Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/233

BOOK FIFTH: THE DUCHESS "So much the better! Only"—Vanderbank suddenly pulled himself up—"to get it she must marry?"

"It's not in my interest to allow you to suppose she needn't, and it's only because of my intense wish for her marriage that I've spoken to you."

"And on the ground also, with it"—Vanderbank so far concurred—"of your quite taking for granted my only having to put myself forward?"

If his friend seemed to cast about, it proved but to be for the fullest expression. Nothing, in fact, could have been more charged than the quiet way in which he presently said: "My dear boy, I back you."

Vanderbank, clearly, was touched by it. "How extraordinarily kind you are to me!" Mr. Longdon's silence appeared to reply that he was willing to let it go for that, and the young man next went on: "What it comes to then—as you put it—is that it's a way for me to add something handsome to my income."

Mr. Longdon sat for a little with his eyes attached to the green field of the billiard-table, vivid in the spreading, suspended lamp-light. "I think I ought to tell you the figure I have in mind."

Another person present might have felt rather taxed either to determine the degree of provocation represented by Vanderbank's considerate smile, or to say if there was an appreciable interval before he rang out: "I think, you know, you oughtn't to do anything of the sort. Let that alone, please. The great thing is the interest—the great thing is the wish you express. It represents a view of me, an attitude toward me—!" He pulled up, dropping his arms and turning away, before the complete image.

"There's nothing in those things that need overwhelm you. It would be odd if you hadn't, yourself, about your value and your future, a feeling quite as lively as any feeling of mine. There is mine, at all events. I can't 223