Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/355

BOOK EIGHTH: TISHY GRENDON of you not to see that her dreariness—on which, moreover, I've set you right before—is a mere facial accident, and doesn't correspond or, as they say, 'rhyme' to anything within her that might make it a little interesting. What I like it for is just that it's so funny in itself. Her low spirits are nothing more than her features. Her gloom, as you call it, is merely her broken nose."

"Has she a broken nose?" Mr. Longdon demanded with an accent that for some reason touched in the others the spring of laughter.

"Has Nanda never mentioned it?" Mrs. Brook inquired with this gaiety.

"That's the discretion you just spoke of," said the Duchess. "Only I should have expected from the cause you refer to rather the comic effect."

"Mrs. Grendon's broken nose, sir," Vanderbank explained to Mr. Longdon, "is only the kinder way taken by these ladies to speak of Mrs. Grendon's broken heart. You must know all about that."

"Oh yes—all." Mr. Longdon spoke very simply, with the consequence this time, on the part of his companions, of a silence of some minutes, which he himself had at last to break. "Mr. Grendon doesn't like her." The addition of these words apparently made the difference—as if they constituted a fresh link with the irresistible comedy of things. That he was unexpectedly diverting was, however, no check to Mr. Longdon's delivering his full thought. "Very horrid of two sisters to be both, in their marriages, so wretched."

"Ah, but Tishy, I maintain," Mrs. Brook returned, "isn't wretched at all. If I were satisfied that she's really so I would never let Nanda come to her."

"That's the most extraordinary doctrine, love," the Duchess interposed. "When you're satisfied a woman's 'really' poor, you never give her a crust?" 345