Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/249

BOOK SIXTH: MRS. BROOK that what is it, pray, that makes him, when 'added on' to her, so double Nanda's value? I somehow or other see, through his being known to back her, and through the pretty story of his loyalty to mamma and all the rest of it (oh, if one chose to work that!) ever so much more of a chance for her."

Vanderbank's eyes were on the ceiling. "It is curious, isn't it?—though I think he's rather more 'in himself,' even for the London estimate, than you quite understand." He appeared to give her time to take this up, but as she said nothing he pursued: "I dare say that if even I now were to enter myself it would strike you as too late."

Her attention to this was but indirect. "It's awfully vulgar to be talking about it, but I can't help feeling that something possibly rather big will come of Mr. Longdon."

"Ah, we've talked of that before," said Vanderbank, "and you know you did think something might come even for me."

She continued, however, as if she scarce heard him, to work out her own vision. "It's very true that up to now—"

"Well, up to now?" he asked as she faltered. She faltered still a little. "I do say the most hideous things. But we have said worse, haven't we? Up to now, I mean, he hasn't given her anything. Unless indeed," she mused, "she may have had something without telling me."

Vanderbank went much straighter. "What sort of thing have you in mind? Are you thinking of money?"

"Yes. Isn't it awful?"

"That you should think of it?"

"That I should talk this way." Her friend was apparently not prepared with an assent, and she quickly enough pursued: "If he had given her any it would come out somehow in her expenditure. She has tremendous 239