Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/198

THE AWKWARD AGE all the Courts of Europe'—who left him a large fortune, which had been made, I believe, in the most extraordinary way, in building-speculations as well."

"Oh yes, I know. It's astonishing!" her companion sighed.

"That he should be of such extraction?"

"Well, everything. That you should be talking as you are—that you should have 'watched life,' as you say, to such purpose. That we should any of us be here—most of all that Mr. Mitchett himself should. That your grandmother's daughter should have brought her daughter—"

"To stay with a person"—Nanda took it up as, apparently out of delicacy, he fairly failed—"whose father used to take the measure, down on his knees on a little mat, as mamma says, of my grandfather's remarkably large foot? Yes, we none of us mind. Do you think we should?" Nanda asked.

Mr. Longdon turned it over. "I'll answer you by a question. Would you marry him?"

"Never." Then as if to show there was no weakness in her mildness, "Never, never, never," she repeated.

"And yet I dare say you know—?" But Mr. Longdon once more faltered; his scruple came uppermost. "You don't mind my speaking of it?"

"Of his thinking he wants to marry me? Not a bit. I positively enjoy telling you there's nothing in it."

"Not even for him?"

Nanda considered. "Not more than is made up to him by his having found out, through talk and things—which mightn't otherwise have occurred—that I do like him. I wouldn't have come down here if I hadn't."

"Not for any other reason?" Mr. Longdon gravely inquired.

"Not for your being here, do you mean?"

He hesitated. "Me and other persons." 188