Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/105

BOOK SECOND: LITTLE AGGIE "Oh, oh, oh!" her interlocutor laughed.

"I must have Mitchy," she went on without noticing his particular shade of humor.

"Mitchy too?"—he appeared to wish to leave her in no doubt of it.

"How low you are!" she simply said. "There are times when I despair of you. He's in every way your superior, and I like him so that—well, he must like her. Make him feel that he does."

Lord Petherton turned it over as something put to him practically. "I could wish for him that he would. I see in her possibilities!" he continued to laugh.

"I dare say you do. I see them in Mitchett, and I trust you'll understand me when I say that I appeal to you."

"Appeal to him straight. That's much better," Petherton lucidly observed.

The Duchess wore for a moment her proudest air, which made her, in the connection, exceptionally gentle. "He doesn't like me."

Her interlocutor looked at her with all his bright brutality. "Oh, my dear, I can speak for you—if that's what you want!"

The Duchess met his eyes, and so, for an instant, they sounded each other. "You're so abysmally coarse that I often wonder—" But, as the door reopened, she caught herself. It was the effect of a face apparently directed at her. "Be quiet. Here's Edward."