Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/351

BOOK EIGHTH: TISHY GRENDON her friend's perceived movement on Mrs. Brook, who also got up. She gave a rap with her fan on his leg. "Sit down—you'll see."

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He mechanically obeyed her, though it happened to lend him the air of taking Mrs. Brook's approach for a signal to resume his seat. She came over to them, Vanderbank followed, and it was without again moving, with a vague upward gape, in fact, from his place, that Mr. Longdon received, as she stood before him, a challenge that flashed a point into what the Duchess had just said. "Why do you hate me so?"

Vanderbank, who, beside Mrs. Brook, looked at him with attention, might have suspected him of turning a trifle pale; though even Vanderbank, with reasons of his own for an observation of the sharpest, could scarce have read into the matter the particular dim vision that would have accounted for it—the flicker of fear of what Mrs. Brook, whether as daughter or as mother, was at last so strangely and differently to show herself.

"I should warn you, sir," the young man threw off, "that we don't consider that—in Buckingham Crescent certainly—a fair question. It isn't playing the game—it's hitting below the belt. We hate and we love—the latter especially—but to tell each other why is to break that little tacit rule of finding out for ourselves which is the delight of our lives and the source of our triumphs. You can say, you know, if you like, but you're not obliged."

Mr. Longdon transferred to him something of the same colder apprehension, looking at him, manifestly, harder than ever before, and finding in his eyes also, no doubt, a consciousness more charged. He presently got up, but, 341