with acuteness.

"Oh we're past saving, if that's what you mean!" Vanderbank laughed.

"You don't care, you don't care!" his guest repeated, "and--if I may be
frank with you--I shouldn't wonder if it were rather a pity."

"A pity I don't care?"

"You ought to, you ought to." And Mr. Longdon paused. "May I say all I
think?"

"I assure you _I_ shall! You're awfully interesting."

"So are you, if you come to that. It's just what I've had in my head.
There's something I seem to make out in you--!" He abruptly dropped
this, however, going on in another way. "I remember the rest of you, but
why did I never see YOU?"

"I must have been at school--at college. Perhaps you did know my
brothers, elder and younger."

"There was a boy with your mother at Malvern. I was near her there for
three months in--what WAS the year?"

"Yes, I know," Vanderbank replied while his guest tried to fix the date.
"It was my brother Miles. He was awfully clever, but had no health,
poor chap, and we lost him at seventeen. She used to take houses at such
places with him--it was supposed to be for his benefit."

Mr. Longdon listened with a visible recovery. "He used to talk to me--I
remember he asked me questions I couldn't answer and made me dreadfully
ashamed. But I lent him books--partly, upon my honour, to make him think
that as I had them I did know something. He read everything and had a
lot to say about it. I used to tell your mother he had a great future."

Vanderbank shook his head sadly and kindly. "So he had. And you remember
Nancy, who was handsome and who was usually with them?" he went on.

Mr. Longdon looked so uncertain that he explained he meant his other
sister; on which his companion said: "Oh her? Yes, she was charming--she
evidently had a future too."

"Well, she's in the midst of her future now. She's married."

"And whom did she marry?"

"A fellow called Toovey. A man in the City."

"Oh!" said Mr. Longdon a little blankly. Then as if to retrieve his
blankness: "But why do you call her Nancy? Wasn't her name Blanche?"

"Exactly--Blanche Bertha Vanderbank."

Mr. Longdon looked half-mystified and half-distressed. "And now she's
Nancy Toovey?"

Vanderbank broke into laughter at his dismay. "That's what every one
calls her."

"But why?"

"Nobody knows. You see you were right about her future."

Mr. Longdon gave another of his soft smothered sighs; he had turned back
again to the first photograph, which he l