kept off--Nanda began
definitely to 'sit'; to be there and look, by the tea-table, modestly
and conveniently abstracted."

"I beg your pardon--I don't think she looks that, Duchess," Mr. Longdon
lucidly broke in. How much she had carried him with her in spite of
himself was betrayed by the very terms of his dissent. "I don't think it
would strike any one that she looks 'convenient.'"

His companion, laughing, gave a shrug. "Try her and perhaps you'll find
her so!" But his objection had none the less pulled her up a little. "I
don't say she's a hypocrite, for it would certainly be less decent for
her to giggle and wink. It's Mrs. Brook's theory moreover, isn't it?
that she has, from five to seven at least, lowered the pitch. Doesn't
she pretend that she bears in mind every moment the tiresome difference
made by the presence of sweet virginal eighteen?"

"I haven't, I'm afraid, a notion of what she pretends!"

Mr. Longdon had spoken with a curtness to which his friend's particular
manner of overlooking it only added significance. "They've become," she
pursued, "superficial or insincere or frivolous, but at least they've
become, with the way the drag's put on, quite as dull as other people."

He showed no sign of taking this up; instead of it he said abruptly:
"But if it isn't Mr. Mitchett's own idea?"

His fellow visitor barely hesitated. "It would be his own if he were
free--and it would be Lord Petherton's FOR him. I mean by his being free
Nanda's becoming definitely lost to him. Then it would be impossible
for Mrs. Brook to continue to persuade him, as she does now, that by a
waiting game he'll come to his chance. His chance will cease to exist,
and he wants so, poor darling, to marry. You've really now seen my
niece," she went on. "That's another reason why I hold you can help me."

"Yes--I've seen her."

"Well, there she is." It was as if in the pause that followed this they
sat looking at little absent Aggie with a wonder that was almost equal.
"The good God has given her to me," the Duchess said at last.

"It seems to me then that she herself is, in her remarkable loveliness,
really your help."

"She'll be doubly so if you give me proofs that you believe in her." And
the Duchess, appearing to consider that with this she had made herself
clear and her interlocutor plastic, rose in confident majesty. "I leave
it to you."

Mr. Longdon did the same, but with more consideration now. "Is it your
expectation