Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/104

THE AWKWARD AGE that I adore her still more for keeping in such happy relations with you as enable me thus to meet you."

Mrs. Donner, overwhelmed, took flight with a nervous laugh, leaving Mr. Mitchett and the Duchess still confronted. Nothing had passed between the two ladies, yet it was as if there were a trace of something in the eyes of the elder, which, during a moment's silence, moved from the retreating visitor, now formally taken over at the door by Edward Brookenham, to Lady Fanny and her hostess, who, in spite of the embraces just performed, had again subsided together while Mrs. Brook gazed up in exalted intelligence. "It's a funny house," said the Duchess at last. "She makes me such a scene over my not bringing Aggie, and still more over my very faint hint of my reasons for it, that I fly off, in compunction, to do what I can, on the spot, to repair my excess of prudence. I reappear, panting, with my niece—and it's to this company I introduce her!"

Her companion looked at the charming child, to whom Lord Petherton was talking with evident kindness and gaiety—a conjunction that evidently excited Mitchy's interest. "May we then know her?" he asked with an effect of drollery. "May I—if he may?"

The Duchess's eyes, turned to him, had taken another light. He even gaped a little at their expression, which was, in a manner, carried out by her tone. "Go and talk to her, you perverse creature, and send him over to me." Lord Petherton, a minute later, had joined her; Brookenham had left the room with Mrs. Donner; his wife and Lady Fanny were still more closely engaged; and the young Agnesina, though visibly a little scared at Mitchy's queer countenance, had begun, after the fashion he had touched on to Mrs. Brook, politely to invoke the aid of the idea of habit. "Look here—you must help me," the Duchess said to Petherton. "You can, perfectly—and it's the first thing I've yet asked of you." 94