Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/158

THE AWKWARD AGE Mrs. Brook meanwhile had thought it out. "Then he has something to be careful of; it would take something really handsome to inspire in a man like him that sort of interest. With his small expenses all these years, his savings must be immense. And how could he have proposed to mamma unless he had originally had money?"

If Vanderbank hesitated he also laughed. "You must remember your mother refused him."

"Ah, but not because there was not enough."

"No—I imagine the force of the blow, for him, was just in the other reason."

"Well, it would have been in that one, just as much, if that one had been the other." Mrs. Brook was sagacious, though a trifle obscure, and she pursued the next moment: "Mamma was so sincere. The fortune was nothing to her. That shows it was immense."

"It couldn't have been as great as your logic," Vanderbank smiled; "but of course if it has been growing ever since—!"

"I can see it grow while he sits there," Mrs. Brook declared. But her logic had in fact its own law, and her next transition was an equal jump. "It was too lovely, the frankness of your admission a minute ago that I affect him uncannily. Ah, don't spoil it by explanations!" she beautifully pleaded; "he's not the first and he won't be the last with whom I shall not have been what they call a combination. The only thing that matters is that I shouldn't, if possible, make the case worse. So you must guide me. What is one to do?"

Vanderbank, now amused again, looked at her kindly. "Be yourself, my dear woman. Obey your fine instincts."

"How can you be," she sweetly asked, "so hideously hypocritical? You know as well as you sit there that my fine instincts are the thing in the world you're most in terror of. 'Be myself?" she echoed. "What you 148