Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/203

BOOK FIFTH: THE DUCHESS words. Finally he brought out as if, though it was what he had been thinking of, her gesture had most determined him: "I wish immensely you'd get married!"

His tone betrayed so special a meaning that the words had a sound of suddenness; yet there was always in Nanda's face that odd preparedness of the young person who has unlearned surprise through the habit, in company, of studiously not compromising her innocence by blinking at things said. "How can I?" she asked, but appearing rather to take up the proposal than to put it by.

"Can't you, can't you?" He spoke pressingly and kept her hand. She shook her head slowly, markedly; on which he continued: "You don't do justice to Mr. Mitchy." She said nothing, but her look was there, and it made him resume: "Impossible?"

"Impossible."At this, letting her go, Mr. Longdon got up; he pulled out his watch. "We must go back." She had risen with him, and they stood face to face in the faded light while he slipped the watch away. "Well, that doesn't make me wish it any less."

"It's lovely of you to wish it, but I shall be one of the people who don't. I shall be at the end," said Nanda, "one of those who haven't."

"No, my child," he returned gravely—"you shall never be anything so sad."

"Why not—if you've been?"

He looked at her a little, quietly; then, putting out his hand, passed her own into his arm. "Exactly because I have."

 XVIII

"Would you," the Duchess said to him the next day, "be for five minutes awfully kind to my poor little niece?" The words were spoken in charming entreaty as he issued from the house late on the Sunday  193