Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/57

BOOK SECOND: LITTLE AGGIE Nanda with any such security as that, I shouldn't be able to help it if I offended you by an honest answer. What it comes to, simply stated, is that really she must choose between Aggie and Tishy. I'm afraid I should shock you were I to tell you what I should think of myself for packing my child, all alone, off for a week with Mrs. Grendon."

Mrs. Brookenham, who had many talents, had none perhaps that she oftener found useful than that of listening with the appearance of being fairly hypnotized. It was the way she listened to her housekeeper at their regular morning conference, and if the rejoinder ensuing upon it frequently appeared to have nothing to do with her manner, that was a puzzle for her interlocutor alone. "Oh, of course I know your theory, dear Jane, and I dare say it's very charming and old-fashioned and, if you like, aristocratic, in a frumpy, foolish old way—though even upon that, at the same time, there would be something too to be said. But I can only congratulate you on finding it more workable than there can be any question of my finding it. If you're all armed for the sacrifices you speak of, I simply am not. I don't think I'm quite a monster, but I don't pretend to be a saint. I'm an English wife and an English mother, and I live in the mixed English world. My daughter, at any rate, is just my daughter—thank heaven, and one of a good English bunch; she's not the unique niece of my dead Italian husband, nor doubtless either, in spite of her excellent birth, of a lineage, like Aggie's, so very tremendous. I've my life to lead, and she's a part of it. Sugar?" She wound up on a still softer note as she handed the cup of tea.

"Never! Well, with me," said the Duchess with spirit, "she would be all."

"'All' is soon said! Life is composed of many things," Mrs. Brookenham gently rang out—"of such mingled, 47