Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/101

BOOK SECOND: LITTLE AGGIE who makes the family accounts balance. She looks—and it's what they love her for here when they say 'Watch her now!'—like an angry saint; but she's neither a saint, nor, to be perfectly fair to her, really angry at all. She has only just enough reflection to make out that it may some day be a little better for her that her husband shall, on his side too, have committed himself; and she's only, in secret, too pleased to be sure whom it has been with. All the same I must tell you," the Duchess still more crisply added, "that our little friend Nanda is of the opinion—which I gather her to be quite ready to defend—that Lady Fanny is wrong."

Poor Mitchy found himself staring. "But what has our little friend Nanda to do with it?"

"What indeed, bless her heart? If you will ask questions, however, you must take, as I say, your risks. There are days when, between you all, you stupefy me. One of them was when I happened, about a month ago, to make some allusion to the charming example of Mr. Cashmore's fine taste that we have there before us: what was my surprise at the tone taken by Mrs. Brook to deny, on this little lady's behalf, the soft impeachment? It was quite a mistake that anything had happened—Mrs. Donner had pulled through unscathed. She had been but a day or two, at the most, in danger, for her family and friends—the best influences—had rallied to her support: the flurry was all over. She was now perfectly safe. Do you think she looks so?" the Duchess asked.

This was not a point that Mitchy was conscious of freedom of mind to examine. "Do I understand you that Nanda was her mother's authority—?"

"For the exact shade of the intimacy of the two friends and the state of Mrs. Brook's information? Precisely—it was 'the latest before going to press.' 'Our own correspondent!' Her mother quoted her." 91