Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/40

THE AWKWARD AGE that felt itself positively too agitated. Vanderbank had helped him on with the Inverness cape and for an instant detained him by it. "Just tell me as a kindness. Do we talk—?"

"Too freely?" Mr. Longdon, with his clear eyes so untouched by time speculatively murmured.

"Too outrageously. I want the truth."

The truth, evidently, for Mr. Longdon, was difficult to tell. "Well—it was certainly different."

"From you and Lady Julia, I see. Well, of course, with time, some change is natural, isn't it? But so different," Vanderbank pressed, "that you were really shocked?"

His visitor, at this, smiled, but the smile somehow made the face graver. "I think I was rather frightened. Good-night."