Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/36

THE AWKWARD AGE "Oh, but for half a minute. It didn't take her long. It was five years after your father's death." This explanation was very delicately made. "She could marry again."

"And I suppose you know she did," Vanderbank replied.

"I knew it soon enough!" With this, abruptly, Mr. Longdon pulled himself forward. "Good-night, goodnight."

"Good-night," said Vanderbank. "But wasn't that after Lady Julia?"

On the edge of the sofa, his hands supporting him, Mr. Longdon looked straight. "There was nothing after Lady Julia."

"I see." His companion smiled. "My mother was earlier."

"She was extremely good to me. I'm not speaking of that time at Malvern—that came later."

"Precisely—I understand. You're speaking of the first years of her widowhood."

Mr. Longdon just faltered. "I should call them rather the last. Six months later came her second marriage."

Vanderbank's interest visibly improved. "Ah, it was then? That was my seventh year." He called things back and pieced them together. "But she must have been older than you."

"Yes—a little. She was kindness itself to me, at all events, then and afterwards. That was the charm of the weeks at Malvern."

"I see," the young man laughed. "The charm was that you had recovered."

"Oh dear, no!" Mr. Longdon, rather to his mystification, exclaimed. "I'm afraid I hadn't recovered at all—hadn't, if that's what you mean, got over my misery and my melancholy. She knew I hadn't—and that was 26