Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/264

THE AWKWARD AGE Then she opened an inch or two, for Vanderbank, the door of her dim radiance. "Only I should have thought it a difference for the better. Of course," she added, "it remains absolutely with us three alone, and don't you already feel from it the fresh charm—with it here between us—of our being together?"

It was as if each of the men had waited for the other to assent better than he himself could, and Mitchy then as Vanderbank failed, had gracefully, to cover him, changed the subject. "But isn't Nanda, the person most interested, to know?"

Vanderbank gave, on this, a strange sound of hilarity. "Ah, that would finish it off!"

It produced, for a few seconds, something like a chill, a chill that had for consequence a momentary pause which in its turn added weight to the words next uttered. "It's not I who shall tell her," Mrs. Brook said gently and gravely. "There!—you maybe sure. If you want a promise, it's a promise. So that if Mr. Longdon's silent," she went on, "and you are, Mitchy, and I am, how in the world shall she have a suspicion?"

"You mean of course except by Van's deciding to mention it himself."

Van might have been, from the way they looked at him, some beautiful unconscious object, but Mrs. Brook was quite ready to answer. "Oh, poor man, he'll never breathe."

"I see. So there we are."

To this discussion the subject of it had for the time nothing to contribute, even when Mitchy, rising with the words he had last uttered from the chair in which he had been placed, took, sociably, as well, on the hearthrug, a position before their hostess. This move ministered, apparently, only to Vanderbank's silence, for it was still without speaking that, after a little, he turned away from his friend and dropped once more into the 254