at anybody else. He takes every one in."

"Every one but you?"

"Oh I like him."

"My poor child, you're of a profundity!" Mr. Longdon murmured.

He spoke almost uneasily, but she was not too much alarmed to continue
lucid. "And he likes me, and I know just how much--and just how little.
He's the most generous man in the world. It pleases him to feel that
he's indifferent and splendid--there are so many things it makes up
to him for." The old man listened with attention, and his young friend
conscious of it, proceeded as on ground of which she knew every inch.
"He's the son, as you know, of a great bootmaker--'to all the Courts of
Europe'--who left him a large fortune, which had been made, I believe,
in the most extraordinary way, by building-speculations as well."

"Oh yes, I know. It's astonishing!" her companion sighed.

"That he should be of such extraction?"

"Well, everything. That you should be talking as you are--that you
should have 'watched life,' as you say, to such purpose. That we should
any of us be here--most of all that Mr. Mitchett himself should. That
your grandmother's daughter should have brought HER daughter--"

"To stay with a person"--Nanda took it up as, apparently out of
delicacy, he fairly failed--"whose father used to take the measure,
down on his knees on a little mat, as mamma says, of my grandfather's
remarkably large foot? Yes, we none of us mind. Do you think we should?"
Nanda asked.

Mr. Longdon turned it over. "I'll answer you by a question. Would you
marry him?"

"Never." Then as if to show there was no weakness in her mildness,
"Never, never, never," she repeated.

"And yet I dare say you know--?" But Mr. Longdon once more faltered; his
scruple came uppermost. "You don't mind my speaking of it?"

"Of his thinking he wants to marry me? Not a bit. I positively enjoy
telling you there's nothing in it."

"Not even for HIM?"

Nanda considered. "Not more than is made up to him by his having
found out through talks and things--which mightn't otherwise have
occurred--that I do like him. I wouldn't have come down here if I hadn't
liked him."

"Not for any other reason?"--Mr. Longdon put it gravely.

"Not for YOUR being here, do you mean?"

He delayed. "Me and other persons."

She showed somehow that she wouldn't flinch. "You weren't asked till
after he had made sure I'd come. We've become, you and I," she smiled,
"one of the couples who are invited together."

These we