Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/132

THE AWKWARD AGE "On the contrary. But Lady Julia was gay!" he added, with an eagerness that made Vanderbank smile.

"I can also see that. Nanda doesn't joke. And yet," Vanderbank continued with his exemplary candor, "we mustn't speak of her, must we? as if she were bold and grim."

Mr. Longdon fixed him. "Do you think she's sad?"

They had preserved their dropped tone and might, with their heads together, have been conferring as the party "out" in some game with the couple in the other room. "Yes. Sad." But Vanderbank broke off. "I'll send her to you." Thus it was he had come back to her.

Nanda, on joining Mr. Longdon, went straight to the point. "He says it's so beautiful—what you feel on seeing me: if that is what he meant." The old man said nothing again, at first; he only smiled at her, but less strangely now, and then appeared to look about him for some place where she could sit near him. There was a sofa in this room too, on which, observing it, she quickly sank down, so that they were presently together, placed a little sideways and face to face. She had shown perhaps that she supposed him to have wished to take her hand, but he forbore to touch her, only letting her feel all the kindness of his eyes and their long, backward vision. These things she evidently felt soon enough; she went on before he had spoken. "I know how well you knew my grandmother. Mother has told me—and I'm so glad. She told me to say to you that she wants you to tell me." Just a shade, at this, might, over the old man's face, have appeared to drop; but who was there to detect whether the girl observed it? It didn't prevent, at any rate, her completing her statement. "That's why, to-day, she wished me to come alone. She wished you to have me, she said, all to yourself."

No, decidedly, she was not shy: that mute reflection 122