Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/361

BOOK EIGHTH: TISHY GRENDON them blankly enough his fine dead face. "'Civil' is just what I was afraid I wasn't. I mean, you know," he continued to Longdon, "that you really mustn't look to us to let you off—"

"From a week or a day"—Mr. Longdon took him up—"of the time to which you consider I've pledged myself? My dear sir, please don't imagine it's for me the Duchess appeals."

"It's from your wife, you delicious dull man," that lady elucidated. "If you wished to be stiff with our friend here you've really been so with her; which comes, no doubt, from the absence between you of proper preconcerted action. You spoke without your cue."

"Oh!" said Edward Brookenham.

"That's it, Jane"—Mrs. Brook continued to take it beautifully. "We dressed to-day in a hurry and hadn't time for our usual rehearsal. Edward, when we dine out, generally brings three pocket-handkerchiefs and six jokes. I leave the management of the handkerchiefs to his own taste, but we mostly try together, in advance, to arrange a career for the other things. It's some charming light thing of my own that's supposed to give him the sign."

"Only sometimes he confounds"—Vanderbank helped her out—"your light and your heavy!" He had got up to make room for his host of so many occasions and, having forced him into the empty chair, now moved vaguely off to the quarter of the room occupied by Nanda and Mr. Cashmore.

"That's very well," the Duchess resumed, "but it doesn't at all clear you, cara mia, of the misdemeanor of setting up as a felt domestic need something of which Edward proves deeply unconscious. He has put his finger on Nanda's true interest. He doesn't care a bit how it would look for you to want her."

"Don't you mean rather, Jane, how it looks for us not 351