Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/94

THE AWKWARD AGE him, inasmuch as, for the most part, he never speaks. What, therefore, must he mean?"

"He's an abyss—he's magnificent!" Mr. Mitchett langhed. "I don"t know a man of an understanding more profound, and he's equally incapable of uttering and of wincing. If, by the same token, I'm 'horrible,' as you call me," he pursued, "it's only because, in every way, I'm so beastly superficial. All the same, I do sometimes go into things, and I insist upon knowing," he again broke out, "what it exactly was you had in mind in saying to Mrs. Brook, about Nanda, what she repeated to me."

"You 'insist,' you silly man?"—the Duchess had veered a little to indulgence. "Pray, on what ground of right, in such a connection, do you do anything of the sort?"

Poor Mitchy showed but for a moment that he felt pulled up. "Do you mean that when a girl liked by a fellow likes him so little in return—?"

"I don't mean anything," said the Duchess, "that may provoke you to suppose me vulgar and odious enough to try to put you out of conceit of a most interesting and unfortunate creature; and I don't quite, as yet, see—though I dare say I shall soon make it out!—what our friend has in her head in tattling to you on these matters as soon as my back is turned. Petherton will tell you—I wonder he hasn't told you before—why Mrs. Grendon, though not perhaps herself quite the rose, is decidedly, in these days, too near it."

"Oh, Petherton never tells me anything!" Mitchy's answer was brisk and impatient, but evidently quite as sincere as if the person alluded to had not been there.

The person alluded to, meanwhile, fidgeting frankly in his chair, alternately stretching his legs and resting his elbows on his knees, had reckoned as small the profit he might derive from this colloquy. His bored state indeed 84