Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/316

THE AWKWARD AGE whom enjoyment was less rotary. He was silent long enough to suggest his fearing that almost anything he might say would appear too allusive; then at last, once more, he took his risk. "Awfully jolly old place!"

"It is indeed," Van only said; but his posture in the large chair he had pushed toward the open window was of itself almost an opinion. The August night was hot and the air that came in charged and sweet. Vanderbank smoked with his face turned to the dusky garden and the dim stars; at the end of a few moments more of which he glanced round. "Don't you think it rather stuffy with that big lamp? As those candles on the chimney are going, we might put it out."

"Like this?" The amiable Mitchy had straightway obliged his companion and he as promptly took in the effect of the diminished light on the character of the room, which he commended as if the depth of shadow produced were all this companion had sought. He might freshly have brought home to Vanderbank that a man sensitive to so many different things could never really be incommoded, though that personage presently indeed showed himself occupied with another thought.

"I think I ought to mention to you that I've told him how you and Mrs. Brook now both know. I did so this afternoon on our way back from church—I hadn't done it before. He took me a walk round, to show me more of the place, and that gave me my chance. But he doesn't mind," Vanderbank continued. "The only thing is that I've thought it may possibly make him speak to you, so that it's better you should know he knows. But he told me definitely Nanda doesn't."

Mitchy took this in with an attention that spoke of his already recognizing how the less tempered darkness favored talk. "And is that all that passed between you?"

"Well, practically; except of course that I made him 306