ever do, for you're quite too great a luxury!"
Mrs. Brookenham declared. "If I haven't threshed you out really MORE
with Nanda," she continued, "it has been from a scruple of a sort you
people never do a woman the justice to impute. You're the object of
views 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, fixed
on his hostess a countenance more controlled. "What does the Duchess
mean by your daughter's being--as I understood you to quote her just
now--'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 back
and little Aggie was in her wake.

V

That young lady, in this relation, was certainly a figure to have
offered a foundation for the highest hopes. As slight and white, as
delicately lovely, as a gathered garden lily, her admirable training
appeared to hold her out to them all as with precautionary finger-tips.
She presumed, however, so little on any introduction that, shyly and
submissively, waiting for the word of direction, she stopped short
in the centre of the general friendliness till Mrs. Brookenham fairly
became, to meet her, also a shy little girl--put out a timid hand with
wonder-struck innocent eyes that hesitated whether a kiss of greeting
might be dared. "Why you dear good strange 'ickle' thing, you haven't
been here for ages, but it IS a joy to see you and I do hope you've
brought your doll!"--such might have been the sense of our friend's fond
murmur while, looking at her up and down with pure pleasure, she drew
the rare creature to a sofa. Little Aggie presented, up and down, an
arrangement of dress exactly in the key of her age, her complexion, her
emphasised virginity. She might have been prepared for her visit by
a cluster of doting nuns, cloistered daughters of ancient houses and
educators of similar products, whose taste, hereditarily good, had
grown, out of the world and most delightfully, so queer as to leave on
everything they touched a particular shade of distinction. The Duchess
had brought in with the child an air of added confidence for which an
observer would in