l him, Van."

"Heaven forbid!"--and Van again retreated.

"I'LL tell him like a shot--if you really give me leave," said Mr.
Cashmore, for whom any scruple referred itself manifestly not to the
subject of the information but to the presence of a lady.

"I DON'T give you leave and I beg you'll hold your tongue," Mrs.
Brookenham returned. "You handle such matters with a minuteness--! In
short," she broke off to Mr. Longdon, "he would tell you a good
deal more than you'll care to know. She IS in a boat--but she's an
experienced mariner. Basta, as she would say. Do you know Mitchy?" Mrs.
Brook suddenly asked.

"Oh yes, he knows Mitchy"--Vanderbank had approached again.

"Then make HIM tell him"--she put it before the young man as a charming
turn for them all. "Mitchy CAN be refined when he tries."

"Oh dear--when Mitchy 'tries'!" Vanderbank laughed. "I think I should
rather, for the job, offer him to Mr. Longdon abandoned to his native
wild impulse."

"I LIKE Mr. Mitchett," the old man said, endeavouring to look his
hostess straight in the eye and speaking as if somewhat to defy her to
convict him, even from the point of view of Beccles, of a mistake.

Mrs. Brookenham took it with a wonderful bright emotion. "My dear
friend, vous me rendez la vie! If you can stand Mitchy you can stand any
of us!"

"Upon my honour I should think so!" Mr. Cashmore was eager to remark.
"What on earth do you mean," he demanded of Mrs. Brook, "by saying that
I'm more 'minute' than he?"

She turned her beauty an instant on this critic. "I don't say you're
more minute--I say he's more brilliant. Besides, as I've told you
before, you're not one of us." With which, as a check to further
discussion, she went straight on to Mr. Longdon: "The point about
Aggie's conservative education is the wonderful sincerity with which
the Duchess feels that one's girl may so perfectly and consistently be
hedged in without one's really ever (for it comes to that) depriving
one's own self--"

"Well, of what?" Mr. Longdon boldly demanded while his hostess appeared
thoughtfully to falter.

She addressed herself mutely to Vanderbank, in whom the movement
produced a laugh. "I defy you," he exclaimed, "to say!"

"Well, you don't defy ME!" Mr. Cashmore cried as Mrs. Brook failed to
take up the challenge. "If you know Mitchy," he went on to Mr. Longdon,
"you must know Petherton."

The elder man remained vague and not imperceptibly cold. "Petherton?"

"My