Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/413

BOOK NINTH: VANDERBANK must begin with is having from you that you recognize she trusts us."

"Nanda?"

Mitchy's idea, after an instant, had visibly gone further. "Both of them—the two women, up there, at present so strangely together. Mrs. Brook must too, immensely. But for that you won't care."

Mr. Longdon had relapsed into an anxiety more natural than his expression of a moment before. "It's about time! But if Nanda didn't trust us," he went on, "her case would indeed be a sorry one. She has nobody else."

"Yes." Mitchy's concurrence was grave. "Only you and me."

"Only you and me."

The eyes of the two men met over it in a pause terminated at last by Mitchy's saying: "We must make it all up to her."

"Is that your idea?"

"Ah," said Mitchy gently, "don't laugh at it."

His friend's gray gloom again covered him. "But what can—?" Then as Mitchy showed a face that seemed to wince with a silent "What could?" the old man completed his objection. "Think of the magnitude of the loss."

"Oh, I don't for a moment suggest," Mitchy hastened to reply, "that it isn't immense."

"She does care for him, you know," said Mr. Longdon.

Mitchy, at this, gave a long, wide glare. Know—'?" he ever so delicately murmured.

His irony had quite touched. "But of course you know! You know everything—Nanda and you."

There was a tone in it that moved a spring, and Mitchy laughed out. "I like your putting me with her! But we're all together. With Nanda," he next added, "it is deep." 403