Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/341

BOOK EIGHTH: TISHY GRENDON I feel as if I must figure to him, you know, very much as Mr. Longdon figures to me. Mr. Longdon doesn't, somehow, get into me. Yet I do, I think, into him. But we don't matter!"

We'?"—Nanda, with her eyes on him, echoed it.

"Mr. Longdon and I. It can't be helped, I suppose," he went on, for Tishy, with sociable sadness, "but it is short innings."

Mrs. Grendon, who was clearly credulous, looked positively frightened. "Ah, but, my dear, thank you! I haven't begun to live.

"Well, I have—that's just where it is," said Harold. "Thank you, all the more, old Van, for the tip."

There was an announcement just now at the door, and Tishy turned to meet the Duchess, with Harold, almost as if he had been master of the house, figuring but a step behind her. "Don't mind her," Vanderbank immediately said to the companion with whom he was left, "but tell me, while I still have hold of you, who wrote my name on the French novel that I noticed a few minutes since in the other room."

Nanda at first only wondered. "If it's there—didn't you?"

He just hesitated. "If it were here you would see if it's my hand."

Nanda faltered, and for somewhat longer. "How should I see? What do I know of your hand?"

He looked at her hard. "You have seen it."

"Oh—so little!" she replied with a faint smile.

"Do you mean I've not written to you for so long? Surely I did in—when was it?"

"Yes, when? But why should you?" she asked in quite a different tone.

He was not prepared, on this, with the right statement, and what he did, after a moment, bring out, had, for the occasion, a little the sound of the wrong. "The 331