e had given Mr. Longdon her hand. "Well, in any case
the child SHALL soon come to you. And oh alone," she insisted: "you
needn't make phrases--I know too well what I'm about."

"One hopes really you do," pursued the unquenched Mr. Cashmore.

"If that's what one gets by having known your mother--!"

"It wouldn't have helped YOU" Mrs. Brook retorted. "And won't you have
to say it's ALL you were to get?" she pityingly murmured to her other
visitor.

He turned to Vanderbank with a strange gasp, and that comforter said
"Come!"

BOOK FIFTH. THE DUCHESS

The lower windows of the great white house, which stood high and
square, opened to a wide flagged terrace, the parapet of which, an old
balustrade of stone, was broken in the middle of its course by a flight
of stone steps that descended to a wonderful garden. The terrace had the
afternoon shade and fairly hung over the prospect that dropped away and
circled it--the prospect, beyond the series of gardens, of scattered
splendid trees and green glades, an horizon mainly of woods. Nanda
Brookenham, one day at the end of July, coming out to find the place
unoccupied as yet by other visitors, stood there a while with an air
of happy possession. She moved from end to end of the terrace, pausing,
gazing about her, taking in with a face that showed the pleasure of a
brief independence the combination of delightful things--of old rooms
with old decorations that gleamed and gloomed through the high windows,
of old gardens that squared themselves in the wide angles of old walls,
of wood-walks rustling in the afternoon breeze and stretching away
to further reaches of solitude and summer. The scene had an expectant
stillness that she was too charmed to desire to break; she watched it,
listened to it, followed with her eyes the white butterflies among the
flowers below her, then gave a start as the cry of a peacock came to
her from an unseen alley. It set her after a minute into less difficult
motion; she passed slowly down the steps, wandering further, looking
back at the big bright house but pleased again to see no one else
appear. If the sun was still high enough she had a pink parasol. She
went through the gardens one by one, skirting the high walls that were
so like "collections" and thinking how, later on, the nectarines and
plums would flush there. She exchanged a friendly greeting with a man
at work, passed through an open door and, turning this way and that,
finally fo