Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/100

THE AWKWARD AGE reflection, "if you're so rash as to ask me in any of these connections for my 'real' impression, you deserve whatever you may get." The penalty Mitchy had incurred was apparently grave enough to make his companion just falter in the infliction of it; which gave him the opportunity of replying that the little person was perhaps not more preposterous than any one else, that there was something in her he rather liked, and that there were many different ways in which a woman could be interesting. This further levity it was, therefore, that laid him fully open. "Do you mean to say you've been living with Petherton so long without becoming aware that he's shockingly worried?"

"My dear Duchess," Mitchy smiled, "Petherton carries his worries with a bravery! They're so many that I've long since ceased to count them; and, in general, I've been disposed to let those pass that I can't help him to meet. You've made, I judge," he went on, "a better use of opportunities perhaps not so good—such as, at any rate, enables you to see further than I into the meaning of the impatience he just now expressed."

The Duchess was admirable, in conversation, for neglecting everything not essential to her present plausibility. "A woman like Lady Fanny can have no 'grounds' for anything—for any indignation, I mean, or for any revenge worth twopence. In this particular case, at all events, they've been sacrificed with such extravagance that, as an injured wife, she hasn't had the gumption to keep back an inch or two to stand on. She can do absolutely nothing."

"Then you take the view—?" Mitchy, who had, after all, his delicacies, pulled up as at sight of a name.

"I take the view," said the Duchess, "and I know exactly why. Elle se les passe—her little fancies! She's a phenomenon, poor dear. And all with—what shall I call it?—the absence of haunting remorse of a good 90