Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/346

THE AWKWARD AGE proper. But I don't think Mr. Vanderbank cares for her."

It kindled in the Duchess an immediate light. "Vous avez bien de l'esprit. You put one at one's ease. I've been vaguely groping, while you're already there. It's really only for Nanda he cares."

"Yes—really."

The Duchess hesitated. "And yet exactly how much?"

"I haven't asked him."

She had another, but a briefer pause. "Don't you think it about time you should?" Once more she waited, then seemed to feel that her opportunity wouldn't. "We've worked a bit together, but you don't take me into your confidence. I dare say you don't believe I'm quite straight. Don't you really see how I must be?" She had a pleading note which made him at last fix her. "Don't you see," she went on with the advantage of it, "that, having got all I want for myself, I haven't a motive in the world for spoiling the fun of another? I don't want in the least, I assure you, to spoil even Mrs. Brook's; for how will she get a bit less out of him—I mean than she does now—if what you desire should take place? Honestly, my dear man, that's quite what I desire, and I only want, over and above, to help you. What I feel for Nanda, believe me, is pure pity. I won't say I'm frantically grateful to her, because, in the long-run—one way or another—she'll have found her account. It nevertheless worries me to see her, and all the more because of this very certitude, which you've so kindly just settled for me, that our young man hasn't really, with her mother—"

Whatever the certitude Mr. Longdon had kindly settled, it was in another interest that he at this moment broke in. "Is he your young man too?"

She was not too much amused to cast about her. 336