Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/183

BOOK FIFTH: THE DUCHESS the girl said, "and the first thing you do is to find me waylaying you in the depths of the forest. But I really couldn't— if you'll reflect upon it—know you were coming this way."

Vanderbank sat there with his position unchanged, but with a constant little shake in the foot that hung down, as if everything—and what she now put before him not least—was much too pleasant to be reflected on. "May I smoke a cigarette?"

Nanda waited a little; her friend had taken out his silver case, which was of ample form, and as he extracted a cigarette she put forth her hand. "May I?" She turned the case over with admiration.

Vanderbank hesitated. "Do you smoke with Mr. Longdon?"

"Immensely. But what has that to do with it?"

"Everything, everything." He spoke with a faint ring of impatience. "I want you to do with me exactly as you do with him."

"Ah, that's soon said!" the girl replied in a peculiar tone. "How do you mean, to 'do'?"

"Well then, to be. What shall I say?" Vanderbank pleasantly wondered while his foot kept up its motion. "To feel."

She continued to handle the cigarette-case, without, however, having profited by its contents. "I don't think that, as regards Mr. Longdon and me, you know quite so much as you suppose."

Vanderbank laughed and smoked. "I take for granted he tells me everything."

"Ah, but you scarcely take for granted I do!" She rubbed her cheek an instant with the polished silver, again, the next moment, turning over the case. "This is the kind of one I should like."

Her companion glanced down at it. "Why, it holds twenty." 173