him again. "I don't know what to make of them.
They don't go with the rest of her. Lady Julia," said Mr. Longdon, "was
rather shy."

On this too his host could meet him. "She must have been. And
Nanda--yes, certainly--doesn't give that impression."

"On the contrary. But Lady Julia was gay!" he added with an eagerness
that made Vanderbank smile.

"I can also see that. Nanda doesn't joke. And yet," Vanderbank continued
with his exemplary candour, "we mustn't speak of her, must we? as if she
were bold and grim."

Mr. Longdon fixed him. "Do you think she's sad?"

They had preserved their lowered tone and might, with their heads
together, have been conferring as the party "out" in some game with the
couple in the other room. "Yes. Sad." But Vanderbank broke off. "I'll
send her to you." Thus it was he had come back to her.

Nanda, on joining the elder man, went straight to the point. "He says
it's so beautiful--what you feel on seeing me: if that IS what he
meant." Mr. Longdon kept silent again at first, only smiling at her, but
less strangely now, and then appeared to look about him for some place
where she could sit near him. There was a sofa in this room too, on
which, observing it, she quickly sank down, so that they were presently
together, placed a little sideways and face to face. She had shown
perhaps that she supposed him to have wished to take her hand, but he
forbore to touch her, though letting her feel all the kindness of his
eyes and their long backward vision. These things she evidently felt
soon enough; she went on before he had spoken. "I know how well you knew
my grandmother. Mother has told me--and I'm so glad. She told me to say
to you that she wants YOU to tell me." Just a shade, at this, might have
appeared to drop over his face, but who was there to know if the girl
observed it? It didn't prevent at any rate her completing her statement.
"That's why she wished me to-day to come alone. She said she wished you
to have me all to yourself."

No, decidedly, she wasn't shy: that mute reflexion was in the air an
instant. "That, no doubt, is the best way. I thank her very much. I
called, after having had the honour of dining--I called, I think, three
times," he went on with a sudden displacement of the question; "but I
had the misfortune each time to miss her."

She kept looking at him with her crude young clearness. "I didn't know
about that. Mother thinks she's more at home than almost any one.
She