Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/171

BOOK FOURTH: MR. CASHMORE Aggie, and won't he find it interesting to talk about all that sort of thing with the Duchess?"

Vanderbank came back laughing, but Mr. Longdon anticipated his reply. "What sort of thing do you mean?"

"Oh," said Mrs. Brook, "the whole question, don't you know? of bringing girls forward or not. The question of—well, what do you call it?—their exposure. It's the question, it appears—the question of the future; it's awfully interesting, and the Duchess, at any rate, is great on it. Nanda, of course, is exposed,'" Mrs. Brook pursued—"fearfully."

"And what on earth is she exposed to?" Mr. Cashmore gaily demanded.

"She's exposed to you, it would seem, my dear fellow!" Vanderbank spoke with a certain discernible impatience not so much of the fact he mentioned as of the turn of their talk. It might have been in almost compassionate deprecation of this weak note that Mrs. Brookenham looked at him. Her reply to Mr. Cashmere's question, however, was uttered at Mr. Longdon. "She's exposed—it's much worse—to me. But Aggie isn't exposed to anything—never has been and never is to be; and we're watching to see if the Duchess can carry it through."

"Why not," asked Mr. Cashmore, "if there's nothing she can be exposed to but the Duchess herself?"

He had appealed to his companions impartially, but Mr. Longdon, whose attention was now all for his hostess, appeared unconscious. "If you're all watching, is it your idea that I should watch with you?"

The inquiry, on his lips, was a waft of cold air, the sense of which clearly led Mrs. Brook to put her invitation on the right ground. "Not, of course, on the chance of anything's happening to the dear child—to whom nothing, obviously, can happen but that her aunt will 161