Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/53

BOOK SECOND: LITTLE AGGIE "Oh, the usual thing, I suppose. A lot of my lord's tiresome supporters."

"To pay his debt? Then why are you poor things asked?"

Mrs. Brookenham looked, on this, quite adorably—that is most wonderingly—grave. "How do I know, my dear Jane, why in the world we're ever asked anywhere? Fancy people wanting Edward!" she quavered with stupefaction. "Yet we can never get off Pewbury."

"You're better for getting on, cara mia, than for getting off!" the Duchess blandly returned. She was a person of no small presence, filling her place, however, without ponderosity, with a massiveness indeed rather artfully kept in bounds. Her head, her chin, her shoulders were well aloft, but she had not abandoned the cultivation of a "figure," or any of the distinctively finer reasons for passing as a handsome woman. She was secretly at war, moreover, in this endeavor, with a lurking no less than with a public foe, and thoroughly aware that if she didn't look well she might at times only, and quite dreadfully, look good. There were definite ways of escape, none of which she neglected and from the total of which, as she flattered herself, the air of distinction almost mathematically resulted. This air corresponded superficially with her acquired Calabrian sonorities, from her voluminous title down, but the colorless hair, the passionless forehead, the mild cheek and long lip of the British matron, the type that had set its trap for her earlier than any other, were elements difficult to deal with, and were all, at moments, that a sharp observer saw. The battle-ground then was the haunting danger of the bourgeois. She gave Mrs. Brookenham no time to resent her last note before inquiring if Nanda were to accompany the couple.

"Mercy, mercy no—she's not asked." Mrs. 43