"

"Not even for her daughter's?"

"Not even for her daughter's." Mr. Longdon had not spoken loud, but he
rang as clear as a bell.

Nanda, for admiration of it, broke almost for the first time into the
semblance of a smile. "You feel as if my grandmother were quite YOUR
property!"

"Oh quite."

"I say--that's splendid!"

"I'm glad you like it," he answered kindly.

The very kindness pulled her up. "Pardon my speaking so, but I'm sure
you know what I mean. You mustn't think," she eagerly continued, "that
mother won't also want to hear you."

"On the subject of Lady Julia?" He gently, but very effectively, shook
his head. "Your mother shall never hear me."

Nanda appeared to wonder at it an instant, and it made her completely
grave again. "It will be all for ME?"

"Whatever there may be of it, my dear."

"Oh I shall get it all out of you," she returned without hesitation.
Her mixture of free familiarity and of the vividness of evocation of
something, whatever it was, sharply opposed--the little worry of
this contradiction, not altogether unpleasant, continued to fill
his consciousness more discernibly than anything else. It was really
reflected in his quick brown eyes that she alternately drew him on and
warned him off, but also that what they were beginning more and more to
make out was an emotion of her own trembling there beneath her tension.
His glimpse of it widened--his glimpse of it fairly triumphed when
suddenly, after this last declaration, she threw off with quite the
same accent but quite another effect: "I'm glad to be like any one the
thought of whom makes you so good! You ARE good," she continued; "I see
already how I shall feel it." She stared at him with tears, the sight of
which brought his own straight back; so that thus for a moment they sat
there together.

"My dear child!" he at last simply murmured. But he laid his hand on her
now, and her own immediately met it.

"You'll get used to me," she said with the same gentleness that the
response of her touch had tried to express; "and I shall be so careful
with you that--well, you'll see!" She broke short off with a quaver and
the next instant she turned--there was some one at the door. Vanderbank,
still not quite at his ease, had come back to smile upon them. Detaching
herself from Mr. Longdon she got straight up to meet him. "You were
right, Mr. Van. It's beautiful, beautiful, beautiful!"

BOOK FOURTH. MR. CASHMORE

Harold Broo