ed. "My dear man, he and his affairs ARE such twaddle!"

Vanderbank laughed in spite of himself. "And does that make it any
better?"

Mrs. Brook thought, but presently had a light--she almost smiled with
it. "For US!" Then more woefully, "Don't you want Carrie to be saved?"
she asked.

"Why should I? Not a jot. Carrie be hanged!"

"But it's for Fanny," Mrs. Brook protested. "If Carrie IS rescued it's
a pretext the less for Fanny." As the young man looked for an instant
rather gloomily vague she softly quavered: "I suppose you don't
positively WANT Fanny to bolt?"

"To bolt?"

"Surely I've not to remind you at this time of day how Captain
Dent-Douglas is always round the corner with the post-chaise, and how
tight, on our side, we're all clutching her."

"But why not let her go?"

Mrs. Brook, at this, showed real resentment. "'Go'? Then what would
become of us?" She recalled his wandering fancy. "She's the delight of
our life."

"Oh!" Vanderbank sceptically murmured.

"She's the ornament of our circle," his companion insisted. "She will,
she won't--she won't, she will! It's the excitement, every day, of
plucking the daisy over." Vanderbank's attention, as she spoke, had
attached itself across the room to Mr. Longdon; it gave her thus an
image of the way his imagination had just seemed to her to stray, and
she saw a reason in it moreover for her coming up in another place.

"Isn't he rather rich?" She allowed the question all its effect of
abruptness.

Vanderbank looked round at her. "Mr. Longdon? I haven't the least idea."

"Not after becoming so intimate? It's usually, with people, the very
first thing I get my impression of." There came into her face for
another glance at their friend no crudity of curiosity, but an
expression more tenderly wistful. "He must have some mysterious box
under his bed."

"Down in Suffolk?--a miser's hoard? Who knows? I dare say," Vanderbank
went on. "He isn't a miser, but he strikes me as careful."

Mrs. Brook meanwhile had thought it out. "Then he has something to be
careful of; it would take something really handsome to inspire in a man
like him that sort of interest. With his small expenses all these years
his savings must be immense. And how could he have proposed to mamma
unless he had originally had money?"

If Vanderbank a little helplessly wondered he also laughed. "You must
remember your mother refused him."

"Ah but not because there wasn't enough."

"No--I