Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/272

THE AWKWARD AGE  rejoined: "Mere, mere, mere. But perhaps exactly the 'mere' that has made us range so wide."

Mrs. Brook's intelligence abounded. "You mean that we haven't had the excuse of passion?"

Her companions once more gave way to merriment, but "There you are!" Vanderbank said, after an instant, less sociably. With it too he held out his hand.

"You are afraid," she answered as she gave him her own; on which, as he made no rejoinder, she held him before her. "Do you mean you really don't know if she gets it?"

"The money, if he doesn't go in?"—Mitchy broke, almost with an air of responsibility, into Vanderbank's silence. "Ah, but, as we said, surely—!"

It was Mitchy's eyes that Vanderbank met. "Yes, I should suppose she gets it."

"Perhaps then, as a compensation, she'll even get more—!"

"If I don't go in? Oh!" said Vanderbank. And he changed color.

He was by this time off, but Mrs. Brook kept Mitchy a moment. "Now—by that suggestion—he has something to show. He won't go in."

 XXIII

Her visitors had been gone half an hour, but she was still in the drawing-room when Nanda came back. The girl found her, on the sofa, in a posture that might have represented restful oblivion, but that, after a glance, our young lady appeared to interpret as mere intensity of thought. It was a condition from which, at all events, Mrs. Brook was quickly roused by her daughter's presence; she opened her eyes and put down her feet, so that the two were confronted as closely as persons may be 262