certain disguised emotion. He grinned almost too much for mere
amusement. "That's the class to which YOU belong."

"It's the best one," she returned, "and I'm careful to remain in it. You
try to get us, by bribery, into the inferior place, because, proud as
you are, it bores you a little that you like us so much. But we won't
go--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 admired
her from his position, slowly shaking his head with it. "He's the
man--with no fortune and just as he is, to the smallest particular--whom
you would have liked to be, whom you intensely envy, and yet to whom
you'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 an
ill 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 queer
glare. "How could it do him an ill turn?"

"Oh it WOULD be a way, don't you see? to put before me the need of
getting rid of him. For he may 'like' Nanda as much as you please: he'll
never, never," Mrs. Brookenham resolutely quavered--"he'll never come to
the 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 it
in time? By forbidding him the house?"

She seemed to stand with little nipping scissors in a garden of
alternatives. "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 that
amounted to high gallantry.

It inspired on the spot his interlocutress, and her own pluck, of as
fine a quality now as her diplomacy, which was saying much, fell but
little 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. "She
said what they always say--that the effect I produce is, though at first
upsetting, one that little by little they find it possible to get used
to. The world's full of people who are getting used to me," Mr. Mitchett
concluded.

"It's what _I_ shall n