Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/157

BOOK FOURTH: MR. CASHMORE "Why should I? Not a jot. Carrie be hanged!"

"But it's for Fanny," Mrs. Brook protested. "If Carrie is rescued, it's a pretext the less for her." As the young man looked for an instant rather gloomily vague she softly quavered. "I suppose you don't positively want her to bolt?"

"To bolt?"

"Surely I've not to remind you at this time of day how Captain Dent-Douglas is always round the corner with the post-chaise, and how tight, on our side, we're all clutching her."

"But why not let her go?"

Mrs. Brook, at this, showed a sentiment more sharp. "'Go'? Then what would become of us?" She recalled his wandering fancy. "She's the delight of our life."

"Oh!" Vanderbank sceptically murmured.

"She's the ornament of our circle," his companion insisted. "She will, she won't—she won't, she will! It's the excitement, every day, of plucking the daisy over." Vanderbank's attention, as she spoke, had attached itself, across the room, to Mr. Longdon; it gave her thus an image of the way his imagination had just seemed to her to stray, and she saw a reason in it moreover for her coming up in another place. "Isn't he rather rich?" She allowed the question all its effect of abruptness.

Vanderbank looked round at her. "I haven't the least idea."

"Not after becoming so intimate? It's usually, with people, the very first thing I get my impression of." There came into her face, for another glance at their friend, no crudity of curiosity, but an expression more tenderly wistful. "He must have some mysterious box under his bed."

"Down in Suffolk?—a miser's hoard? Who knows? I dare say," Vanderbank went on. "He isn't a miser, but he strikes me as careful." 147