Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/250

THE AWKWARD AGE liberty and is very secretive, but still it would come out."

"He wouldn't give her any without letting you know. Nor would she, without doing so," Vanderbank added, "take it."

"Ah," Mrs. Brook quietly said, "she hates me enough for anything."

"That's only your romantic theory."

Once more she appeared not to hear him; she came up suddenly in another place. "Has he given you anything?"

Her visitor smiled. "Not so much as a cigarette. I've always my pockets full of them, and he never; so he only takes mine. Oh, Mrs. Brook," he continued, "with me too—though I've also tremendous liberty!—it would come out."

"I think you'd let me know," she returned.

"Yes, I'd let you know."

Silence, upon this, fell between them a little; which Mrs. Brook was the first to break. "She has gone with him this afternoon—by solemn appointment—to the South Kensington Museum."

There was something in Mrs. Brook's dolorous drop that yet presented the news as a portent so great that he was moved again to mirth. "Ah, that's where she is? Then I confess she has scored. He has never taken me to the South Kensington Museum."

"You were asking what we're going to do," she went on. "What I meant was—about Baireuth—that the question for Nanda is simplified. He has pressed her so to pay him a visit."

Vanderbank's assent was marked. "I see: so that if you do go abroad she'll be provided for by that engagement."

"And by lots of other invitations."

These were such things as, for the most part, the young 240