like to if you dared or didn't fear I'd
be shocked. I CAN'T be shocked, but frankly I can't tell you either. The
situation belongs, I think, to an order I don't understand. I understand
either one thing or the other--I understand taking a man up or letting
him alone. But I don't really get at Mrs. Brook. You must judge at any
rate for yourself. Vanderbank could of course tell you if he would--but
it wouldn't be right that he should. So the one thing we have to do
with is that she's in fact against us. I can only work Mitchy through
Petherton, but Mrs. Brook can work him straight. On the other hand
that's the way you, my dear man, can work Vanderbank."

One thing evidently beyond the rest, as a result of this vivid
demonstration, disengaged itself to our old friend's undismayed sense,
but his consternation needed a minute or two to produce it. "I can
absolutely assure you that Mr. Vanderbank entertains no sentiment for
Mrs. Brookenham--!"

"That he may not keep under by just setting his teeth and holding on?
I never dreamed he does, and have nothing so alarming in store for
you--rassurez-vous bien!--as to propose that he shall be invited to sink
a feeling for the mother in order to take one up for the child. Don't,
please, flutter out of the whole question by a premature scare. I never
supposed it's he who wants to keep HER. He's not in love with her--be
comforted! But she's amusing--highly amusing. I do her perfect justice.
As your women go she's rare. If she were French she'd be a femme
d'esprit. She has invented a nuance of her own and she has done it all
by herself, for Edward figures in her drawing-room only as one of those
queer extinguishers of fire in the corridors of hotels. He's just a
bucket on a peg. The men, the young and the clever ones, find it a
house--and heaven knows they're right--with intellectual elbow-room,
with freedom of talk. Most English talk is a quadrille in a sentry-box.
You'll tell me we go further in Italy, and I won't deny it, but in Italy
we have the common sense not to have little girls in the room. The
young men hang about Mrs. Brook, and the clever ones ply her with
the uproarious appreciation that keeps her up to the mark. She's in a
prodigious fix--she must sacrifice either her daughter or what she once
called to me her intellectual habits. Mr. Vanderbank, you've seen for
yourself, is of these one of the most cherished, the most confirmed.
Three months ago--it couldn't be any longer