s. Brook sadly brought forth.

"I know what you mean by that," he rejoined in a moment. "You mean I'm
hypocritical."

"Hypocritical?"

"I'm diplomatic and calculating--I don't show him how bad I am; whereas
with you he knows the worst."

Of this observation Mrs. Brook, whose eyes attached themselves again
to Mr. Longdon, took at first no further notice than might have been
indicated by the way it set her musing.

"'Calculating'?"--she at last took him up. "On what is there to
calculate?"

"Why," said Vanderbank, "if, as you just hinted, he's a blessing
in disguise--! I perfectly admit," he resumed, "that I'm capable of
sacrifices to keep on good terms with him."

"You're not afraid he'll bore you?"

"Oh yes--distinctly."

"But he'll be worth it? Then," Mrs. Brook said as he appeared to assent,
"he'll be worth a great deal." She continued to watch Mr. Longdon, who,
without his glasses, stared straight at the floor while Mr. Cashmore
talked to him. She pursued, however, dispassionately enough: "He must be
of a narrowness--!"

"Oh beautiful!"

She was silent again. "I shall broaden him. YOU won't."

"Heaven forbid!" Vanderbank heartily concurred. "But none the less, as
I've said, I'll help you."

Her attention was still fixed. "It will be him you'll help. If you're to
make sacrifices to keep on good terms with him the first sacrifice will
be of me." Then on his leaving this remark so long unanswered that she
had finally looked at him again: "I'm perfectly prepared for it."

It was as if, jocosely enough, he had had time to make up his mind how
to meet her. "What will you have--when he loved my mother?"

Nothing could have been droller than the gloom of her surprise. "Yours
too?"

"I didn't tell you the other day--out of delicacy."

Mrs. Brookenham darkly thought. "HE didn't tell me either."

"The same consideration deterred him. But if I didn't speak of it,"
Vanderbank continued, "when I arranged with you, after meeting him here
at dinner, that you should come to tea with him at my rooms--if I didn't
mention it then it wasn't because I hadn't learnt it early."

Mrs. Brook more deeply sounded this affair, but she spoke with the
exaggerated mildness that was the form mostly taken by her gaiety. "It
was because of course it makes him out such a wretch! What becomes in
that case of his loyalty?"

"To YOUR mother's memory? Oh it's all right--he has it quite straight.
She came later. Mine, after my fat