Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/50

THE AWKWARD AGE from Brander. It's the sort of thing for the Mangers. Or even wire."

"Both?" the young man laughed. "Oh you duck!" he cried. "And from where will you let them have it?"

"From Pewbury," she replied without wincing. "I'll write on Sunday."

"Good. How'd'ye do, Duchess?"—and Harold, hefore he disappeared, greeted with a rapid concentration of all the shades of familiarity a large, high lady, the visitor he had announced, who rose in the doorway with the manner of a person used to arriving on thresholds very much as people arrive at stations—with the expectation of being "met."

 V

"Good-by. He's off," Mrs. Brookenham, who had remained quite on her own side of the room, explained to her friend.

"Where's he off to?" this friend inquired with a casual advance and a look not so much at her hostess as at the cushions just rearranged.

"Oh, to some places. To Brander to-day."

"How he does run about!" And the Duchess, still with a glance hither and yon, sank upon the sofa to which she had made her way unaided. Mrs. Brookenham knew perfectly the meaning of this glance: she had but three or four comparatively good pieces, whereas the Duchess, rich with the spoils of Italy, had but three or four comparatively bad. This was the relation, as between intimate friends, that the Duchess visibly preferred, and it was quite groundless, in Buckingham Crescent, ever to enter the drawing-room with an expression suspicious of disloyalty. The Duchess was a woman who so cultivated her passions that she would 40