wonderful, and I'm intensely curious to hear you," the young man
pursued. "Were we absolutely odious?" Before his guest's puzzled,
finally almost pained face, such an air of appreciating so much candour,
yet of looking askance at so much freedom, he could only try to smooth
the way and light the subject. "You see we don't in the least know where
we are. We're lost--and you find us." Mr. Longdon, as he spoke, had
prepared at last really to go, reaching the door with a manner that
denoted, however, by no means so much satiety as an attention that felt
itself positively too agitated. Vanderbank had helped him on with the
Inverness cape and for an instant detained him by it. "Just tell me as a
kindness. DO we talk--"

"Too freely?" Mr. Longdon, with his clear eyes so untouched by time,
speculatively murmured.

"Too outrageously. I want the truth."

The truth evidently for Mr. Longdon was difficult to tell. "Well--it was
certainly different."

"From you and Lady Julia? I see. Well, of course with time SOME change
is natural, isn't it? But so different," Vanderbank pressed, "that you
were really shocked?"

His visitor smiled at this, but the smile somehow made the face graver.
"I think I was rather frightened. Good-night."

BOOK SECOND. LITTLE AGGIE

Mrs. Brookenham stopped on the threshold with the sharp surprise of the
sight of her son, and there was disappointment, though rather of the
afflicted than of the irritated sort, in the question that, slowly
advancing, she launched at him. "If you're still lolling about why did
you tell me two hours ago that you were leaving immediately?"

Deep in a large brocaded chair with his little legs stuck out to the
fire, he was so much at his ease that he was almost flat on his back.
She had evidently roused him from sleep, and it took him a couple
of minutes--during which, without again looking at him, she directly
approached a beautiful old French secretary, a fine piece of the period
of Louis Seize--to justify his presence. "I changed my mind. I couldn't
get off."

"Do you mean to say you're not going?"

"Well, I'm thinking it over. What's a fellow to do?" He sat up a little,
staring with conscious solemnity at the fire, and if it had been--as
it was not--one of the annoyances she in general expected from him,
she might have received the impression that his flush was the heat of
liquor.

"He's to keep out of the way," she returned--"when he has led one so
deeply