Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/357

BOOK EIGHTH: TISHY GRENDON "Why, what on earth," Vanderbank asked, "do you suspect him of supposing you want to do?"

"Oh, it isn't that," Mrs. Brook sadly said.

"It isn't what?" laughed the Duchess.

"That he fears I may want in any way to—what do you call it?—make up to him." She spoke as if she only wished it had been. "He has a deeper thought."

"Well then, what in goodness is it?"

Mr. Longdon had said nothing more, but Mrs. Brook preferred none the less to treat the question as between themselves. She was, as the others said, wonderful. "You can't help thinking me"—she spoke to him straight—"rather tortuous." The pause she thus momentarily produced was so intense as to give a sharpness that was almost vulgar to the little "Oh!" by which it was presently broken and the source of which neither of her three companions could afterwards in the least have named. Neither would have endeavored to fix an indecency of which each, doubtless, had been but too capable. "It's only as a mother," she added, "that I want my chance."

But the Duchess, at this, was again in the breach. "Take it, for mercy's sake then, my dear, over Harold, who's an example to Nanda herself in the way that, behind the piano there, he's keeping it up with Lady Fanny."

If this had been a herring that, in the interest of peace, the Duchess had wished to draw across the scent, it could scarce have been more effective. Mrs. Brook, whose position had made just the difference that she lost the view of the other side of the piano, took a slight but immediate stretch. "Is Harold with Lady Fanny?"

"You ask it, my dear child," said the Duchess, "as if it were too grand to be believed. It's the note of eagerness," she went on for Mr. Longdon's benefit—"it's almost the note of hope: one of those that ces messieurs, 347