ed to appear to wonder. "'All'?"

"Nanda, Mrs. Brook, Mr. Longdon--!"

"And you. I see."

"Names of distinction. And all the others," Mitchy pursued, "that I
don't count."

"Oh you're the best."

"I?"

"You're the best," Vanderbank simply repeated. "It's at all events most
extraordinary," he declared. "But I make you out on the whole better
than I do Mr. Longdon."

"Ah aren't we very much the same--simple lovers of life? That is of that
finer essence of it which appeals to the consciousness--"

"The consciousness?"--his companion took up his hesitation.

"Well, enlarged and improved."

The words had made on Mitchy's lips an image by which his friend
appeared for a moment held. "One doesn't really know quite what to say
or to do."

"Oh you must take it all quietly. You're of a special class; one of
those who, as we said the other day--don't you remember?--are a
source of the sacred terror. People made in such a way must take the
consequences; just as people must take them," Mitchy went on, "who are
made as _I_ am. So cheer up!"

Mitchy, uttering this incitement, had moved to the empty chair by
the window, in which he presently was sunk; and it might have been in
emulation of his previous strolling and straying that Vanderbank himself
now began to revolve. The meditation he next threw out, however, showed
a certain resistance to Mitchy's advice. "I'm glad at any rate I don't
deprive her of a fortune."

"You don't deprive her of mine of course," Mitchy answered from the
chair; "but isn't her enjoyment of Mr. Longdon's at least a good deal
staked after all on your action?"

Vanderbank stopped short. "It's his idea to settle it ALL?"

Mitchy gave out his glare. "I thought you didn't 'care a hang.' I
haven't been here so long," he went on as his companion at first
retorted nothing, "without making up my mind for myself about his means.
He IS distinctly bloated."

It sent Vanderbank off again. "Oh well, she'll no more get all in the
one event than she'll get nothing in the other. She'll only get a sort
of provision. But she'll get that whatever happens."

"Oh if you're sure--!" Mitchy simply commented.

"I'm not sure, confound it!" Then--for his voice had been irritated--Van
spoke more quietly. "Only I see her here--though on his wish of
course--handling things quite as if they were her own and paying him a
visit without, apparently, any calculable end. What's that on HIS part
but a pledge?"

Oh Mitc