Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/217

BOOK FIFTH: THE DUCHESS it, I should know exactly from what. But why differ about reasons," she asked, "when we're at one about the fact? I don't mention the greatest of Vanderbank's merits," she added—"his having so delicious a friend. By whom, let me hasten to assure you," she laughed, "I don't in the least mean Mrs. Brook! She is delicious, if you like, but believe me when I tell you, caro mio—if you need to be told—that for effective action on him you're worth twenty of her."

What was most visible in Mr. Longdon was that, however it came to him, he had rarely before, all at once, had so much given him to think about. Again the only way to manage was to take what came uppermost. "By effective action you mean action on the matter of his proposing for Nanda?"

The Duchess's assent was noble. "You can make him propose—you can make, I mean, a sure thing of it. You can doter the bride." Then as with the impulse to meet benevolently and more than half-way her companion's imperfect apprehension: "You can settle on her something that will make her a parti." His apprehension was perhaps imperfect, but it could still lead somehow to his flushing all over, and this demonstration the Duchess as quickly took into account. "Poor Edward, you know, won't give her a penny."

Decidedly, she went fast, but Mr. Longdon, in a moment, had caught up. "Mr. Vanderbank—your idea is—would require on the part of his wife something of that sort?"

"Pray, who wouldn't—in the world we all move in—require it quite as much? Mr. Vanderbank, I'm assured, has no means of his own at all, and if he doesn't believe in impecunious marriages it's not I who shall be shocked at him. For myself, I simply despise them. He has nothing but a poor official salary. If it's enough for one, it would be little for two, and would be still less for half 207