Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/191

BOOK FIFTH: THE DUCHESS "Ah," their companion laughed, "you two are the crowd!"

"Well—have your tea first."

Vanderbank, on this, giving it up with his laugh, offered to Mr. Longdon, before withdrawing, the handshake of greeting he had omitted—a demonstration really the warmer for the tone of the joke that went with it. "Intrigant!"

 XVII

Nanda praised to Mr. Longdon the charming spot she had quitted, with the effect that they presently took a fresh possession of it, finding the beauty of the view deepened as the afternoon grew old and the shadows long. They were of a comfortable agreement on these matters, by which, moreover, they were not long delayed, one of the pair at least being too conscious, for the hour, of still other phenomena than the natural and peaceful process that filled the air. "Well, you must tell me about these things," Mr. Longdon sociably said: he had joined his young friend with a budget of impressions rapidly gathered at the house; as to which his appeal to her for a light or two may be taken as the measure of the confidence now ruling their relations. He had come to feel at last, he mentioned, that he could allow for most differences; yet in such a situation as the present bewilderment could only come back. There were no differences in the world—so it had all ended for him—but those that marked at every turn the manners he had for three months been observing in good society. The general wide deviation of this body occupied his mind to the exclusion of almost everything else, and he had finally been brought to believe that even in his slow-paced prime he must have hung behind his contemporaries. He had 181