Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/155

BOOK FOURTH: MR. CASHMORE this time, so well. I only want, Heaven help me, to be as nice to him as I possibly can."

"That's quite the best thing for you and altogether why, this afternoon, I brought him: he might have better luck in finding you—it was he who suggested it—than he has had by himself. I'm in a general way," Vanderbank added, "watching over him."

"I see—and he's watching over you." Mrs. Brook's lovely vacancy had already taken in so much. "He wants to judge of what I may be doing to you—he wants to save you from me. He quite detests me."

Vanderbank, with the interest as well as the amusement, fairly threw himself back. "There's nobody like you—you're too magnificent!"

"I am; and that I can look the truth in the face and not be angry or silly about it is, as you know, the one thing in the world for which I think a bit well of myself."

"Oh yes, I know—I know; you're too wonderful!"

Mrs. Brookenham, in a brief pause, completed her consciousness. "They're doing beautifully—he's taking Cashmore with a seriousness!"

"And with what is Cashmore taking him?"

"With the hope that, from one moment to another, Nanda may come in."

"But how on earth does that concern him?"

"Through an extraordinary fancy he has suddenly taken to her." Mrs. Brook had been swift to master the facts. "He has been meeting her at Tishy's, and she has talked to him so effectually about his behavior that she has quite made him cease to think about Carrie. He prefers her now—and of course she's much nicer."

Vanderbank's attention, it was clear, had now been fully seized. "She's much nicer. Rather! What you mean is," he asked the next moment, "that Nanda, this afternoon, has been the object of his call?"

"Yes—really; though he tried to keep it from me. 145