open on Vanderbank's entrance. It
opened into a second, a smaller sitting-room, into which the eyes of his
companions 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's
not the sort of thing that's to be had for the asking--it's a sort we
shall be mighty lucky if we can get!"

Mitchy turned with amusement to Nanda. "Van has invented him and, with
the 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," Vanderbank
explained.

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

"Mr. Van's not at all too good for ME, if you mean that," Nanda broke
in. She had finished her tea-making and leaned back in her chair with
her 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're
going to say--that she hasn't got any set, that she's just a loose
little white flower dropped on the indifferent bosom of the world. But
you're the small sprig of tender green that, added to her, makes her
immediately '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 think
ME, either, too good for you. No one, remember, will take that for your
excuse when the world some day sees me annihilated by your having put an
end to our so harmless relations."

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

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

Vanderbank, whose handsome face had a fine thought in it, looked a
trifle abs