Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/323

BOOK SEVENTH: MITCHY strolling and straying that Vanderbank himself now began to revolve. The meditation he next threw out, however, showed a certain resistance to Mitchy's advice. "I'm glad at any rate I don't deprive her of a fortune."

"You don't deprive her of mine, of course," Mitchy answered from his chair; "but isn't her enjoyment of Mr. Longdon's, at least, a good deal staked, after all, on your action?"

Vanderbank stopped short. "It's his idea to settle it all?

Mitchy gave out his glare. "I thought you didn't 'care a hang.' I haven't been here so long," he went on as his companion at first retorted nothing, "without making up my mind, for myself, about his means. He is distinctly rich."

It sent Vanderbank off again. "Oh well, she'll no more get all in the one event than she'll get nothing in the other. She'll only get a sort of a provision. But she'll get that whatever happens."

"Oh, if you're sure—!" Mitchy simply commented.

"I'm not sure, confound it!" Then—for his voice had been irritated—Van spoke more quietly. "Only I see her here—though on his wish of course—handling things quite as if they were her own and paying him a visit without, apparently, any calculated end. What's that, on his part, but a pledge?"

Oh, Mitchy could show off-hand that he knew what it was. "It's a pledge, quite as much, to you. He shows you the whole thing. He likes you not a whit less than he likes her."

"Oh, thunder!" Van impatiently sighed.

"It's as 'rum' as you please, but there it is," said the inexorable Mitchy.

"Then does he think I'll do it for this?"

"For 'this'?" 313