meeting his eyes.

Mitchy, as if with more to say, watched him an instant, then before
speaking caught himself up. "Look out--here he comes."

Hearing the stir of the door by which he had entered he looked round;
but it opened at first only to admit Vanderbank's servant. "Miss
Brookenham!" the man announced; on which the two gentlemen in the room
were--audibly, almost violently--precipitated into a union of surprise.

II

However she might have been discussed Nanda was not one to shrink, for,
though she drew up an instant on failing to find in the room the person
whose invitation she had obeyed, she advanced the next moment as if
either of the gentlemen before her would answer as well. "How do you
do, Mr. Mitchy? How do you do, Mr. Longdon?" She made no difference for
them, speaking to the elder, whom she had not yet seen, as if they were
already acquainted. There was moreover in the air of that personage at
this juncture little to invite such a confidence: he appeared to have
been startled, in the oddest manner, into stillness and, holding out
no hand to meet her, only stared rather stiffly and without a smile. An
observer disposed to interpret the scene might have fancied him a trifle
put off by the girl's familiarity, or even, as by a singular effect
of her self-possession, stricken into deeper diffidence. This
self-possession, however, took on her own part no account of any
awkwardness: it seemed the greater from the fact that she was almost
unnaturally grave, and it overflowed in the immediate challenge: "Do you
mean to say Van isn't here? I've come without mother--she said I could,
to see HIM," she went on, addressing herself more particularly to
Mitchy. "But she didn't say I might do anything of that sort to see
YOU."

If there was something serious in Nanda and something blank in their
companion, there was, superficially at least, nothing in Mr. Mitchett
but his usual flush of gaiety. "Did she really send you off this way
alone?" Then while the girl's face met his own with the clear confession
of it: "Isn't she too splendid for anything?" he asked with immense
enjoyment. "What do you suppose is her idea?" Nanda's eyes had now
turned to Mr. Longdon, whom she fixed with her mild straightness; which
led to Mitchy's carrying on and repeating the appeal. "Isn't Mrs. Brook
charming? What do you suppose is her idea?"

It was a bound into the mystery, a bound of which his fellow visitor
stood quite unconscio