which he continued: "Has he been with you much?"

She just hesitated. "As little as possible. But as it happens he washere just now. "

Her visitor fairly flushed. "And I've only missed him?"

Her pause again was of the briefest. "You wouldn't if he HAD gone up. "

"'Gone up'?"

"To Nanda, who has now her own sitting-room, as you know; for whom heimmediately asked and for whose benefit, whatever you may think, I wasat the end of a quarter of an hour, I assure you, perfectly ready torelease him. He changed his mind, however, and went away without seeingher. "

Mitchy showed the deepest interest. "And what made him change his mind?"

"Well, I'm thinking it out. "

He appeared to watch this labour. "But with no light yet?"

"When it comes I'll tell you. "

He hung fire once more but an instant. "You didn't yourself work thething again?"

She rose at this in strange sincerity. "I think, you know, you go veryfar. "

"Why, didn't we just now settle, " he promptly replied, "that it's allinstinctive and unconscious? If it was so that night at Tishy's--!"

"Ah, voyons, voyons, " she broke in, "what did I do even then?"He laughed out at something in her tone. "You'd like it again allpictured--?"

"I'm not afraid. "

"Why, you just simply--publicly--took her back. "

"And where was the monstrosity of that?"

"In the one little right place. In your removal of every doubt--"

"Well, of what?" He had appeared not quite to know how to put it. Buthe saw at last. "Why, of what we may still hope to do for her. Thanksto your care there were specimens. " Then as she had the look of tryingvainly to focus a few, "I can't recover them one by one, " he pursued, "but the whole thing was quite lurid enough to do us all credit. "

She met him after a little, but at such an odd point. "Pardon me if Iscarcely see how much of the credit was yours. For the first time sinceI've known you, you went in for decency. "

Mitchy's surprise showed as real. "It struck you as decency--?"

Since he wished she thought it over. "Oh your behaviour--!"

"My behaviour was--my condition. Do you call THAT decent? No, you'requite out. " He spoke, in his good nature, with an approach to reproof. "How can I ever--?"

But it had already brought her quite round, and to a firmer earth thatshe clearly preferred to tread. "Are things really bad with you, Mitch?"

"Well, I'll tell you how they are. But not now. "

"Some other time?--on your honour?"

"You shall have it all. Don't be afraid. "

She dimly smiled. "It will be like old times. "

He rather demurred. "For you perhaps. But not for me. "

In spite of what he said it did hold her, and her hand again almostcaressed him. "But--till you do tell me--is it very very dreadful?"

"That's just perhaps what I may have to get you to decide. "

"Then shall I help you?" she eagerly asked. 

"I think it will be quite in your line. "

At the thought of her line--it sounded somehow so general--she releasedhim a little with a sigh, yet still looking round, as it were, forpossibilities. "Jane, you know, is in a state. "

"Yes, Jane's in a state. That's a comfort!"

She continued in a manner to cling to him. "But is it your only one?"

He was very kind and patient. "Not perhaps quite. "

"I'M a little of one?"

"My dear child, as you see. "

Yes, she saw, but was still on the wing. "And shall you haverecourse--?"

"To what?" he asked as she appeared to falter. 

"I don't mean to anything violent. But shall you tell Nanda?"

Mitchy wondered. "Tell her--?"

"Well, everything. I think, you know, " Mrs. Brook musingly observed, "that it would really serve her right. "

Mitchy's silence, which lasted a minute, seemed to take the idea, butnot perhaps quite to know what to do with it. "Ah I'm afraid I shallnever really serve her right!"

Just as he spoke the butler reappeared; at sight of whom Mrs. Brookimmediately guessed. "Mr. Longdon?"

"In Mr. Brookenham's room, ma'am. Mr. Brookenham has gone out. "

"And where has he gone?"

"I think, ma'am, only for some evening papers. "

She had an intense look for Mitchy; then she said to the man: "Ask himto wait three minutes--I'll ring;" turning again to her visitor as soonas they were alone. "You don't know how I'm trusting you!"

"Trusting me?"

"Why, if he comes up to you. "

Mitchy thought. "Hadn't I better go down?"

"No--you may have Edward back. If you see him you must see him here. IfI don't myself it's for a reason. "

Mitchy again just sounded her. "His not, as you a while ago hinted--?"

"Yes, caring for what I say. " She had a pause, but she brought it out. "He doesn't believe a word--!"

"Of what you tell him?" Mitchy was splendid. "I see. And you wantsomething said to him. "

"Yes, that he'll take from YOU. Only it's for you, " Mrs. Brook went on, "really and honestly, and as I trust you, to give it. But the comfort ofyou is that you'll do so if you promise. "

Mitchy was infinitely struck. "But I haven't promised, eh? Of course Ican't till I know what it is. "

"It's to put before him--!"

"Oh I see: the situation. "

"What has happened here to-day. Van's marked retreat and how, with thetime that has passed, it makes us at last know where we are. You ofcourse for yourself, " Mrs. Brook wound up, "see that. "

"Where we are?" Mitchy took a turn and came back. "But what then did Vancome for? If you speak of a retreat there must have been an advance. "

"Oh, " said Mrs. Brook, "he simply wanted not to look too brutal. Afterso much absence he COULD come. "

"Well, if he established that he isn't brutal, where was the retreat?"

"In his not going up to Nanda. He came--frankly--to do that, but madeup his mind on second thoughts that he couldn't risk even being civil toher. "

Mitchy had visibly warmed to his work. "Well, and what made thedifference?"

She wondered. "What difference?"

"Why, of the effect, as you say, of his second thoughts. Thoughts ofwhat?"

"Oh, " said Mrs. Brook suddenly and as if it were quite simple--"I knowTHAT! Suspicions. "

"And of whom?"

"Why, of YOU, you goose. Of your not having done--"

"Well, what?" he persisted as she paused. 

"How shall I say it? The best thing for yourself. And of Nanda's feelingthat. Don't you see?"

In the effort of seeing, or perhaps indeed in the full act of it, poorMitchy glared as never before. "Do you mean Van's JEALOUS of me?"

Pressed as she was, there was something in his face that momentarilyhushed her. "There it is!" she achieved however at last. 

"Of ME?" Mitchy went on. 

What was in his face so suddenly and strangely--was the look of risingtears--at sight of which, as from a compunction as prompt, she showed alovely flush. "There it is, there it is, " she repeated. "You ask me fora reason, and it's the only one I see. Of course if you don't care, " sheadded, "he needn't come up. He can go straight to Nanda. "

Mitchy had turned away again as with the impulse of hiding the tearsthat had risen and that had not wholly disappeared even by the time hefaced about. "Did Nanda know he was to come?"

"Mr. Longdon?"

"No, no. Was she expecting Van--?"

"My dear man, " Mrs. Brook mildly wailed, "when can she have NOT been?"

Mitchy looked hard for an instant at the floor. "I mean does she know hehas been and gone?"

Mrs. Brook, from where she stood and through the window, looked ratherat the sky. "Her father will have told her. "

"Her father?" Mitchy frankly wondered. "Is HE in it?"

Mrs. Brook had at this a longer pause. "You assume, I suppose, Mitchydear, " she then quavered "that I put him up--!"

"Put Edward up?" he broke in. 

"No--that of course. Put Van up to ideas--!"

He caught it again. "About ME--what you call his suspicions?" He seemedto weigh the charge, but it ended, while he passed his hand hard overhis eyes, in weariness and in the nearest approach to coldness he hadever shown Mrs. Brook. "It doesn't matter. It's every one's fate to bein one way or another the subject of ideas. Do then, " he continued, "letMr. Longdon come up. "

She instantly rang the bell. "Then I'll go to Nanda. But don't lookfrightened, " she added as she came back, "as to what we may--Edward orI--do next. It's only to tell her that he'll be with her. "

"Good. I'll tell Tatton, " Mitchy replied. 

Still, however, she lingered. "Shall you ever care for me more?"

He had almost the air, as he waited for her to go, of the master of thehouse, for she had made herself before him, as he stood with his backto the fire, as humble as a tolerated visitor. "Oh just as much. Where'sthe difference? Aren't our ties in fact rather multiplied?"

"That's the way _I_ want to feel it. And from the moment you recognisewith me--"

"Yes?"

"Well, that he never, you know, really WOULD--"

He took her mercifully up. "There's no harm done?" Mitchy thought of it. 

It made her still hover. "Nanda will be rich. Toward that you CAN help, and it's really, I may now tell you, what it came into my head youshould see our friend here FOR. "

He maintained his waiting attitude. "Thanks, thanks. "

"You're our guardian angel!" she exclaimed. 

At this he laughed out. "Wait till you see what Mr. Longdon does!"

But she took no notice. "I want you to see before I go that I've donenothing for myself. Van, after all--!" she mused. 

"Well?"

"Only hates me. It isn't as with you, " she said. "I've really lost him. "

Mitchy for an instant, with the eyes that had shown his tears, glaredaway into space. "He can't very positively, you know, now like ANY ofus. He misses a fortune. "

"There it is!" Mrs. Brook once more observed. Then she had a comparativebrightness. "I'm so glad YOU don't!" He gave another laugh, but she wasalready facing Mr. Tatton, who had again answered the bell. "Show Mr. Longdon up. "

"I'm to tell him then it's at your request?" Mitchy asked when thebutler had gone. 

"That you receive him? Oh yes. He'll be the last to quarrel with that. But there's one more thing. "

It was something over which of a sudden she had one of her returns ofanxiety. "I've been trying for months and months to remember to find outfrom you--"

"Well, what?" he enquired, as she looked odd. 

"Why if Harold ever gave back to you, as he swore to me on his honour hewould, that five-pound note--!"

"But which, dear lady?" The sense of other incongruities than those theyhad been dealing with seemed to arrive now for Mitchy's aid. 

"The one that, ages ago, one day when you and Van were here, we had thejoke about. You produced it, in sport, as a 'fine' for something, andput it on that table; after which, before I knew what you were about, before I could run after you, you had gone off and ridiculously left it. Of course the next minute--and again before I could turn round--Haroldhad pounced on it, and I tried in vain to recover it from him. But all Icould get him to do--"

"Was to promise to restore it straight to its owner?" Mitchy hadlistened so much less in surprise than in amusement that he hadapparently after a moment re-established the scene. "Oh I recollect--hedid settle with me. THAT'S all right. "

She fixed him from the door of the next room. "You got every penny?"

"Every penny. But fancy your bringing it up!"

"Ah I always do, you know--SOME day. "

"Yes, you're of a rigour--! But be at peace. Harold's quite square, " hewent on, "and I quite meant to have asked you about him. "

Mrs. Brook, promptly, was all for this. "Oh it's all right. "

Mitchy came nearer. "Lady Fanny--?"

"Yes--HAS stayed for him. "

"Ah, " said Mitchy, "I knew you'd do it! But hush--they're coming!" Onwhich, while she whisked away, he went back to the fire. 

IV

Ten minutes of talk with Mr. Longdon by Mrs. Brookenham's hearth elapsedfor him without his arriving at the right moment to take up the businessso richly put before him in his previous interview. No less time indeedcould have sufficed to bring him into closer relation with this affair, and nothing at first could have been more marked than the earnestnessof his care not to show impatience of appeals that were, for a person ofhis old friend's general style, simple recognitions and decencies. Therewas a limit to the mere allusiveness with which, in Mr. Longdon's schoolof manners, a foreign tour might be treated, and Mitchy, no doubt, plentifully showed that none of his frequent returns had encountered acuriosity at once so explicit and so discreet. To belong to a circle inwhich most of the members might be at any moment on the other side ofthe globe was inevitably to fall into the habit of few questions, aswell as into that of making up for their fewness by their freedom. This interlocutor in short, while Mrs. Brook's representativeprivately thought over all he had in hand, went at some length and verycharmingly--since it was but a tribute to common courtesy--into theVirgilian associations of the Bay of Naples. Finally, however, hestarted, his eye having turned to the clock. "I'm afraid that, thoughour hostess doesn't appear, I mustn't forget myself. I too came back butyesterday and I've an engagement--for which I'm already late--with MissBrookenham, who has been so good as to ask me to tea. "

The divided mind, the express civility, the decent "Miss Brookenham, "the escape from their hostess--these were all things Mitchy couldquickly take in, and they gave him in a moment his light for not missinghis occasion. "I see, I see--I shall make you keep Nanda waiting. Butthere's something I shall ask you to take from me quite as a sufficientbasis for that: which is simply that after all, you know--for I thinkyou do know, don't you?--I'm nearly as much attached to her as you are. "

Mr. Longdon had looked suddenly apprehensive and even a trifleembarrassed, but he spoke with due presence of mind. "Of course Iunderstand that perfectly. If you hadn't liked her so much--"

"Well?" said Mitchy as he checked himself. 

"I would never, last year, have gone to stay with you. "

"Thank you!" Mitchy laughed. 

"Though I like you also--and extremely, " Mr. Longdon gravely pursued, "for yourself. "

Mitchy made a sign of acknowledgement. "You like me better for HER thanyou do for anybody else BUT myself. "

"You put it, I think, correctly. Of course I've not seen so muchof Nanda--if between my age and hers, that is, any real contact ispossible--without knowing that she now regards you as one of the verybest of her friends, treating you, I find myself suspecting, with adegree of confidence--"

Mitchy gave a laugh of interruption. "That she doesn't show even toyou?"

Mr. Longdon's poised glasses faced him. "Even! I don't mind, as theopportunity has come up, telling you frankly--and as from my time oflife to your own--all the comfort I take in the sense that in any caseof need or trouble she might look to you for whatever advice or supportthe crisis should demand. "

"She has told you she feels I'd be there?" Mitchy after an instantasked. 

"I'm not sure, " his friend replied, "that I ought quite to mentionanything she has 'told' me. I speak of what I've made out myself. "

"Then I thank you more than I can say for your penetration. Her mother, I should let you know, " Mitchy continued, "is with her just now. "

Mr. Longdon took off his glasses with a jerk. "Has anything happened toher?"

"To account for the fact I refer to?" Mitchy said in amusement at hisstart. "She's not ill, that I know of, thank goodness, and she hasn'tbroken her leg. But something, none the less, has happened to her--thatI think I may say. To tell you all in a word, it's the reason, such asit is, of my being here to meet you. Mrs. Brook asked me to wait. She'llsee you herself some other time. "

Mr. Longdon wondered. "And Nanda too?"

"Oh that must be between yourselves. Only, while I keep you here--"

"She understands my delay?"

Mitchy thought. "Mrs. Brook must have explained. " Then as his companiontook this in silence, "But you don't like it?" he asked. 

"It only comes to me that Mrs. Brook's explanations--!"

"Are often so odd? Oh yes; but Nanda, you know, allows for that oddity. And Mrs. Brook, by the same token, " Mitchy developed, "knows herself--noone better--what may frequently be thought of it. That's precisely thereason of her desire that you should have on this occasion explanationsfrom a source that she's so good as to pronounce, for the immediatepurpose, superior. As for Nanda, " he wound up, "to be aware that we'rehere together won't strike her as so bad a sign. "

"No, " Mr. Longdon attentively assented; "she'll hardly fear we'replotting her ruin. But what then has happened to her?"

"Well, " said Mitchy, "it's you, I think, who will have to give it aname. I know you know what I've known. "

Mr. Longdon, his nippers again in place, hesitated. "Yes, I know. "

"And you've accepted it. "

"How could I help it? To reckon with such cleverness--!"

"Was beyond you? Ah it wasn't my cleverness, " Mitchy said. "There's agreater than mine. There's a greater even than Van's. That's the wholepoint, " he went on while his friend looked at him hard. "You don't evenlike it just a little?"

Mr. Longdon wondered. "The existence of such an element--?"

"No; the existence simply of my knowledge of your idea. "

"I suppose I'm bound to keep in mind in fairness the existence of my ownknowledge of yours. "

But Mitchy gave that the go-by. "Oh I've so many 'ideas'! I'm alwaysgetting hold of some new one and for the most part trying it--generallyto let it go as a failure. Yes, I had one six months ago. I tried that. I'm trying it still. "

"Then I hope, " said Mr. Longdon with a gaiety slightly strained, "that, contrary to your usual rule, it's a success. "

It was a gaiety, for that matter, that Mitchy's could match. "It doespromise well! But I've another idea even now, and it's just what I'magain trying. "

"On me?" Mr. Longdon still somewhat extravagantly smiled. 

Mitchy thought. "Well, on two or three persons, of whom you ARE thefirst for me to tackle. But what I must begin with is having from youthat you recognise she trusts us. "

Mitchy's idea after an instant had visibly gone further. "Both ofthem--the two women up there at present so strangely together. Mrs. Brook must too; immensely. But for that you won't care. "

Mr. Longdon had relapsed into an anxiety more natural than hisexpression of a moment before. "It's about time! But if Nanda didn'ttrust us, " he went on, "her case would indeed be a sorry one. She hasnobody else to trust. "

"Yes. " Mitchy's concurrence was grave. "Only you and me. "

"Only you and me. "

The eyes of the two men met over it in a pause terminated at last byMitchy's saying: "We must make it all up to her. "

"Is that your idea?"

"Ah, " said Mitchy gently, "don't laugh at it. "

His friend's grey gloom again covered him. "But what CAN--?" Then asMitchy showed a face that seemed to wince with a silent "What COULD?"the old man completed his objection. "Think of the magnitude of theloss. "

"Oh I don't for a moment suggest, " Mitchy hastened to reply, "that itisn't immense. "

"She does care for him, you know, " said Mr. Longdon. 

Mitchy, at this, gave a wide, prolonged glare. "'Know'--?" he ever sodelicately murmured. 

His irony had quite touched. "But of course you know! You knoweverything--Nanda and you. "

There was a tone in it that moved a spring, and Mitchy laughed out. "Ilike your putting me with her! But we're all together. With Nanda, " henext added, "it IS deep. "

His companion took it from him. "Deep. "

"And yet somehow it isn't abject. "

The old man wondered. "'Abject'?"

"I mean it isn't pitiful. In its way, " Mitchy developed, "it's happy. "

This too, though rather ruefully, Mr. Longdon could take from him. "Yes--in its way. "

"Any passion so great, so complete, " Mitchy went on, "is--satisfied orunsatisfied--a life. " Mr. Longdon looked so interested that his fellowvisitor, evidently stirred by what was now an appeal and a dependence, grew still more bland, or at least more assured, for affirmation. "She'snot TOO sorry for herself. "

"Ah she's so proud!"

"Yes, but that's a help. "

"Oh--not for US!"

It arrested Mitchy, but his ingenuity could only rebound. "In ONEway: that of reducing us to feel that the desire to 'make up' to heris--well, mainly for OUR relief. If she 'trusts' us, as I said just now, it isn't for THAT she does so. " As his friend appeared to wait then tohear, it was presently with positive joy that he showed he could meetthe last difficulty. "What she trusts us to do"--oh Mitchy had worked itout!--"is to let HIM off. "

"Let him off?" It still left Mr. Longdon dim. 

"Easily. That's all. "

"But what would letting him off hard be? It seems to me he's--on anyterms--already beyond us. He IS off. "

Mr. Longdon had given it a sound that suddenly made Mitchy appear tocollapse under a sharper sense of the matter. "He IS off, " he moodilyechoed. 

His companion, again a little bewildered, watched him; then withimpatience: "Do, please, tell me what has happened. "

He quickly pulled himself round. "Well, he was, after a long absence, here a while since as if expressly to see her. But after spending halfan hour he went away without it. "

Mr. Longdon's watch continued. "He spent the half-hour with her motherinstead?"

"Oh 'instead'--it was hardly that. He at all events dropped his idea. "

"And what had it been, his idea?"

"You speak as if he had as many as I!" Mitchy replied. "In a mannerindeed he has, " he continued as if for himself. "But they're of adifferent kind, " he said to Mr. Longdon. 

"What had it been, his idea?" the old man, however, simply repeated. 

Mitchy's confession at this seemed to explain his previous evasion. "Weshall never know. "

Mr. Longdon hesitated. "He won't tell YOU?"

"Me?" Mitchy had a pause. "Less than any one. "

Many things they had not spoken had already passed between them, andsomething evidently, to the sense of each, passed during the moment thatfollowed this. "While you were abroad, " Mr. Longdon presently asked, "did you hear from him?"

"Never. And I wrote nothing. "

"Like me, " said Mr. Longdon. "I've neither written nor heard. "

"Ah but with you it will be different. " Mr. Longdon, as if with theoutbreak of an agitation hitherto controlled, had turned abruptly awayand, with the usual swing of his glass, begun almost wildly to wander. "You WILL hear. "

"I shall be curious. "

"Oh but what Nanda wants, you know, is that you shouldn't be too muchso. "

Mr. Longdon thoughtfully rambled. "Too much--?"

"To let him off, as we were saying, easily. "

The elder man for a while said nothing more, but he at last came back. "She'd like me actually to give him something?"

"I dare say!"

"Money?"

Mitchy smiled. "A handsome present. " They were face to face againwith more mute interchange. "She doesn't want HIM to have lost--!"Mr. Longdon, however, on this, once more broke off while Mitchy'seyes followed him. "Doesn't it give a sort of measure of what she mayfeel--?"

He had paused, working it out again with the effect of his friend'sreturning afresh to be fed with his light. "Doesn't what give it?"

"Why the fact that we still like him. "

Mr. Longdon stared. "Do YOU still like him?"

"If I didn't how should I mind--?" But on the utterance of it Mitchyfairly pulled up. 

His companion, after another look, laid a mild hand on his shoulder. "What is it you mind?"

"From HIM? Oh nothing!" He could trust himself again. "There are peoplelike that--great cases of privilege. "

"He IS one!" Mr. Longdon mused. 

"There it is. They go through life somehow guaranteed. They can't helppleasing. "

"Ah, " Mr. Longdon murmured, "if it hadn't been for that--!"

"They hold, they keep every one, " Mitchy went on. "It's the sacredterror. "

The companions for a little seemed to stand together in this element;after which the elder turned once more away and appeared to continue towalk in it. "Poor Nanda!" then, in a far-off sigh, came across from himto Mitchy. Mitchy on this turned vaguely round to the fire, into whichhe remained gazing till he heard again Mr. Longdon's voice. "I knewit of course after all. It was what I came up to town for. That night, before you went abroad, at Mrs. Grendon's--"

"Yes?"--Mitchy was with him again. 

"Well, made me see the future. It was then already too late. "

Mitchy assented with emphasis. "Too late. She was spoiled for him. "

If Mr. Longdon had to take it he took it at least quietly, only sayingafter a time: "And her mother ISN'T?"

"Oh yes. Quite. "

"And does Mrs. Brook know it?"

"Yes, but doesn't mind. She resembles you and me. She 'still likes'him. "

"But what good will that do her?"

Mitchy sketched a shrug. "What good does it do US?"

Mr. Longdon thought. "We can at least respect ourselves. "

"CAN we?" Mitchy smiled. 

"And HE can respect us, " his friend, as if not hearing him, went on. 

Mitchy seemed almost to demur. "He must think we're 'rum. '"

"Well, Mrs. Brook's worse than rum. He can't respect HER. "

"Oh that will be perhaps, " Mitchy laughed, "what she'll get just mostout of!" It was the first time of Mr. Longdon's showing that even aftera minute he had not understood him; so that as quickly as possible hepassed to another point. "If you do anything may I be in it?"

"But what can I do? If it's over it's over. "

"For HIM, yes. But not for her or for you or for me. "

"Oh I'm not for long!" the old man wearily said, turning the next momentto the door, at which one of the footmen had appeared. 

"Mrs. Brookenham's compliments, please sir, " this messenger articulated, "and Miss Brookenham is now alone. "

"Thanks--I'll come up. "

The servant withdrew, and the eyes of the two visitors again met fora minute, after which Mitchy looked about for his hat. "Good-bye. I'llgo. "

Mr. Longdon watched him while, having found his hat, he looked about forhis stick. "You want to be in EVERYTHING?"

Mitchy, without answering, smoothed his hat down; then he replied: "Yousay you're not for long, but you won't abandon her. "

"Oh I mean I shan't last for ever. "

"Well, since you so expressed it yourself, that's what I mean too. Iassure you _I_ shan't desert her. And if I can help you--!"

"Help me?" Mr. Longdon interrupted, looking at him hard. 

It made him a little awkward. "Help you to help her, you know--!"

"You're very wonderful, " Mr. Longdon presently returned. "A year and ahalf ago you wanted to help me to help Mr. Vanderbank. "

"Well, " said Mitchy, "you can't quite say I haven't. "

"But your ideas of help are of a splendour--!"

"Oh I've told you about my ideas. " Mitchy was almost apologetic. Mr. Longdon had a pause. "I suppose I'm not indiscreet then in recognisingyour marriage as one of them. And that, with a responsibility so greatalready assumed, you appear fairly eager for another--!"

"Makes me out a kind of monster of benevolence?" Mitchy looked at itwith a flushed face. "The two responsibilities are very much one and thesame. My marriage has brought me, as it were, only nearer to Nanda. Mywife and she, don't you see? are particular friends. "

Mr. Longdon, on his side, turned a trifle pale; he looked rather hardat the floor. "I see--I see. " Then he raised his eyes. "But--to an oldfellow like me--it's all so strange. "

"It IS strange. " Mitchy spoke very kindly. "But it's all right. "

Mr. Longdon gave a headshake that was both sad and sharp. "It's allwrong. But YOU'RE all right!" he added in a different tone as he walkedhastily away. 

BOOK TENTH. NANDA

I

Nanda Brookenham, for a fortnight after Mr. Longdon's return, had foundmuch to think of; but the bustle of business became, visibly for us, particularly great with her on a certain Friday afternoon in June. Shewas in unusual possession of that chamber of comfort in which so muchof her life had lately been passed, the redecorated and rededicated roomupstairs in which she had enjoyed a due measure both of solitude andof society. Passing the objects about her in review she gave especialattention to her rather marked wealth of books; changed repeatedly, forfive minutes, the position of various volumes, transferred to tablesthose that were on shelves and rearranged shelves with an eye to theeffect of backs. She was flagrantly engaged throughout indeed in thestudy of effect, which moreover, had the law of an extreme freshness notinveterately prevailed there, might have been observed to be traceablein the very detail of her own appearance. "Company" in short was in theair and expectation in the picture. The flowers on the little tablesbloomed with a consciousness sharply taken up by the glitter ofnick-nacks and reproduced in turn in the light exuberance of cushionson sofas and the measured drop of blinds in windows. The numerousphotographed friends in particular were highly prepared, with smallintense faces, each, that happened in every case to be turned to thedoor. The pair of eyes most dilated perhaps was that of old Van, presentunder a polished glass and in a frame of gilt-edged morocco that spokeout, across the room, of Piccadilly and Christmas, and visibly wideninghis gaze at the opening of the door, at the announcement of a name by afootman and at the entrance of a gentleman remarkably like him save asthe resemblance was on the gentleman's part flattered. Vanderbank hadnot been in the room ten seconds before he showed ever so markedly thathe had arrived to be kind. Kindness therefore becomes for us, by a quickturn of the glass that reflects the whole scene, the high pitch of theconcert--a kindness that almost immediately filled the place, tothe exclusion of everything else, with a familiar friendly voice, abrightness of good looks and good intentions, a constant though perhapssometimes misapplied laugh, a superabundance almost of interest, inattention and movement. 

The first thing the young man said was that he was tremendously glad shehad written. "I think it was most particularly nice of you. " And thisthought precisely seemed, as he spoke, a flower of the general bloom--asif the niceness he had brought in was so great that it straightwayconverted everything to its image. "The only thing that upset me alittle, " he went on, "was your saying that before writing it you had sohesitated and waited. I hope very much, you know, that you'll never doanything of that kind again. If you've ever the slightest desire to seeme--for no matter what reason, if there's ever the smallest thing of anysort that I can do for you, I promise you I shan't easily forgive you ifyou stand on ceremony. It seems to me that when people have known eachother as long as you and I there's one comfort at least they may treatthemselves to. I mean of course, " Van developed, "that of being easy andfrank and natural. There are such a lot of relations in which one isn't, in which it doesn't pay, in which 'ease' in fact would be the greatestof troubles and 'nature' the greatest of falsities. However, " hecontinued while he suddenly got up to change the place in which he hadput his hat, "I don't really know why I'm preaching at such a rate, forI've a perfect consciousness of not myself requiring it. One does halfthe time preach more or less for one's self, eh? I'm not mistaken at allevents, I think, about the right thing with YOU. And a hint's enoughfor you, I'm sure, on the right thing with me. " He had been looking allround while he talked and had twice shifted his seat; so that it wasquite in consonance with his general admiring notice that the nextimpression he broke out with should have achieved some air of relevance. "What extraordinarily lovely flowers you have and how charming you'vemade everything! You're always doing something--women are alwayschanging the position of their furniture. If one happens to come in inthe dark, no matter how well one knows the place, one sits down on ahat or a puppy-dog. But of course you'll say one doesn't come in in thedark, or at least, if one does, deserves what one gets. Only you knowthe way some women keep their rooms. I'm bound to say YOU don't, doyou?--you don't go in for flower-pots in the windows and half a dozenblinds. Why SHOULD you? You HAVE got a lot to show!" He rose with thisfor the third time, as the better to command the scene. "What I mean isthat sofa--which by the way is awfully good: you do, my dear Nanda, goit! It certainly was HERE the last time, wasn't it? and this thing wasthere. The last time--I mean the last time I was up here--was fearfullylong ago: when, by the way, WAS it? But you see I HAVE been and thatI remember it. And you've a lot more things now. You're laying uptreasure. Really the increase of luxury--! What an awfully jolly lotof books--have you read them all? Where did you learn so much aboutbindings?"

He continued to talk; he took things up and put them down; Nanda sat inher place, where her stillness, fixed and colourless, contrasted withhis rather flushed freedom, and appeared only to wait, half in surprise, half in surrender, for the flow of his suggestiveness to run its course, so that, having herself provoked the occasion, she might do a littlemore to meet it. It was by no means, however, that his presence in anydegree ceased to prevail; for there were minutes during which her face, the only thing in her that moved, turning with his turns and followinghis glances, actually had a look inconsistent with anything butsubmission to almost any accident. It might have expressed a desire forhis talk to last and last, an acceptance of any treatment of the houror any version, or want of version, of her act that would best suit hisease, even in fact a resigned prevision of the occurrence of somethingthat would leave her, quenched and blank, with the appearance of havingmade him come simply that she might look at him. She might indeed wellhave been aware of an inability to look at him little enough to makeit flagrant that she had appealed to him for something quite different. Keeping the situation meanwhile thus in his hands he recognised over thechimney a new alteration. "There used to be a big print--wasn't there?a thing of the fifties--we had lots of them at home; some place or other'in the olden time. ' And now there's that lovely French glass. So yousee. " He spoke as if she had in some way gainsaid him, whereas he hadnot left her time even to answer a question. But he broke out anew onthe beauty of her flowers. "You have awfully good ones--where do you getthem? Flowers and pictures and--what are the other things people havewhen they're happy and superior?--books and birds. You ought to have abird or two, though I dare say you think that by the noise I make I'mas good myself as a dozen. Isn't there some girl in some story--it isn'tScott; what is it?--who had domestic difficulties and a cage in herwindow and whom one associates with chickweed and virtue? It isn'tEsmeralda--Esmeralda had a poodle, hadn't she?--or have I got myheroines mixed? You're up here yourself like a heroine; you're perchedin your tower or what do you call it?--your bower. You quite hang overthe place, you know--the great wicked city, the wonderful London sky andthe monuments looming through: or am I again only muddling up my Zola?You must have the sunsets--haven't you? No--what am I talking about? Ofcourse you look north. Well, they strike me as about the only thing youhaven't. At the same time it's not only because I envy you that I feelhumiliated. I ought to have sent you some flowers. " He smote himselfwith horror, throwing back his head with a sudden thought. "Why ingoodness when I got your note didn't I for once in my life do somethingreally graceful? I simply liked it and answered it. Here I am. But I'vebrought nothing. I haven't even brought a box of sweets. I'm not a manof the world. "

"Most of the flowers here, " Nanda at last said, "come from Mr. Longdon. Don't you remember his garden?"

Vanderbank, in quick response, called it up. "Dear yes--wasn't itcharming? And that morning you and I spent there"--he was so careful tobe easy about it--"talking under the trees. "

"You had gone out to be quiet and read--!"

"And you came out to look after me. Well, I remember, " Van went on, "that we had some good talk. "

The talk, Nanda's face implied, had become dim to her; but there wereother things. "You know he's a great gardener--I mean really one of thegreatest. His garden's like a dinner in a house where the person--theperson of the house--thoroughly knows and cares. "

"I see. And he sends you dishes from the table. "

"Often--every week. It comes to the same thing--now that he's in townhis gardener does it. "

"Charming of them both!" Vanderbank exclaimed. "But his gardener--thatextraordinarily tall fellow with the long red beard--was almost as niceas himself. I had talks with HIM too and remember every word he said. Iremember he told me you asked questions that showed 'a deal of study. 'But I thought I had never seen all round such a charming lot ofpeople--I mean as those down there that our friend has got about him. It's an awfully good note for a man, pleasant servants, I always think, don't you? Mr. Longdon's--and quite without their saying anything; justfrom the sort of type and manner they had--struck me as a kind of chorusof praise. The same with Mitchy's at Mertle, I remember, " Van rambledon. "Mitchy's the sort of chap who might have awful ones, but Irecollect telling him that one quite felt as if it were with THEM onehad come to stay. Good note, good note, " he cheerfully repeated. "I'mbound to say, you know, " he continued in this key, "that you've a jollysense for getting in with people who make you comfortable. Then, by theway, he's still in town?"

Nanda waited. "Do you mean Mr. Mitchy?"

"Oh HE is, I know--I met them two nights ago; and by the wayagain--don't let me forget--I want to speak to you about his wife. ButI've not seen, do you know? Mr. Longdon--which is really too awful. Twice, thrice I think, have I at moments like this one snatched myselffrom pressure; but there's no finding the old demon at any earthly hour. When do YOU go--or does he only come here? Of course I see you've gotthe place arranged for him. When I asked at his hotel at what hour heever IS in, blest if the fellow didn't say 'very often, sir, about ten!'And when I said 'Ten P. M. ?' he quite laughed at my innocence over aperson of such habits. What ARE his habits then now, and what are youputting him up to? Seriously, " Vanderbank pursued, "I AM awfully sorryand I wonder if, the first time you've a chance, you'd kindly tell himyou've heard me say so and that I mean yet to run him to earth. The samereally with the dear Mitchys. I didn't somehow, the other night, in sucha lot of people, get at them. But I sat opposite to Aggie all throughdinner, and that puts me in mind. I should like volumes from you aboutAggie, please. It's too revolting of me not to go to see her. But everyone knows I'm busy. We're up to our necks!"

"I can't tell you, " said Nanda, "how kind I think it of you to havefound, with all you have to do, a moment for THIS. But please, withoutdelay, let me tell you--!"

Practically, however, he would let her tell him nothing; his almostaggressive friendly optimism clung so to references of short range. "Don't mention it, please. It's too charming of you to squeeze me in. Tosee YOU moreover does me good. Quite distinct good. And your writing metouched me--oh but really. There were all sorts of old things in it. "Then he broke out once more on her books, one of which for some minutespast he had held in his hand. "I see you go in for sets--and, my dearchild, upon my word, I see, BIG sets. What's this?--'Vol. 23: TheBritish Poets. ' Vol. 23 is delightful--do tell me about Vol. 23. Areyou doing much in the British Poets? But when the deuce, you wonderfulbeing, do you find time to read? _I_ don't find any--it's too hideous. One relapses in London into such illiteracy and barbarism. I have tokeep up a false glitter to hide in conversation my rapidly increasingignorance: I should be so ashamed after all to see other people NOTshocked by it. But teach me, teach me!" he gaily went on. 

"The British Poets, " Nanda immediately answered, "were given me by Mr. Longdon, who has given me all the good books I have except a few--thosein that top row--that have been given me at different times by Mr. Mitchy. Mr. Mitchy has sent me flowers too, as well as Mr. Longdon. And they're both--since we've spoken of my seeing them--coming byappointment this afternoon; not together, but Mr. Mitchy at 5. 30 and Mr. Longdon at 6. 30. "

She had spoken as with conscious promptitude, making up for what she hadnot yet succeeded in saying by a quick, complete statement of her case. She was evidently also going on with more, but her actual visitor hadalready taken her up with a laugh. "You ARE making a day of it and yourun us like railway-trains!" He looked at his watch. "Have _I_ thentime?"

"It seems to me I should say 'Have _I_?' But it's not half-past four, "Nanda went on, "and though I've something very particular of course tosay to you it won't take long. They don't bring tea till five, and youmust surely stay till that. I had already written to you when theyeach, for the same reason, proposed this afternoon. They go out of townto-morrow for Sunday. "

"Oh I see--and they have to see you first. What an influence you exert, you know, on people's behaviour!"

She continued as literal as her friend was facetious. "Well, it justhappened so, and it didn't matter, since, on my asking you, don't youknow? to choose your time, you had taken, as suiting you best, thiscomparatively early hour. "

"Oh perfectly. " But he again had his watch out. "I've a job, perversely--that was my reason--on the other side of the world; which, by the way, I'm afraid, won't permit me to wait for tea. My tea doesn'tmatter. " The watch went back to his pocket. "I'm sorry to say I must beoff before five. It has been delightful at all events to see you again. "

He was on his feet as he spoke, and though he had been half the time onhis feet his last words gave the effect of his moving almost immediatelyto the door. It appeared to come out with them rather clearer thanbefore that he was embarrassed enough really to need help, and it wasdoubtless the measure she after an instant took of this that enabledNanda, with a quietness all her own, to draw to herself a little more ofthe situation. The quietness was plainly determined for her by a quickvision of its being the best assistance she could show. Had he an inwardterror that explained his superficial nervousness, the incoherence ofa loquacity designed, it would seem, to check in each direction heradvance? He only fed it in that case by allowing his precautionarybenevolence to put him in so much deeper. Where indeed could he havesupposed she wanted to come out, and what that she could ever do forhim would really be so beautiful as this present chance to smooth hisconfusion and add as much as possible to that refined satisfaction withhimself which would proceed from his having dealt with a difficult hourin a gallant and delicate way? To force upon him an awkwardness waslike forcing a disfigurement or a hurt, so that at the end of a minute, during which the expression of her face became a kind of uplifted viewof her opportunity, she arrived at the appearance of having changedplaces with him and of their being together precisely in order thathe--not she--should be let down easily. 

II

"But surely you're not going already?" she asked. "Why in the world thendo you suppose I appealed to you?"

"Bless me, no; I've lots of time. " He dropped, laughing for veryeagerness, straight into another chair. "You're too awfully interesting. Is it really an 'appeal'?" Putting the question indeed he could scarceeven yet allow her a chance to answer it. "It's only that you make mea little nervous with your account of all the people who are going totumble in. And there's one thing more, " he quickly went on; "I just wantto make the point in case we should be interrupted. The whole fun is inseeing you this way alone. "

"Is THAT the point?" Nanda, as he took breath, gravely asked. 

"That's a part of it--I feel it, I assure you, to be charming. But whatI meant--if you'd only give me time, you know, to put in a word--is whatfor that matter I've already told you: that it almost spoils my pleasurefor you to keep reminding me that a bit of luck like this--luck for ME:I see you coming!--is after all for you but a question of business. Hangbusiness! Good--don't stab me with that paper-knife. I listen. What ISthe great affair?" Then as it looked for an instant as if the words shehad prepared were just, in the supreme pinch of her need, falling apart, he once more tried his advantage. "Oh if there's any difficulty about itlet it go--we'll take it for granted. There's one thing at any rate--dolet me say this--that I SHOULD like you to keep before me: I want beforeI go to make you light up for me the question of little Aggie. Oh thereare other questions too as to which I regard you as a perfect fountainof curious knowledge! However, we'll take them one by one--the next someother time. You always seem to me to hold the strings of such a lot ofqueer little dramas. Have something on the shelf for me when we meetagain. THE thing just now is the outlook for Mitchy's affair. One caresenough for old Mitch to fancy one may feel safer for a lead or two. Infact I want regularly to turn you on. "

"Ah but the thing I happen to have taken it into my head to say to you, "Nanda now securely enough replied, "hasn't the least bit to do, I assureyou, either with Aggie or with 'old Mitch. ' If you don't want to hearit--want some way of getting off--please believe THEY won't help you abit. " It was quite in fact that she felt herself at last to have foundthe right tone. Nothing less than a conviction of this could have madeher after an instant add: "What in the world, Mr. Van, are you afraidof?"

Well, that it WAS the right tone a single little minute was sufficientto prove--a minute, I must yet haste to say, big enough in spite of itssmallness to contain the longest look on any occasion exchanged betweenthese friends. It was one of those looks--not so frequent, it must beadmitted, as the muse of history, dealing at best in short cuts, isoften by the conditions of her trade reduced to representing them--whichafter they have come and gone are felt not only to have changedrelations but absolutely to have cleared the air. It certainly helpedVanderbank to find his answer. "I'm only afraid, I think, of yourconscience. "

He had been indeed for the space more helped than she. "My conscience?"

"Think it over--quite at your leisure--and some day you'll understand. There's no hurry, " he continued--"no hurry. And when you do understand, it needn't make your existence a burden to you to fancy you must tellme. " Oh he was so kind--kinder than ever now. "The thing is, you see, that _I_ haven't a conscience. I only want my fun. "

They had on this a second look, also decidedly comfortable, thoughdiscounted, as the phrase is, by the other, which had really in itsway exhausted the possibilities of looks. "Oh I want MY fun too, " saidNanda, "and little as it may strike you in some ways as looking like it, just this, I beg you to believe, is the real thing. What's at the bottomof it, " she went on, "is a talk I had not long ago with mother. "

"Oh yes, " Van returned with brightly blushing interest. "The fun, " helaughed, "that's to be got out of 'mother'!"

"Oh I'm not thinking so much of that. I'm thinking of any that sheherself may be still in a position to pick up. Mine now, don't yousee? is in making out how I can manage for this. Of course it's ratherdifficult, " the girl pursued, "for me to tell you exactly what I mean. "

"Oh but it isn't a bit difficult for me to understand you!" Vanderbankspoke, in his geniality, as if this were in fact the veriest trifle. "You've got your mother on your mind. That's very much what I mean byyour conscience. "

Nanda had a fresh hesitation, but evidently unaccompanied at presentby any pain. "Don't you still LIKE mamma?" she at any rate quitesuccessfully brought out. "I must tell you, " she quickly subjoined, "that though I've mentioned my talk with her as having finally led to mywriting to you, it isn't in the least that she then suggested my puttingyou the question. I put it, " she explained, "quite off my own bat. "

The explanation, as an effect immediately produced, did proportionatelymuch for the visitor, who sat back in his chair with a pleased--adistinctly exhilarated--sense both of what he himself and what Nanda haddone. "You're an adorable family!"

"Well then if mother's adorable why give her up? This I don't mindadmitting she did, the day I speak of, let me see that she feels you'vedone; but without suggesting either--not a scrap, please believe--that Ishould make you any sort of scene about it. Of course in the first placeshe knows perfectly that anything like a scene would be no use. Youcouldn't make out even if you wanted, " Nanda went on, "that THIS is one. She won't hear us--will she?--smashing the furniture. I didn't think fora while that I could do anything at all, and I worried myself with thatidea half to death. Then suddenly it came to me that I could do justwhat I'm doing now. You said a while ago that we must never be--youand I--anything but frank and natural. That's what I said to myselfalso--why not? Here I am for you therefore as natural as a cold inyour head. I just ask you--I even press you. It's because, as she said, you've practically ceased coming. Of course I know everything changes. It's the law--what is it?--'the great law' of something or other. Allsorts of things happen--things come to an end. She has more or less--byhis marriage--lost Mitchy. I don't want her to lose everything. Do stickto her. What I really wanted to say to you--to bring it straight out--isthat I don't believe you thoroughly know how awfully she likes you. Ihope my saying such a thing doesn't affect you as 'immodest. ' One neverknows--but I don't much care if it does. I suppose it WOULD be immodestif I were to say that I verily believe she's in love with you. Not, forthat matter, that father would mind--he wouldn't mind, as he says, atuppenny rap. So"--she extraordinarily kept it up--"you're welcome toany good the information may have for you: though that, I dare say, doessound hideous. No matter--if I produce any effect on you. That'sthe only thing I want. When I think of her downstairs there so oftennowadays practically alone I feel as if I could scarcely bear it. She'sso fearfully young. "

This time at least her speech, while she went from point to point, completely hushed him, though after a full glimpse of the direction itwas taking he ceased to meet her eyes and only sat staring hard at thepattern of the rug. Even when at last he spoke it was without lookingup. "You're indeed, as she herself used to say, the modern daughter! Ittakes that type to wish to make a career for her parents. "

"Oh, " said Nanda very simply, "it isn't a 'career' exactly, isit--keeping hold of an old friend? but it may console a little, mayn'tit, for the absence of one? At all events I didn't want not to havespoken before it's too late. Of course I don't know what's the matterbetween you, or if anything's really the matter at all. I don't careat any rate WHAT is--it can't be anything very bad. Make it up, make itup--forget it. I don't pretend that's a career for YOU any more than forher; but there it is. I know how I sound--most patronising and pushing;but nothing venture nothing have. You CAN'T know how much you are toher. You're more to her, I verily believe, than any one EVER was. I hateto have the appearance of plotting anything about her behind her back;so I'll just say it once for all. She said once, in speaking of it toa person who repeated it to me, that you had done more for her than anyone, because it was you who had really brought her out. It WAS. Youdid. I saw it at the time myself. I was very small, but I COULD see it. You'll say I must have been a most uncanny little wretch, and I daresay I was and am keeping now the pleasant promise. That doesn't preventone's feeling that when a person has brought a person out--"

"A person should take the consequences, " Vanderbank broke in, "and see aperson through?" He could meet her now perfectly and proceeded admirablyto do it. "There's an immense deal in that, I admit--I admit. I'm boundto say I don't know quite what I did--one does those things, no doubt, with a fine unconsciousness: I should have thought indeed it was theother way round. But I assure you I accept all consequences and allresponsibilities. If you don't know what's the matter between us I'msure _I_ don't either. It can't be much--we'll look into it. I don'tmean you and I--YOU mustn't be any more worried; but she and herso unwittingly faithless one. I HAVEN'T been as often, I know"--Vanpleasantly kept his course. "But there's a tide in the affairs ofmen--and of women too, and of girls and of every one. You know what Imean--you know it for yourself. The great thing is that--bless both yourhearts!--one doesn't, one simply CAN'T if one would, give your motherup. It's absurd to talk about it. Nobody ever did such a thing in hislife. There she is, like the moon or the Marble Arch. I don't say, mindyou, " he candidly explained, "that every one LIKES her equally: that'sanother affair. But no one who ever HAS liked her can afford everagain for any long period to do without her. There are too many stupidpeople--there's too much dull company. That, in London, is to be had bythe ton; your mother's intelligence, on the other hand, will always haveits price. One can talk with her for a change. She's fine, fine, fine. So, my dear child, be quiet. She's a fixed star. "

"Oh I know she is, " Nanda said. "It's YOU--"

"Who may be only the flashing meteor?" He sat and smiled at her. "Ipromise you then that your words have stayed me in my course. You'vemade me stand as still as Joshua made the sun. " With which he gotstraight up. "'Young, ' you say she is?"--for as if to make up for ithe all the more sociably continued. "It's not like anything else. She'syouth. She's MY youth--she WAS mine. And if you ever have a chance, "he wound up, "do put in for me that if she wants REALLY to know she'sbooked for my old age. She's clever enough, you know"--and Vanderbank, laughing, went over for his hat--"to understand what you tell her. "

Nanda took this in with due attention; she was also now on her feet. "And then she's so lovely. "

"Awfully pretty!"

"I don't say it, as they say, you know, " the girl continued, "BECAUSEshe's mother, but I often think when we're out that wherever she is--!"

"There's no one that all round really touches her?" Vanderbank took itup with zeal. "Oh so every one thinks, and in fact one's appreciationof the charming things in that way so intensely her own can scarcelybreathe on them all lightly enough. And then, hang it, she hasperceptions--which are not things that run about the streets. She hassurprises. " He almost broke down for vividness. "She has little ways. "

"Well, I'm glad you do like her, " Nanda gravely replied. 

At this again he fairly faced her, his momentary silence making it stillmore direct. "I like, you know, about as well as I ever liked anything, this wonderful idea of yours of putting in a plea for her solitudeand her youth. Don't think I do it injustice if I say--which is sayingmuch--that it's quite as charming as it's amusing. And now good-bye. "

He had put out his hand, but Nanda hesitated. "You won't wait for tea?"

"My dear child, I can't. " He seemed to feel, however, that somethingmore must be said. "We shall meet again. But it's getting on, isn't it, toward the general scatter?"

"Yes, and I hope that this year, " she answered, "you'll have a goodholiday. "

"Oh we shall meet before that. I shall do what I can, but upon my wordI feel, you know, " he laughed, "that such a tuning-up as YOU'VE given mewill last me a long time. It's like the high Alps. " Then with his handout again he added: "Have you any plans yourself?"

So many, it might have seemed, that she had no time to take for thinkingof them. "I dare say I shall be away a good deal. "

He candidly wondered. "With Mr. Longdon?"

"Yes--with him most. "

He had another pause. "Really for a long time?"

"A long long one, I hope. "

"Your mother's willing again?"

"Oh perfectly. And you see that's why. "

"Why?" She had said nothing more, and he failed to understand. 

"Why you mustn't too much leave her alone. DON'T!" Nanda brought out. 

"I won't. But, " he presently added, "there are one or two things. "

"Well, what are they?"

He produced in some seriousness the first. "Won't she after all see theMitchys?"

"Not so much either. That of course is now very different. "

Vanderbank demurred. "But not for YOU, I gather--is it? Don't you expectto see them?"

"Oh yes--I hope they'll come down. "

He moved away a little--not straight to the door. "To Beccles? Funnyplace for them, a little though, isn't it?"

He had put the question as if for amusement, but Nanda took itliterally. "Ah not when they're invited so very very charmingly. Notwhen he wants them so. "

"Mr. Longdon? Then that keeps up?"

"'That'?"--she was at a loss. 

"I mean his intimacy--with Mitchy. "

"So far as it IS an intimacy. "

"But didn't you, by the way"--and he looked again at his watch--"tell methey're just about to turn up together?"

"Oh not so very particularly together. "

"Mitchy first alone?" Vanderbank asked. 

She had a smile that was dim, that was slightly strange. "Unless you'llstay for company. "

"Thanks--impossible. And then Mr. Longdon alone?"

"Unless Mitchy stays. "

He had another pause. "You haven't after all told me about the'evolution'--or the evolutions--of his wife. "

"How can I if you don't give me time?"

"I see--of course not. " He seemed to feel for an instant the return ofhis curiosity. "Yet it won't do, will it? to have her out before HIM?No, I must go. " He came back to her and at present she gave him a hand. "But if you do see Mr. Longdon alone will you do me a service? I meanindeed not simply today, but with all other good chances?"

She waited. "Any service whatever. But which first?"

"Well, " he returned in a moment, "let us call it a bargain. I look afteryour mother--"

"And I--?" She had had to wait again. 

"Look after my good name. I mean for common decency to HIM. He has beenof a kindness to me that, when I think of my failure to return it, makes me blush from head to foot. I've odiously neglected him--by acomplication of accidents. There are things I ought to have done that Ihaven't. There's one in particular--but it doesn't matter. And I haven'teven explained about THAT. I've been a brute and I didn't mean it andI couldn't help it. But there it is. Say a good word for me. Make outsomehow or other that I'm NOT a beast. In short, " the young man said, quite flushed once more with the intensity of his thought, "let us haveit that you may quite trust ME if you'll let me a little--just for mycharacter as a gentleman--trust YOU. "

"Ah you may trust me, " Nanda replied with her handshake. 

"Good-bye then!" he called from the door. 

"Good-bye, " she said after he had closed it. 

III

It was half-past five when Mitchy turned up; and her relapse had in themean time known no arrest but the arrival of tea, which, however, shehad left unnoticed. He expressed on entering the fear that he failedof exactitude, to which she replied by the assurance that he was onthe contrary remarkably near it and by the mention of all the aidto patience she had drawn from the pleasure of half an hour with Mr. Van--an allusion that of course immediately provoked on Mitchy's partthe liveliest interest. 

"He HAS risked it at last then? How tremendously exciting! And yourmother?" he went on; after which, as she said nothing: "Did SHE see him, I mean, and is he perhaps with her now?"

"No; she won't have come in--unless you asked. "

"I didn't ask. I asked only for you. "

Nanda thought an instant. "But you'll still sometimes come to see her, won't you? I mean you won't ever give her up?"

Mitchy at this laughed out. "My dear child, you're an adorable family!"

She took it placidly enough. "That's what Mr. Van said. He said I'mtrying to make a career for her. "

"Did he?" Her visitor, though without prejudice to his amusement, appeared struck. "You must have got in with him rather deep. "

She again considered. "Well, I think I did rather. He was awfullybeautiful and kind. "

"Oh, " Mitchy concurred, "trust him always for that!"

"He wrote me, on my note, " Nanda pursued, "a tremendously good answer. "

Mitchy was struck afresh. "Your note? What note?"

"To ask him to come. I wrote at the beginning of the week. "

"Oh--I see" Mitchy observed as if this were rather different. "Hecouldn't then of course have done less than come. "

Yet his companion again thought. "I don't know. "

"Oh come--I say: You do know, " Mitchy laughed. "I should like to seehim--or you either!" There would have been for a continuous spectatorof these episodes an odd resemblance between the manner and all themovements that had followed his entrance and those that had accompaniedthe installation of his predecessor. He laid his hat, as Vanderbank haddone, in three places in succession and appeared to question scarcelyless the safety, somewhere, of his umbrella and the grace of retainingin his hand his gloves. He postponed the final selection of a seat andhe looked at the objects about him while he spoke of other matters. Quite in the same fashion indeed at last these objects impressed him. "How charming you've made your room and what a lot of nice things you'vegot!"

"That's just what Mr. Van said too. He seemed immensely struck. "

But Mitchy hereupon once more had a drop to extravagance. "Can I donothing then but repeat him? I came, you know, to be original. "

"It would be original for you, " Nanda promptly returned, "to be at alllike him. But you won't, " she went back, "not sometimes come for motheronly? You'll have plenty of chances. "

This he took up with more gravity. "What do you mean by chances? Thatyou're going away? That WILL add to the attraction!" he exclaimed as shekept silence. 

"I shall have to wait, " she answered at last, "to tell you definitelywhat I'm to do. It's all in the air--yet I think I shall know to-day. I'm to see Mr. Longdon. "

Mitchy wondered. "To-day?"

"He's coming at half-past six. "

"And then you'll know?"

"Well--HE will. "

"Mr. Longdon?"

"I meant Mr. Longdon, " she said after a moment. 

Mitchy had his watch out. "Then shall I interfere?"

"There are quantities of time. You must have your tea. You see at anyrate, " the girl continued, "what I mean by your chances. "

She had made him his tea, which he had taken. "You do squeeze us in!"

"Well, it's an accident your coming together--except of course thatyou're NOT together. I simply took the time that you each independentlyproposed. But it would have been all right even if you HAD met. 

"That is, I mean, " she explained, "even if you and Mr. Longdon do. Mr. Van, I confess, I did want alone. "

Mitchy had been glaring at her over his tea. "You're more and moreremarkable!"

"Well then if I improve so give me your promise. "

Mitchy, as he partook of refreshment, kept up his thoughtful gaze. "Ishall presently want some more, please. But do you mind my asking if Vanknew--"

"That Mr. Longdon's to come? Oh yes, I told him, and he left with me amessage for him. "

"A message? How awfully interesting!"

Nanda thought. "It WILL be awfully--to Mr. Longdon. "

"Some more NOW, please, " said Mitchy while she took his cup. "And toMr. Longdon only, eh? Is that a way of saying that it's none of MYbusiness?"

The fact of her attending--and with a happy show of particular care--tohis immediate material want added somehow, as she replied, to her effectof sincerity. "Ah, Mr. Mitchy, the business of mine that has not by thistime ever so naturally become a business of yours--well, I can't thinkof any just now, and I wouldn't, you know, if I could!"

"I can promise you then that there's none of mine, " Mitchy declared, "that hasn't made by the same token quite the same shift. Keep it wellbefore you, please, that if ever a young woman had a grave lookout--!"

"What do you mean, " she interrupted, "by a grave lookout?"

"Well, the certainty of finding herself saddled for all time to comewith the affairs of a gentleman whom she can never get rid of on thespecious plea that he's only her husband or her lover or her father orher son or her brother or her uncle or her cousin. There, as none ofthese characters, he just stands. "

"Yes, " Nanda kindly mused, "he's simply her Mitchy. "

"Precisely. And a Mitchy, you see, is--what do you call it?--simplyindissoluble. He's moreover inordinately inquisitive. He goes to thelength of wondering whether Van also learned that you were expectingME. "

"Oh yes--I told him everything. "

Mitchy smiled. "Everything?"

"I told him--I told him, " she replied with impatience. 

Mitchy hesitated. "And did he then leave me also a message?"

"No, nothing. What I'm to do for him with Mr. Longdon, " she immediatelyexplained, "is to make practically a kind of apology. "

"Ah and for me"--Mitchy quickly took it up--"there can be no question ofanything of that kind. I see. He has done me no wrong. "

Nanda, with her eyes now on the window, turned it over. "I don't muchthink he would know even if he had. "

"I see, I see. And we wouldn't tell him. "

She turned with some abruptness from the outer view. "We wouldn't tellhim. But he was beautiful all round, " she went on. "No one could havebeen nicer about having for so long, for instance, come so little to thehouse. As if he hadn't only too many other things to do! He didn't evenmake them out nearly the good reasons he might. But fancy, with hisimportant duties--all the great affairs on his hands--our making vulgarlittle rows about being 'neglected'! He actually made so little of whathe might easily plead--speaking so, I mean, as if he were all in thewrong--that one had almost positively to SHOW him his excuses. Asif"--she really kept it up--"he hasn't plenty!"

"It's only people like me, " Mitchy threw out, "who have none?"

"Yes--people like you. People of no use, of no occupation and noimportance. Like you, you know, " she pursued, "there are so many. "Then it was with no transition of tone that she added: "If you're bad, Mitchy, I won't tell you anything. "

"And if I'm good what will you tell me? What I want really most to KNOWis why he should be, as you said just now, 'apologetic' to Mr. Longdon. What's the wrong he allows he has done HIM?"

"Oh he has 'neglected' him--if that's any comfort to us--quite as much. "

"Hasn't looked him up and that sort of thing?"

"Yes--and he mentioned some other matter. "

Mitchy wondered. "'Mentioned' it?"

"In which, " said Nanda, "he hasn't pleased him. "

Mitchy after an instant risked it. "But what other matter?"

"Oh he says that when I speak to him Mr. Longdon will know. "

Mitchy gravely took this in. "And shall you speak to him?"

"For Mr. Van?" How, she seemed to ask, could he doubt it? "Why the veryfirst thing. "

"And then will Mr. Longdon tell you?"

"What Mr. Van means?" Nanda thought. "Well--I hope not. "

Mitchy followed it up. "You 'hope'--?"

"Why if it's anything that could possibly make any one like him anyless. I mean I shan't in that case in the least want to hear it. "

Mitchy looked as if he could understand that and yet could also imaginesomething of a conflict. "But if Mr. Longdon insists--?"

"On making me know? I shan't let him insist. Would YOU?" she put to him. 

"Oh I'm not in question!"

"Yes, you are!" she quite rang out. 

"Ah--!" Mitchy laughed. After which he added: "Well then, I mightoverbear you. "

"No, you mightn't, " she as positively declared again, "and you wouldn'tat any rate desire to. "

This he finally showed he could take from her--showed it in the silencein which for a minute their eyes met; then showed it perhaps even morein his deep exclamation: "You're complete!"

For such a proposition as well she had the same detached sense. "I don'tthink I am in anything but the wish to keep YOU so. "

"Well--keep me, keep me! It strikes me that I'm not at all now on afooting, you know, of keeping myself. I quite give you notice infact, " Mitchy went on, "that I'm going to come to you henceforth foreverything. But you're too wonderful, " he wound up as she at first saidnothing to this. "I don't even frighten you. "

"Yes--fortunately for you. "

"Ah but I distinctly warn you that I mean to do my very best for it!"

Nanda viewed it all with as near an approach to gaiety as she oftenachieved. "Well, if you should ever succeed it would be a dark day foryou. "

"You bristle with your own guns, " he pursued, "but the ingenuity ofa lifetime shall be devoted to my taking you on some quarter on whichyou're not prepared. "

"And what quarter, pray, will that be?"

"Ah I'm not such a fool as to begin by giving you a tip!" Mitchy on thisturned off with an ambiguous but unmistakeably natural sigh; he lookedat photographs, he took up a book or two as Vanderbank had done, and fora couple of minutes there was silence between them. "What does stretchbefore me, " he resumed after an interval during which clearly, in spiteof his movements, he had looked at nothing--"what does stretch before meis the happy prospect of my feeling that I've found in you a friendwith whom, so utterly and unreservedly, I can always go to the bottomof things. This luxury, you see now, of our freedom to look facts in theface is one of which, I promise you, I mean fully to avail myself. " Hestopped before her again, and again she was silent. "It's so awfullyjolly, isn't it? that there's not at last a single thing that wecan't take our ease about. I mean that we can't intelligibly name andcomfortably tackle. We've worked through the long tunnel of artificialreserves and superstitious mysteries, and I at least shall have only tofeel that in showing every confidence and dotting every 'i' I follow theexample you so admirably set. You go down to the roots? Good. It's all Iask!"

He had dropped into a chair as he talked, and so long as she remainedin her own they were confronted; but she presently got up and, the nextmoment, while he kept his place, was busy restoring order to the objectsboth her visitors had disarranged. "If you weren't delightful you'd bedreadful!"

"There we are! I could easily, in other words, frighten you if I would. "

She took no notice of the remark, only, after a few more scatteredtouches, producing an observation of her own. "He's going, all the same, Mr. Van, to be charming to mother. We've settled that. "

"Ah then he CAN make time--?"

She judged it. "For as much as THAT, yes. For as much, I mean, asmay sufficiently show her that he hasn't given her up. So don't yourecognise how much more time YOU can make?"

"Ah--see precisely--there we are again!" Mitchy promptly ejaculated. 

Yet he had gone, it seemed, further than she followed. "But where?"

"Why, as I say, at the roots and in the depths of things. "

"Oh!" She dropped to an indifference that was but part of her generalpatience for all his irony. 

"It's needless to go into the question of not giving your mother up. Onesimply DOESN'T give her up. One can't. There she is. "

"That's exactly what HE says. There she is. "

"Ah but I don't want to say nothing but what 'he' says!" Mitchy laughed. "He can't at all events have mentioned to you any such link as the onethat in my case is now almost the most palpable. I'VE got a wife, youknow. "

"Oh Mitchy!" the girl protestingly though vaguely murmured. 

"And my wife--did you know it?" Mitchy went on, "is positively gettingthick with your mother. Of course it isn't new to you that she'swonderful for wives. Now that our marriage is an accomplished fact shetakes the greatest interest in it--or bids fair to if her attention canonly be thoroughly secured--and more particularly in what I believe isgenerally called our peculiar situation: for it appears, you know, thatwe're to the most conspicuous degree possible IN a peculiar situation. Aggie's therefore already, and is likely to be still more, in what'suniversally recognised as your mother's regular line. Your mother willattract her, study her, finally 'understand' her. In fact she'll 'help'her as she has 'helped' so many before and will 'help' so many still tocome. With Aggie thus as a satellite and a frequenter--in a degree inwhich she never yet HAS been, " he continued, "what will the whole thingbe but a practical multiplication of our points of contact? You mayremind me of Mrs. Brook's contention that if she did in her time keepsomething of a saloon the saloon is now, in consequence of events, buta collection of fortuitous atoms; but that, my dear Nanda, will becomenone the less, to your clearer sense, but a pious echo of her momentarymodesty or--call it at the worst--her momentary despair. The generationswill come and go, and the PERSONNEL, as the newspapers say, of thesaloon will shift and change, but the institution itself, as resting ona deep human need, has a long course yet to run and a good work yet todo. WE shan't last, but your mother will, and as Aggie is happily veryyoung she's therefore provided for, in the time to come, on a scalesufficiently considerable to leave us just now at peace. Meanwhile, as you're almost as good for husbands as Mrs. Brook is for wives, whyaren't we, as a couple, we Mitchys, quite ideally arranged for, and whymayn't I speak to you of my future as sufficiently guaranteed? The onlyappreciable shadow I make out comes, for me, from the question of whatmay to-day be between you and Mr. Longdon. Do I understand, " Mitchyasked, "that he's presently to arrive for an answer to something he hasput to you?" Nanda looked at him a while with a sort of solemnity oftenderness, and her voice, when she at last spoke, trembled with afeeling that clearly had grown in her as she listened to the string ofwhimsicalities, bitter and sweet, that he had just unrolled. "You'rewild, " she said simply--"you're wild. "

He wonderfully glared. "Am I then already frightening you?" He shook hishead rather sadly. "I'm not in the least trying yet. There's something, "he added after an instant, "that I do want too awfully to ask you. "

"Well then--!" If she had not eagerness she had at least charity. 

"Oh but you see I reflect that though you show all the courage to goto the roots and depths with ME, I'm not--I never have been--fullyconscious of the nerve for doing as much with you. It's a question, "Mitchy explained, "of how much--of a particular matter--you know. "

She continued ever so kindly to face him. "Hasn't it come out all roundnow that I know everything?"

Her reply, in this form, took a minute or two to operate, but when itbegan to do so it fairly diffused a light. Mitchy's face turned of acolour that might have been produced by her holding close to it somelantern wonderfully glazed. "You know, you know!" he then rang out. 

"Of course I know. "

"You know, you know!" Mitchy repeated. 

"Everything, " she imperturbably went on, "but what you're talkingabout. "

He was silent a little, his eyes on her. "May I kiss your hand?"

"No, " she answered: "that's what I call wild. "

He had risen with his question and after her reply he remained a momenton the spot. "See--I've frightened you. It proves as easy as that. ButI only wanted to show you and to be sure for myself. Now that I've themental certitude I shall never wish otherwise to use it. " He turned awayto begin again one of his absorbed revolutions. "Mr. Longdon has askedyou this time for a grand public adhesion, and what he turns up for nowis to receive your ultimatum? A final irrevocable flight with him isthe line he advises, so that he'll be ready for it on the spot with thepost-chaise and the pistols?"

The image appeared really to have for Nanda a certain vividness, andshe looked at it a space without a hint of a smile. "We shan't need anypistols, whatever may be decided about the post-chaise; and any flightwe may undertake together will need no cover of secrecy or night. Mother, as I've told you--"

"Won't fling herself across your reckless path? I remember, " saidMitchy--"you alluded to her magnificent resignation. But father?" heoddly demanded. 

Nanda thought for this a moment longer. "Well, Mr. Longdon has--off inthe country--a good deal of shooting. "

"So that Edward can sometimes come down with his old gun? Good thentoo--if it isn't, as he takes you by the way, to shoot YOU. You've gotit all shipshape and arranged, in other words, and have only, if thefancy does move you, to clear out. You clear out--you make all sorts ofroom. It IS interesting, " Mitchy exclaimed, "arriving thus with you atthe depths! I look all round and see every one squared and every one butone or two suited. Why then reflexion and delay?"

"You don't, dear Mr. Mitchy, " Nanda took her time to return, "knownearly as much as you think. "

"But isn't my question absolutely a confession of ignorance and arenunciation of thought? I put myself from this moment forth with you, "Mitchy declared, "on the footing of knowing nothing whatever and ofreceiving literally from your hands all information and all life. Let mycontinued attitude of dependence, my dear Nanda, show it. Any hesitationyou may yet feel, you imply, proceeds from a sense of duties in Londonnot to be lightly renounced? Oh, " he thoughtfully said, "I do at leastknow you HAVE them. "

She watched him with the same mildness while he vaguely circled about. "You're wild, you're wild, " she insisted. "But it doesn't in the leastmatter. I shan't abandon you. "

He stopped short. "Ah that's what I wanted from you in so many clear-cutgolden words--though I won't in the least of course pretend that I'vefelt I literally need it. I don't literally need the big turquoise inmy neck-tie; which incidentally means, by the way, that if you shouldadmire it you're quite welcome to it. Such words--that's my point--arelike such jewels: the pride, you see, of one's heart. They're merevanity, but they help along. You've got of course always poor Tishy, " hecontinued. 

"Will you leave it all to ME?" Nanda said as if she had not heard him. 

"And then you've got poor Carrie, " he went on, "though HER of course yourather divide with your mother. "

"Will you leave it all to ME?" the girl repeated. 

"To say nothing of poor Cashmore, " he pursued, "whom you take ALL, Ibelieve, yourself?"

"Will you leave it all to ME?" she once more repeated. 

This time he pulled up, suddenly and expressively wondering. "Are yougoing to do anything about it at present?--I mean with our friend?"

She appeared to have a scruple of saying, but at last she produced it. "Yes--he doesn't mind now. "

Mitchy again laughed out. "You ARE, as a family--!" But he had alreadychecked himself. "Mr. Longdon will at any rate, you imply, be somehowinterested--"

"In MY interests? Of course--since he has gone so far. You expressedsurprise at my wanting to wait and think; but how can I not wait and notthink when so much depends on the question--now so definite--of how muchfurther he WILL go?"

"I see, " said Mitchy, profoundly impressed. "And how much does thatdepend on?"

She had to reflect. "On how much further I, for my part, MUST!"

Mitchy's grasp was already complete. "And he's coming then to learn fromyou how far this is?"

"Yes--very much. "

Mitchy looked about for his hat. "So that of course I see my time'sabout up, as you'll want to be quite alone together. "

Nanda glanced at the clock. "Oh you've a margin yet. "

"But you don't want an interval for your thinking--?"

"Now that I've seen you?" Nanda was already very obviously thoughtful. 

"I mean if you've an important decision to take. "

"Well, " she returned, "seeing you HAS helped me. "

"Ah but at the same time worried you. Therefore--" And he picked up hisumbrella. 

Her eyes rested on its curious handle. "If you cling to your idea thatI'm frightened you'll be disappointed. It will never be given you toreassure me. "

"You mean by that that I'm primarily so solid--!"

"Yes, that till I see you yourself afraid--!"

"Well?"

"Well, I won't admit that anything isn't exactly what I was preparedfor. "

Mitchy looked with interest into his hat. "Then what is it I'm to'leave' to you?" After which, as she turned away from him with asuppressed sound and said, while he watched her, nothing else, "It's nodoubt natural for you to talk, " he went on, "but I do make you nervous. Good-bye--good-bye. "

She had stayed him, by a fresh movement, however, as he reached thedoor. "Aggie's only trying to find out--!"

"Yes--what?" he asked, waiting. 

"Why what sort of a person she is. How can she ever have known? It wascarefully, elaborately hidden from her--kept so obscure that she couldmake out nothing. She isn't now like ME. "

He wonderingly attended. "Like you?"

"Why I get the benefit of the fact that there was never a time when Ididn't know SOMETHING or other, and that I became more and more aware, as I grew older, of a hundred little chinks of daylight. "

Mitchy stared. "You're stupendous, my dear!" he murmured. 

Ah but she kept it up. "_I_ had my idea about Aggie. "

"Oh don't I know you had? And how you were positive about the sort ofperson--!"

"That she didn't even suspect herself, " Nanda broke in, "to be? I'mequally positive now. It's quite what I believed, only there's ever somuch more of it. More HAS come--and more will yet. You see, when therehas been nothing before, it all has to come with a rush. So that if evenI'm surprised of course she is. "

"And of course _I_ am!" Mitchy's interest, though even now not whollyunqualified with amusement, had visibly deepened. "You admit then, " hecontinued, "that you're surprised?"

Nanda just hesitated. "At the mere scale of it. I think it's splendid. The only person whose astonishment I don't quite understand, " she added, "is Cousin Jane. "

"Oh Cousin Jane's astonishment serves her right!"

"If she held so, " Nanda pursued, "that marriage should do everything--!"

"She shouldn't be in such a funk at finding what it IS doing? Oh no, she's the last one!" Mitchy declared. "I vow I enjoy her scare. "

"But it's very bad, you know, " said Nanda. 

"Oh too awful!"

"Well, of course, " the girl appeared assentingly to muse, "she couldn'tafter all have dreamed--!" But she took herself up. "The great thing isto be helpful. "

"And in what way--?" Mitchy asked with his wonderful air of invitingcompetitive suggestions. 

"Toward Aggie's finding herself. Do you think, " she immediatelycontinued, "that Lord Petherton really is?"

Mitchy frankly considered. "Helpful? Oh he does his best, I gather. Yes, " he presently added--"Petherton's all right. "

"It's you yourself, naturally, " his companion threw off, "who can helpmost. "

"Certainly, and I'm doing my best too. So that with such goodassistance"--he seemed at last to have taken it all from her--"what isit, I again ask, that, as you request, I'm to 'leave' to you?"

Nanda required, while he still waited, some time to reply. "To keep mypromise. "

"Your promise?"

"Not to abandon you. "

"Ah, " cried Mitchy, "that's better!"

"Then good-bye, " she said. 

"Good-bye. " But he came a few steps forward. "I MAYN'T kiss your hand?"

"Never. "

"Never?"

"Never. "

"Oh!" he oddly sounded as he quickly went out. 

IV

The interval he had represented as likely to be useful to her was infact, however, not a little abbreviated by a punctuality of arrivalon Mr. Longdon's part so extreme as to lead the first thing to a wordalmost of apology. "You can't say, " her new visitor immediately began, "that I haven't left you alone, these many days, as much as I promisedon coming up to you that afternoon when after my return to town I foundMr. Mitchett instead of your mother awaiting me in the drawing-room. "

"Yes, " said Nanda, "you've really done quite as I asked you. "

"Well, " he returned, "I felt half an hour ago that, near as I was torelief, I could keep it up no longer; so that though I knew it wouldbring me much too soon I started at six sharp for our trysting-place. "

"And I've no tea, after all, to reward you!" It was but now clearly thatshe noticed it. "They must have removed the things without my heeding. "

Her old friend looked at her with some intensity. "Were you in theroom?"

"Yes--but I didn't see the man come in. "

"What then were you doing?"

Nanda thought; her smile was as usual the faintest discernible outwardsign. "Thinking of YOU. "

"So tremendously hard?"

"Well, of other things too and of other persons. Of everything reallythat in our last talk I told you I felt I must have out with myselfbefore meeting you for what I suppose you've now in mind. "

Mr. Longdon had kept his eyes on her, but at this he turned away; not, however, for an alternative, embracing her material situation with theembarrassed optimism of Vanderbank or the mitigated gloom of Mitchy. "Ah"--he took her up with some dryness--"you've been having things outwith yourself?" But he went on before she answered: "I don't want anytea, thank you. I found myself, after five, in such a fidget that Iwent three times in the course of the hour to my club, where I've theimpression I each time had it. I dare say it wasn't there, though, Idid have it, " he after an instant pursued, "for I've somehow a confusedimage of a shop in Oxford Street--or was it rather in Regent?--intowhich I gloomily wandered to beguile the moments with a mixture that ifI strike you as upset I beg you to set it all down to. Do you know infact what I've been doing for the last ten minutes? Roaming hither andthither in your beautiful Crescent till I could venture to come in. "

"Then did you see Mitchy go out? But no, you wouldn't"--Nanda correctedherself. "He has been gone longer than that. "

Her visitor had dropped on a sofa where, propped by the back, he satrather upright, his glasses on his nose, his hands in his pockets andhis elbows much turned out. "Mitchy left you more than ten minutes ago, and yet your state on his departure remains such that there could be abustle of servants in the room without your being aware? Kindly give mea lead then as to what it is he has done to you. "

She hovered before him with her obscure smile. "You see it foryourself. "

He shook his head with decision. "I don't see anything for myself, andI beg you to understand that it's not what I've come here to-day to do. Anything I may yet see which I don't already see will be only, I warnyou, so far as you shall make it very clear. There--you've work cutout. And is it with Mr. Mitchett, may I ask, that you've been, as youmention, cutting it?"

Nanda looked about her as if weighing many things; after which her eyescame back to him. "Do you mind if I don't sit down?"

"I don't mind if you stand on your head--at the pass we've come to. "

"I shall not try your patience, " the girl good-humouredly replied, "so far as that. I only want you not to be worried if I walk about alittle. "

Mr. Longdon, without a movement, kept his posture. "Oh I can't obligeyou there. I SHALL be worried. I've come on purpose to be worried, andthe more I surrender myself to the rack the more, I seem to feel, weshall have threshed our business out. So you may dance, you may stamp, if you like, on the absolutely passive thing you've made of me. "

"Well, what I HAVE had from Mitchy, " she cheerfully responded, "ispractically a lesson in dancing: by which I perhaps mean rather a lessonin sitting, myself, as I want you to do while _I_ talk, as still asa mouse. They take, " she declared, "while THEY talk, an amount ofexercise!"

"They?" Mr. Longdon wondered. "Was his wife with him?"

"Dear no--he and Mr. Van. "

"Was Mr. Van with him?"

"Oh no--before, alone. All over the place. "

Mr. Longdon had a pause so rich in appeal that when he at last spoke hisquestion was itself like an answer. "Mr. Van has been to see you?"

"Yes. I wrote and asked him. "

"Oh!" said Mr. Longdon. 

"But don't get up. " She raised her hand. "Don't. "

"Why should I?" He had never budged. 

"He was most kind; stayed half an hour and, when I told him you werecoming, left a good message for you. "

Mr. Longdon appeared to wait for this tribute, which was not immediatelyproduced. "What do you call a 'good' message?"

"I'm to make it all right with you. "

"To make what?"

"Why, that he has not, for so long, been to see you or written to you. That he has seemed to neglect you. "

Nanda's visitor looked so far about as to take the neighbourhood ingeneral into the confidence of his surprise. "To neglect ME?"

"Well, others too, I believe--with whom we're not concerned. He has beenso taken up. But you above all. "

Mr. Longdon showed on this a coldness that somehow spoke for itself asthe greatest with which he had ever in his life met an act of reparationand that was infinitely confirmed by his sustained immobility. "But ofwhat have I complained?"

"Oh I don't think he fancies you've complained. "

"And how could he have come to see me, " he continued, "when for so manymonths past I've been so little in town?"

He was not more ready with objections, however, than his companion hadby this time become with answers. "He must have been thinking of thetime of your present stay. He evidently has you much on his mind--hespoke of not having seen you. "

"He has quite sufficiently tried--he has left cards, " Mr. Longdonreturned. "What more does he want?"

Nanda looked at him with her long grave straight-ness, which had often aplay of light beyond any smile. "Oh, you know, he does want more. "

"Then it was open to him--"

"So he so strongly feels"--she quickly took him up--"that you must havefelt. And therefore it is I speak for him. "

"Don't!" said Mr. Longdon. 

"But I promised him I would. "

"Don't!" her friend repeated as in stifled pain. 

She had kept for the time all her fine clearness turned to him; butshe might on this have been taken as giving him up with a movement ofobedience and a strange soft sigh. The smothered sound might even haverepresented to a listener at all initiated a consenting retreat beforean effort greater than her reckoning--a retreat that was in so far thesnap of a sharp tension. The next minute, none the less, she evidentlyfound a fresh provocation in the sight of the pale and positivelyexcessive rigour she had imposed, so that, though her friend was onlyaccommodating himself to her wish she had a sudden impulse of criticism. "You're proud about it--too proud!"

"Well, what if I am?" He looked at her with a complexity ofcommunication that no words could have meddled with. "Pride's all rightwhen it helps one to bear things. "

"Ah, " said Nanda, "but that's only when one wants to take the least fromthem. When one wants to take the most--!"

"Well?"--he spoke, as she faltered, with a certain small hardness ofinterest. 

She faltered, however, indeed. "Oh I don't know how to say it. " Shefairly coloured with the attempt. "One must let the sense of all that Ispeak of--well, all come. One must rather like it. I don't know--but Isuppose one must rather grovel. "

Mr. Longdon, though with visible reluctance, turned it over. "That'svery fine--but you're a woman. "

"Yes--that must make a difference. But being a woman, in such a case, has then, " Nanda went on, "its advantages. "

On this point perhaps her friend might presently have been taken asrelaxing. "It strikes me that even at that the advantages are mainly forothers. I'm glad, God knows, that you're not also a young man. "

"Then we're suited all round. "

She had spoken with a promptitude that appeared again to act on himslightly as an irritant, for he met it--with more delay--by a long andderisive murmur. "Oh MY pride--!" But this she in no manner took up;so that he was left for a little to his thoughts. "That's what you wereplotting when you told me the other day that you wanted time?"

"Ah I wasn't plotting--though I was, I confess, trying to work thingsout. That particular idea of simply asking Mr. Van by letter to presenthimself--that particular flight of fancy hadn't in fact then at alloccurred to me. "

"It never occurred, I'm bound to say, to ME, " said Mr. Longdon. "I'venever thought of writing to him. "

"Very good. But you haven't the reasons. I wanted to attack him. "

"Not about me, I hope to God!" Mr. Longdon, distinctly a little paler, rejoined. 

"Don't be afraid. I think I had an instinct of how you would have takenTHAT. It was about mother. "

"Oh!" said her visitor. 

"He has been worse to her than to you, " she continued. "But he'll makeit all right. "

Mr. Longdon's attention retained its grimness. "If he has such a remedyfor the more then, what has he for the less?"

Nanda, however, was but for an instant checked. 

"Oh it's I who make it up to YOU. To mother, you see, there's no oneotherwise to make it up. "

This at first unmistakeably sounded to him too complicated foracceptance. But his face changed as light dawned. "That puts it thenthat you WILL come?"

"I'll come if you'll take me as I am--which is what I must previouslyexplain to you: I mean more than I've ever done before. But what HEmeans by what you call his remedy is my making you feel better abouthimself. "

The old man gazed at her. "'Your' doing it is too beautiful! And hecould really come to you for the purpose of asking you?"

"Oh no, " said the girl briskly, "he came simply for the purpose of doingwhat he HAD to do. After my letter how could he not come? Then he metmost kindly what I said to him for mother and what he quite understoodto be all my business with him; so that his appeal to me to plead withyou for--well, for his credit--was only thrown in because he had so gooda chance. "

This speech brought Mr. Longdon abruptly to his feet, but before shecould warn him again of the patience she continued to need he hadalready, as if what she evoked for him left him too stupefied, droppedback into submission. "The man stood there for you to render him aservice?--for you to help him and praise him?"

"Ah but it wasn't to go out of my way, don't you see? He knew you werepresently to be here. " Her anxiety that he should understand gave her arare strained smile. "I mustn't make--as a request from him--too much ofit, and I've not a doubt that, rather than that you should think anyill of him for wishing me to say a word, he would gladly be left withwhatever bad appearance he may actually happen to have. " She pulledup on these words as with a quick sense of their really, by their meresound, putting her in deeper; and could only give her friend one of thelooks that expressed: "If I could trust you not to assent even more thanI want, I should say 'You know what I mean!'" She allowed him at allevents--or tried to allow him--no time for uttered irony before goingon: "He was everything you could have wished; quite as beautiful aboutYOU--"

"As about you?"--Mr. Longdon took her up. 

She demurred. "As about mother. " With which she turned away as if ithandsomely settled the question. 

But it only left him, as she went to the window, sitting there sombre. "I like, you know, " he brought out as his eyes followed her, "yoursaying you're not proud! Thank God you ARE, my dear. Yes--it's betterfor us. "

At this, after a moment, in her place, she turned round to him. "I'mglad I'm anything--whatever you may call it and though I can't call itthe same--that's good for YOU. "

He said nothing more for a little, as if by such a speech something inhim were simplified and softened. "It would be good for me--by which Imean it would be easier for me--if you didn't quite so immensely carefor him. "

"Oh!" came from Nanda with an accent of attenuation at once soprecipitate and so vague that it only made her attitude at first ratherawkward. "Oh!" she immediately repeated, but with an increase of thesame effect. After which, conscious, she made, as if to save herself, aquick addition. "Dear Mr. Longdon, isn't it rather yourself most--?"

"It would be easier for me, " he went on, heedless, "if you didn't, mypoor child, so wonderfully love him. "

"Ah but I don't--please believe me when I assure you I DON'T!" she brokeout. It burst from her, flaring up, in a queer quaver that ended insomething queerer still--in her abrupt collapse, on the spot, into thenearest chair, where she choked with a torrent of tears. Her buried facecould only after a moment give way to the flood, and she sobbed in apassion as sharp and brief as the flurry of a wild thing for an instantuncaged; her old friend meantime keeping his place in the silence brokenby her sound and distantly--across the room--closing his eyes to hishelplessness and her shame. Thus they sat together while their troubleboth conjoined and divided them. She recovered herself, however, with aneffort worthy of her fall and was on her feet again as she stammeringlyspoke and angrily brushed at her eyes. "What difference in the worlddoes it make--what difference ever?" Then clearly, even with the words, her checked tears suffered her to see how it made the difference that hetoo had been crying; so that "I don't know why you mind!" she thereuponwailed with extravagance. 

"You don't know what I would have done for him. You don't know, you don't know!" he repeated--while she looked as if she naturallycouldn't--as with a renewal of his dream of beneficence and of thesoreness of his personal wound. 

"Well, but HE does you justice--he knows. So it shows, so it shows--!"

But in this direction too, unable to say what it showed, she had againbroken down and again could only hold herself and let her companion sitthere. "Ah Nanda, Nanda!" he deeply murmured; and the depth of the pitywas, vainly and blindly, as the depth of a reproach. 

"It's I--it's I, therefore, " she said as if she must then so look at itwith him; "it's I who am the horrible impossible and who have coveredeverything else with my own impossibility. For some different person youCOULD have done what you speak of, and for some different person you cando it still. "

He stared at her with his barren sorrow. "A person different from him?"

"A person different from ME!"

"And what interest have I in any such person?"

"But your interest in me--you see well enough where THAT lands us. "

Mr. Longdon now got to his feet and somewhat stiffly remained; afterwhich, for all answer, "You say you WILL come then?" he asked. Thenas--seemingly with her last thought--she kept silent: "You understandclearly, I take it, that this time it's never again to leave me--or toBE left. "

"I understand, " she presently replied. "Never again. That, " shecontinued, "is why I asked you for these days. "

"Well then, since you've taken them--"

"Ah but have YOU?" said Nanda. They were close to each other now, andwith a tenderness of warning that was helped by their almost equalstature she laid her hand on his shoulder. "What I did more thananything else write to him for, " she had now regained her clearnessenough to explain, "was that--with whatever idea you had--you should seefor yourself how he could come and go. "

"And what good was that to do me? HADN'T I seen for myself?"

"Well--you've seen once more. Here he was. I didn't care what hethought. Here I brought him. And his reasons remain. "

She kept her eyes on her companion's face, but his own now andafterwards seemed to wander far. "What do I care for his reasons so longas they're not mine?"

She thought an instant, still holding him gently and as if forsuccessful argument. "But perhaps you don't altogether understand them. "

"And why the devil, altogether, SHOULD I?"

"Ah because you distinctly want to, " said Nanda ever so kindly. "You'veadmitted as much when we've talked--"

"Oh but when HAVE we talked?" he sharply interrupted. 

This time he had challenged her so straight that it was her own lookthat strayed. "When?"

"When. "

She hesitated. "When HAVEN'T we?"

"Well, YOU may have: if that's what you call talking--never saying aword. But I haven't. I've only to do at any rate, in the way of reasons, with my own. "

"And yours too then remain? Because, you know, " the girl pursued, "I AMlike that. "

"Like what?"

"Like what he thinks. " Then so gravely that it was almost asupplication, "Don't tell me, " she added, "that you don't KNOW what hethinks. You do know. "

Their eyes, on that strange ground, could meet at last, and the effectof it was presently for Mr. Longdon. "I do know. "

"Well?"

"Well!" He raised his hands and took her face, which he drew so close tohis own that, as she gently let him, he could kiss her with solemnityon the forehead. "Come!" he then very firmly said--quite indeed as if itwere a question of their moving on the spot. 

It literally made her smile, which, with a certain compunction, sheimmediately corrected by doing for him in the pressure of her lipsto his cheek what he had just done for herself. "To-day?" she moreseriously asked. 

He looked at his watch. "To-morrow. "

She paused, but clearly for assent. "That's what I mean by your takingme as I am. It IS, you know, for a girl--extraordinary. "

"Oh I know what it is!" he exclaimed with an odd fatigue in histenderness. 

But she continued, with the shadow of her scruple, to explain. "We'remany of us, we're most of us--as you long ago saw and showed youfelt--extraordinary now. We can't help it. It isn't really our fault. There's so much else that's extraordinary that if we're in it all somuch we must naturally be. " It was all obviously clearer to her thanever yet, and her sense of it found renewed expression; so that shemight have been, as she wound up, a very much older person than herfriend. "Everything's different from what it used to be. "

"Yes, everything, " he returned with an air of final indoctrination. "That's what he ought to have recognised. "

"As YOU have?" Nanda was once more--and completely now--enthroned inhigh justice. "Oh he's more old-fashioned than you. "

"Much more, " said Mr. Longdon with a queer face. 

"He tried, " the girl went on--"he did his best. But he couldn't. Andhe's so right--for himself. "

Her visitor, before meeting this, gathered in his hat and stick, whichfor a minute occupied his attention. "He ought to have married--!"

"Little Aggie? Yes, " said Nanda. 

They had gained the door, where Mr. Longdon again met her eyes. "Andthen Mitchy--!"

But she checked him with a quick gesture. "No--not even then!"

So again before he went they were for a minute confronted. "Are youanxious about Mitchy?"

She faltered, but at last brought it out. "Yes. Do you see? There I am. "

"I see. There we are. Well, " said Mr. Longdon--"to-morrow. "