n was the
haunting danger of the bourgeois. She gave Mrs. Brookenham no time to
resent her last note before enquiring if Nanda were to accompany the
couple.

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

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

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

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

"Thirty!" said Mrs. Brookenham with distilled sweetness. Then with no
transition 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 together
to-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. "When
is Nanda ever here?"

"Ah you know I've given her a room of her own--the sweetest little room
in the world." Mrs. Brookenham never looked so comparatively hopeful as
when 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 movements
of the red-haired footman that Mrs. Brookenham followed. "You had better
ask my child herself."

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

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

Again the Duchess had one of her pauses, which were indeed so frequent
in her talks with this intimate that an auditor could sometimes wonder
what particular form of relief they represented. They might have been a
habit proceeding from the fear of undue impatience. If the Duchess had
been as impatient with Mrs. Brookenham as she would possibly have seemed
without them her frequent visit