old?"

"No--that might just put it into his head." Brookenham walked up
and down a little with his hands in his pockets, after which, with
a complete concealment of the steps of the transition, "Where are we
dining to-night?" he brought out.

"Nowhere, thank heaven. We grace our own board."

"Oh--with those fellows, as you said, and Jane?"

"That's not for dinner. The Baggers and Mary Pinthorpe and--upon my word
I forget."

"You'll see when she comes," suggested Brookenham, who was again at the
window.

"It isn't a she--it's two or three he's, I think," his wife replied
with her indifferent anxiety. "But I don't know what dinner it is," she
bethought herself; "it may be the one that's after Easter. Then that
one's this one," she added with her eyes once more on her book.

"Well, it's a relief to dine at home"--and Brookenham faced about.
"Would you mind finding out?" he asked with some abruptness.

"Do you mean who's to dine?"

"No, that doesn't matter. But whether Mitchy HAS come down."

"I can only find out by asking him."

"Oh _I_ could ask him." He seemed disappointed at his wife's want of
resource.

"And you don't want to?"

He looked coldly, from before the fire, over the prettiness of her brown
bent head. "It will be such a beastly bore if he admits it."

"And you think poor I can make him not admit it?" She put the question
as if it were really her own thought too, but they were a couple who
could, even face to face and unlike the augurs behind the altar, think
these things without laughing. "If he SHOULD admit it," Mrs. Brookenham
threw in, "will you give me the money?"

"The money?"

"To pay Mitchy back."

She had now raised her eyes to her husband, but, turning away, he failed
to meet them. "He'll deny it."

"Well, if they all deny it," she presently remarked, "it's a simple
enough matter. I'm sure _I_ don't want them to come down on us! But
that's the advantage," she almost prattled on, "of having so many such
charming friends. They DON'T come down."

This again was a remark of a sweep that there appeared to be nothing in
Brookenham's mind to match; so that, scarcely pausing in the walk he had
resumed, he only said: "Who do you mean by 'all'?"

"Why if he has had anything from Mitchy I dare say he has had something
from Van."

"Oh!" Brookenham returned as if with a still deeper drop of interest.

"They oughtn't to do it," she declared; "they ought to tell us, and when
they don't