imagine the force of the blow for him was just in the other
reason."

"Well, it would have been in that one just as much if that one had been
the other." Mrs. Brook was sagacious, though a trifle obscure, and she
pursued the next moment: "Mamma was so sincere. The fortune was nothing
to her. That shows it was immense."

"It couldn't have been as great as your logic," Vanderbank smiled; "but
of course if it has been growing ever since--!"

"I can see it grow while he sits there," Mrs. Brook declared. But her
logic had in fact its own law, and her next transition was an equal
jump. "It was too lovely, the frankness of your admission a minute ago
that I affect him uncannily. Ah don't spoil it by explanations!" she
beautifully pleaded: "he's not the first and he won't be the last with
whom I shall not have been what they call a combination. The only thing
that matters is that I mustn't, if possible, make the case worse. So you
must guide me. What IS one to do?"

Vanderbank, now amused again, looked at her kindly. "Be yourself, my
dear woman. Obey your fine instincts."

"How can you be," she sweetly asked, "so hideously hypocritical? You
know as well as you sit there that my fine instincts are the thing in
the world you're most in terror of. 'Be myself?'" she echoed. "What
you'd LIKE to say is: 'Be somebody else--that's your only chance.' Well,
I'll try--I'll try."

He laughed again, shaking his head. "Don't--don't."

"You mean it's too hopeless? There's no way of effacing the bad
impression or of starting a good one?" On this, with a drop of his
mirth, he met her eyes, and for an instant, through the superficial
levity of their talk, they might have appeared to sound each other. It
lasted till Mrs. Brook went on: "I should really like not to lose him."

Vanderbank seemed to understand and at last said: "I think you won't
lose him."

"Do you mean you'll help me, Van, you WILL?" Her voice had at moments
the most touching tones of any in England, and humble, helpless,
affectionate, she spoke with a familiarity of friendship. "It's for the
sense of the link with mamma," she explained. "He's simply full of her."

"Oh I know. He's prodigious."

"He has told you more--he comes back to it?" Mrs. Brook eagerly asked.

"Well," the young man replied a trifle evasively, "we've had a great
deal of talk, and he's the jolliest old boy possible, and in short I
like him."

"I see," said Mrs. Brook blandly, "and he likes you