nd she has
come back here to live."

"Gloomily, I should think--after Naples?" Mr. Longdon threw out.

"Oh it would take more than even a Neapolitan past--! However"--and the
young man caught himself up--"she lives not in what's behind her, but in
what's before--she lives in her precious little Aggie."

"Little Aggie?" Mr. Longdon risked a cautious interest.

"I don't take a liberty there," Vanderbank smiled: "I speak only of the
young Agnesina, a little girl, the Duchess's niece, or rather I believe
her husband's, whom she has adopted--in the place of a daughter early
lost--and has brought to England to marry."

"Ah to some great man of course!"

Vanderbank thought. "I don't know." He gave a vague but expressive sigh.
"She's rather lovely, little Aggie."

Mr. Longdon looked conspicuously subtle. "Then perhaps YOU'RE the man!"

"Do I look like a 'great' one?" Vanderbank broke in.

His visitor, turning away from him, again embraced the room. "Oh dear,
yes!"

"Well then, to show how right you are, there's the young lady." He
pointed to an object on one of the tables, a small photograph with a
very wide border of something that looked like crimson fur.

Mr. Longdon took up the picture; he was serious now. "She's very
beautiful--but she's not a little girl."

"At Naples they develop early. She's only seventeen or eighteen, I
suppose; but I never know how old--or at least how young--girls are, and
I'm not sure. An aunt, at any rate, has of course nothing to conceal.
She IS extremely pretty--with extraordinary red hair and a complexion to
match; great rarities I believe, in that race and latitude. She gave me
the portrait--frame and all. The frame is Neapolitan enough and little
Aggie's charming." Then Vanderbank subjoined: "But not so charming as
little Nanda."

"Little Nanda?--have you got HER?" The old man was all eagerness.

"She's over there beside the lamp--also a present from the original."

II

Mr. Longdon had gone to the place--little Nanda was in glazed white
wood. He took her up and held her out; for a moment he said nothing,
but presently, over his glasses, rested on his host a look intenser
even than his scrutiny of the faded image. "Do they give their portraits
now?"

"Little girls--innocent lambs? Surely--to old friends. Didn't they in
your time?"

Mr. Longdon studied the portrait again; after which, with an exhalation
of something between superiority and regret, "They never did to me