ll be at peace. Go, little heart," she continued to the child,
"but leave me your book to look over again. I don't know that I'm quite
sure!" She sent them off together, but had a grave protest as her friend
put out his hand for the volume. "No, Petherton--not for books; for her
reading I can't say I do trust you. But for everything else--quite!" she
declared to Mr. Longdon with a look of conscientious courage as their
companion withdrew. "I do believe," she pursued in the same spirit, "in
a certain amount of intelligent confidence. Really nice men are steadied
by the sense of your having had it. But I wouldn't," she added gaily,
"trust him all round!"

IV

Many things at Mertle were strange for her interlocutor, but nothing
perhaps as yet had been so strange as the sight of this arrangement for
little Aggie's protection; an arrangement made in the interest of her
remaining as a young person of her age and her monde--so her aunt would
have put it--should remain. The strangest part of the impression too
was that the provision might really have its happy side and his lordship
understand definitely better than any one else his noble friend's whole
theory of perils and precautions. The child herself, the spectator of
the incident was sure enough, understood nothing; but the understandings
that surrounded her, filling all the air, made it a heavier compound to
breathe than any Mr. Longdon had yet tasted. This heaviness had grown
for him through the long sweet summer day, and there was something in
his at last finding himself ensconced with the Duchess that made it
supremely oppressive. The contact was one that, none the less, he would
not have availed himself of a decent pretext to avoid. With so many
fine mysteries playing about him there was relief, at the point he had
reached, rather than alarm, in the thought of knowing the worst; which
it pressed upon him somehow that the Duchess must not only altogether
know but must in any relation quite naturally communicate. It fluttered
him rather that a person who had an understanding with Lord Petherton
should so single him out as to wish for one also with himself; such a
person must either have great variety of mind or have a wonderful idea
of HIS variety. It was true indeed that Mr. Mitchett must have the most
extraordinary understanding, and yet with Mr. Mitchett he now found
himself quite pleasantly at his ease. Their host, however, was a person
sui generis, whom he had