day
she wouldn't come. She said it's really all for ME. I'm sure I hope it
is!"--with which there flickered in her eyes, dimly but perhaps all
the more prettily, the first intimation they had given of the light of
laughter. "She told me you'd understand, Mr. Van--from something you've
said to her. It's for my seeing Mr. Longdon without--she thinks--her
spoiling it."

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

A sound of protest rather formless escaped from the gentleman named, but
Nanda continued to carry out her duty. "She told me to ask why he hadn't
been 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." Mitchy
had dashed forward for his tea; she gave it to him; then she added with
her 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, whose
hand, however, dealt with him on the question of his sitting down again.
Mr. Longdon, resisting, kept erect with a low gasp that his host
only was near enough to catch. This suddenly appeared to confirm an
impression gathered by Vanderbank in their contact, a strange sense that
his visitor was so agitated as to be trembling in every limb. It brought
to his own lips a kind of ejaculation--"I SAY!" But even as he spoke
Mr. 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 require
more than this to achieve a divination as deep as it was rapid. "Why
we'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 paying
visits, I myself have been out of London, Mitchy has been to Paris, and
you--oh yes, I know where you've been."

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

"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 have
pulled himself together, dropping back on his sofa and attending in a
manner to his tea. It mi