Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/455

BOOK TENTH: NANDA Nanda just hesitated. "At the mere scale of it. I think it's splendid. The only person whose astonishment I don't quite understand," she added, "is Cousin Jane."

"Oh, Cousin Jane's astonishment serves her right!"

"If she held so," Nanda pursued, "that marriage should do everything—"

"She shouldn't be in such a funk at finding what it is doing? Oh no, she's the last one!" Mitchy declared. "I vow I enjoy her scare."

"But it's very bad, you know," said Nanda.

"Oh, too awful!"

"Well, of course," the girl appeared assentingly to muse, "she couldn't after all have dreamed—!" But she took herself up. "The great thing is to be helpful."

"And in what way—?" Mitchy asked with his wonderful air of inviting competitive suggestions.

"Toward Aggie's finding herself. Do you think," she immediately continued, "that Lord Petherton really is?"

Mitchy frankly considered. "Helpful? Oh, he does his best, I gather. Yes," he presently added—"Petherton's all right."

"It's you yourself, naturally," his companion threw off, "who can help most."

"Certainly, and I'm doing my best too. So that with such good assistance"—he seemed at last to have taken it all from her—"what is it, I again ask, that, as you request, I'm to leave to you?"

Nanda required, while he still waited, some time to reply. "To keep my promise."

"Your promise?"

"Not to abandon you."

"Ah," cried Mitchy, "that's better!"

"Then good-by!" she said. 445