ucation." Then she appealed
to Vanderbank. "Won't Mr. Longdon be struck with little Aggie and won't
he find it interesting to talk about all that sort of thing with the
Duchess?"

Vanderbank came back laughing, but Mr. Longdon anticipated his reply.
"What sort of thing do you mean?"

"Oh," said Mrs. Brook, "the whole question, don't you know? of bringing
girls forward or not. The question of--well, what do you call it?--their
exposure. It's THE question, it appears--the question--of the future;
it's awfully interesting and the Duchess at any rate is great on it.
Nanda of course is exposed," Mrs. Brook pursued--"fearfully."

"And what on earth is she exposed to?" Mr. Cashmore gaily demanded.

"She's exposed to YOU, it would seem, my dear fellow!" Vanderbank
spoke with a certain discernible impatience not so much of the fact he
mentioned as of the turn of their talk.

It might have been in almost compassionate deprecation of this weak
note that Mrs. Brookenham looked at him. Her own reply to Mr. Cashmere's
question, however, was uttered at Mr. Longdon. "She's exposed--it's much
worse--to ME. But Aggie isn't exposed to anything--never has been and
never is to be; and we're watching to see if the Duchess can carry it
through."

"Why not," asked Mr. Cashmore, "if there's nothing she CAN be exposed to
but the Duchess herself?"

He had appealed to his companions impartially, but Mr. Longdon, whose
attention was now all for his hostess, appeared unconscious. "If you're
all watching is it your idea that I should watch WITH you?"

The enquiry, on his lips, was a waft of cold air, the sense of which
clearly led Mrs. Brook to put her invitation on the right ground. "Not
of course on the chance of anything's happening to the dear child--to
whom nothing obviously CAN happen but that her aunt will marry her off
in the shortest possible time and in the best possible conditions. No,
the interest is much more in the way the Duchess herself steers."

"Ah, she's in a boat," Mr. Cashmore fully concurred, "that will take a
good bit of that."

It is not for Mr. Longdon's historian to overlook that if he was, not
unnaturally, mystified he was yet also visibly interested. "What boat is
she in?"

He had addressed his curiosity, with politeness, to Mr. Cashmore, but
they were all arrested by the wonderful way in which Mrs. Brook managed
to smile at once very dimly, very darkly, and yet make it take them all
in. "I think YOU must tel