Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/97

BOOK SECOND: LITTLE AGGIE their advice, but it's mostly fearful rot. Mrs. Brook's isn't, upon my word—I've tried some myself!"

"You talk as if it were something nasty and homemade—gooseberry wine!" the Duchess laughed; "but one can't know Fernanda, of course, without knowing that she has set up, for the convenience of her friends, a little office for consultations. She listens to the case, she strokes her chin and prescribes—"

"And the beauty of it is," cried Lord Petherton, "that she makes no charge whatever!"

"She doesn't take a guinea at the time, but you may still get your account," the Duchess returned. "Of course we know that the great business she does is in husbands and wives."

"This then seems the day of the wives!" Mr. Mitchett interposed as he became aware, the first, of the illustration that the Duchess's image was in the act of receiving. "Lady Fanny Cashmore!"—the butler was already in the field, and the company, with the exception of Mrs. Donner, who remained seated, was apparently conscious of a vibration that brought it afresh, but still more nimbly than on Aggie's advent, to its feet.

 IX

"Go to her straight—be nice to her: you must have plenty to say. You stay with me—we have our affair."

The latter of these commands the Duchess addressed to Mr. Mitchett while their companion, in obedience to the former and affected, as it seemed, by an unrepressed familiar accent that stirred a fresh flicker of Mitchy's grin, met the new arrival in the middle of the room before Mrs. Brookenham had had time to reach her. The Duchess, quickly reseated, watched an instant the inexpressive concussion of the tall brother and sister; 87