tor to whom Mrs. Brook had
on some occasion dropped "DO come." But there was something perhaps more
expressly conciliatory in the way she had kept everything on: as if, in
particular serenity and to confirm kindly Mrs. Brook's sense of what had
been done for her, she had neither taken off her great feathered hat nor
laid down her parasol of pale green silk, the "match" of hat and ribbons
and which had an expensive precious knob. Our spectator would possibly
have found too much earnestness in her face to be sure if there was also
candour. "And do you mean that YOU have had to pay--?"

"Oh yes--all the while." With this Mrs. Brook was a little short, and
also as she added as if to banish a slight awkwardness: "But don't let
it discourage you."

Nanda seemed an instant to weigh the advice, and the whole thing would
have been striking as another touch in the picture of the odd want, on
the part of each, of any sense of levity in the other. Whatever escape,
face to face, mother or daughter might ever seek would never be the
humorous one--a circumstance, notwithstanding, that would not in every
case have failed to make their interviews droll for a third person. It
would always indeed for such a person have produced an impression of
tension beneath the surface. "I could have done much better at the start
and have lost less time," the girl at last said, "if I hadn't had the
drawback of not really remembering Granny."

"Oh well, _I_ remember her!" Mrs. Brook moaned with an accent that
evidently struck her the next moment as so much out of place that she
slightly deflected. She took Nanda's parasol and held it as if--a more
delicate thing much than any one of hers--she simply liked to have it.
"Her clothes--at your age at least--must have been hideous. Was it at
the place he took you to that he gave you tea?" she then went on.

"Yes, at the Museum. We had an orgy in the refreshment-room. But he took
me afterwards to Tishy's, where we had another."

"He went IN with you?" Mrs. Brook had suddenly flashed into eagerness.

"Oh yes--I made him."

"He didn't want to?"

"On the contrary--very much. But he doesn't do everything he wants,"
said Nanda.

Mrs. Brook seemed to wonder. "You mean you've also to want it?"

"Oh no--THAT isn't enough. What I suppose I mean," Nanda continued, "is
that he doesn't do anything he doesn't want. But he does quite enough,"
she added.

"And who then was at Tishy's?"

"Oh poor old Tish herse