of Mrs. Brook and found Mrs. Brook herself in the state of
muffled exaltation that was the mark of all her intercourse--and most
of all perhaps of her farewells--with Lady Fanny. This splendid creature
gave out, as it were, so little that Vanderbank was freshly struck
with all Mrs. Brook could take in, though nothing, for that matter, in
Buckingham Crescent, had been more fully formulated on behalf of the
famous beauty than the imperturbable grandeur of her almost total
absence of articulation. Every aspect of the phenomenon had been freely
discussed there and endless ingenuity lavished on the question of how
exactly it was that so much of what the world would in another case have
called complete stupidity could be kept by a mere wonderful face from
boring one to death. It was Mrs. Brook who, in this relation as in many
others, had arrived at the supreme expression of the law, had thrown
off, happily enough, to whomever it might have concerned: "My dear
thing, it all comes back, as everything always does, simply to personal
pluck. It's only a question, no matter when or where, of having enough.
Lady Fanny has the courage of all her silence--so much therefore that
it sees her completely through and is what really makes her interesting.
Not to be afraid of what may happen to you when you've no more to say
for yourself than a steamer without a light--that truly is the highest
heroism, and Lady Fanny's greatness is that she's never afraid. She
takes the risk every time she goes out--takes, as you may say, her life
in her hand. She just turns that glorious mask upon you and practically
says: 'No, I won't open my lips--to call it really open--for the forty
minutes I shall stay; but I calmly defy you, all the same, to kill me
for it.' And we don't kill her--we delight in her; though when either of
us watches her in a circle of others it's like seeing a very large blind
person in the middle of Oxford Street. One fairly looks about for the
police." Vanderbank, before his fellow visitor withdrew it, had the
benefit of the glorious mask and could scarce have failed to be amused
at the manner in which Mrs. Brook alone showed the stress of thought.
Lady Fanny, in the other scale, sat aloft and Olympian, so that though
visibly much had happened between the two ladies it had all happened
only to the hostess. The sense in the air in short was just of Lady
Fanny herself, who came to an end like a banquet or a procession.
Mrs. Brook left t