Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/88

THE AWKWARD AGE most delightfully, so queer as to leave on everything they touched a particular shade of distinction. The Duchess had brought in with the child an air of added confidence for which, in a moment, an observer would have seen the grounds, the association of the pair being so markedly favorable to each. Its younger member carried out the style of her aunt's presence quite as one of the accessory figures effectively thrown into old portraits. The Duchess, on the other hand, seemed, with becoming blandness, to draw from her niece the dignity of a kind of office of state—hereditary governess of the children of the blood. Little Aggie had a smile as softly bright as a southern dawn, and the friends of her relative looked at each other, according to a fashion frequent in Mrs. Brookenham's drawing-room, in free communication of their happy impression. Mr. Mitchett was, none the less, scantly diverted from his recognition of the occasion Mrs. Brookenham had just named to him.

"My dear Duchess," he promptly asked, "do you mind explaining to me an opinion that I have just heard of your—with marked originality—holding?"

The Duchess, with her head in the air, considered an instant her little ivory princess. "I'm always ready, Mr. Mitchett, to defend my opinions; but if it's a question of going much into the things that are the subjects of some of them, perhaps we had better, if you don't mind, choose our time and our place."

"No 'time,' gracious lady, for my impatience," Mr. Mitchett replied, "could be better than the present—but if you've reasons for wanting a better place, why shouldn't we go, on the spot, into another room?"

Lord Petherton, at this inquiry, broke into instant mirth. "Well, of all the coolness, Mitchy!—he does go at it, doesn't he, Mrs. Brook? What do you want to do in another room?" he demanded of his friend. "Upon my word, Duchess, under the nose of those—!" 78