Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/456

THE AWKWARD AGE "Good-by." But he came a few steps forward. "I mayn't kiss your hand?"

"Never."

"Never?"

"Never."

"Oh!" he oddly sounded as he quickly went out.

 XXXVIII

The interval he had represented as likely to be useful to her was in fact, however, not a little abbreviated by a punctuality of arrival on Mr. Longdon's part so extreme as to lead, the first thing, to a word almost of apology. "You can't say," her new visitor immediately began, "that I haven't left you alone, these many days, as much as I promised on coming up to you that afternoon when, after my return to town, I found Mr. Mitchett, instead of your mother, awaiting me in the drawing-room."

"Yes," said Nanda, "you've really done quite as I asked you."

"Well," he returned, "I felt half an hour ago that, near as I was to relief, I could keep it up no longer; so that, though I knew it would bring me much too soon, I started at six sharp for our trysting-place."

"And I've no tea, after all, to reward you!" It was but now, clearly, that she observed it. "They must have removed the things without my noticing."

Her old friend looked at her with some intensity. "Were you in the room?"

"Yes—but I didn't see the man come in."

"What then were you doing?"

Nanda thought; her smile was, as usual, the faintest discernible outward sign. "Thinking of you."

"So tremendously hard?"

"Well, of other things too and of other persons. Of 446