Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/356

THE AWKWARD AGE "Do you call Nanda a crust, Duchess?" Vanderbank amusedly asked.

"She's all, at any rate, apparently, just now, that poor Tishy has to live on."

"You're severe then," the young man said, "on our dinner of to-night."

"Oh, Jane," Mrs. Brook declared, "is never severe: she's only uncontrollably witty. It's only Tishy, moreover, who gives out that her husband doesn't like her. He, poor man, doesn't say anything of the sort."

"Yes, but after all, you know "—Vanderbank just put it to her—"where the deuce, all the while, is he?"

"Heaven forbid," the Duchess remarked, "that we should too indiscreetly inquire."

"There it is—exactly," Mr. Longdon subjoined.

He had once more his success of hilarity, though not indeed to the injury of the Duchess's next word. "It's Nanda, you know, who speaks, and loud enough, for Harry Grendon's dislikes."

"That's easy for her," Mrs. Brook declared, "when she herself isn't one of them."

"She isn't surely one of anybody's," Mr. Longdon gravely observed.

Mrs. Brook gazed across at him. "You are too dear! But I've none the less a crow to pick with you."

Mr. Longdon returned her look, but returned it somehow to Van. "You frighten me, you know, out of my wits."

"I do?" said Vanderbank.

Mr. Longdon just hesitated. "Yes."

"It must be the sacred terror," Mrs. Brook suggested to Van, "that Mitchy so often speaks of. I'm not trying with you," she went on to Mr. Longdon, "for anything of that kind, but only for the short half-hour, ii private, that I think you won't for the world grant me. Nothing will induce you to find yourself alone with me." 346