Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/224

THE AWKWARD AGE so many. But we must move fast," she added more sharply.

"What do you mean by fast?"

"What should I mean but what I say? If Nanda doesn't get a husband early in the business—"

"Well?" said Mr. Longdon, as she appeared to pause with the weight of her idea.

"Why, she won't get one late—she won't get one at all. One, I mean, of the kind she'll take. She'll have been in it long for their taste."

She had moved, looking off and about her—little Aggie always on her mind—to the flight of steps, where she again hung fire; and had really succeeded in producing in him the manner of keeping up with her to challenge her. "Been in what?"

She went down a few steps while he stood with his face full of perceptions strained and scattered. " Why, in the mal' aria they themselves have made for her!"

 XX

Late that night, in the smoking-room at Mertle, as the smokers—talkers and listeners alike—were about to disperse, Mr. Longdon asked Vanderbank to stay, and then it was that the young man, to whom all the evening he had not addressed a word, could make out why, a little unnaturally, he had prolonged his vigil. "I've something particular to say to you, and I've been waiting. I hope you don't mind. It's rather important." Vanderbank expressed on the spot the liveliest desire to oblige him and, quickly lighting another cigarette, mounted again to the deep divan with which a part of the place was furnished. The smoking-room at Mertle was not unworthy of the general nobleness, and the fastidious spectator had clearly been reckoned on in the great  214