Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/60

THE AWKWARD AGE than one. But I've not so much as thought of Mr. Mitchett—who, rich as he may be, is the son of a shoemaker and superlatively hideous—for a reason I don't at all mind telling you. Don't be outraged if I say that I've for a long time hoped you yourself would find the right use for him." She paused—at present with a momentary failure of assurance, from which she rallied, however, to proceed with a burst of earnestness that was fairly noble: "Forgive me if I just tell you once for all how it strikes me. I'm stupefied at your not seeming to recognize either your interest or your duty. Oh, I know you want to, but you appear to me—in your perfect good faith, of course—utterly at sea. They're one and the same thing, don't you make out? your interest and your duty. Why isn't it as plain as a pikestaff that the thing to do with Nanda is simply to marry her—and to marry her soon? That's the great thing—do it while you can. If you don't want her downstairs—at which, let me say, I don't in the least wonder—your remedy is to take the right alternative. Don't send her to Tishy—"

"Send her to Mr. Mitchett?" Mrs. Brookenham unresentfully quavered. Her color, during her visitor's allocution, had distinctly risen, but there was no irritation in her voice. "How do you know, Jane, that I don't want her downstairs?"

The Duchess looked at her with an audacity confirmed by the absence from her face of everything but the plaintive. "There you are, with your eternal English false positions! J'aime, moi, les situations nettes—je n'en comprends pas d'autres. It wouldn't be to your honor—to that of your delicacy—that, with your impossible house, you should wish to plant your girl in your drawing-room. But such a way of keeping her out of it as throwing her into a worse—"

"Well, Jane, you do say things to me!" Mrs. Brookenham blandly broke in. She had sunk back into her 50