ve also tremendous liberty!--it would
come out."

"I think you'd let me know," she returned.

"Yes, I'd let you know."

Silence, upon this, fell between them a little; which she was the
first to break. "She has gone with him this afternoon--by solemn
appointment--to the South Kensington Museum."

There was something in Mrs. Brook's dolorous drop that yet presented the
news as a portent so great that he was moved again to mirth. "Ah that's
where she is? Then I confess she has scored. He has never taken ME to
the South Kensington Museum."

"You were asking what we're going to do," she went on. "What I meant
was--about Baireuth--that the question for Nanda's simplified. He has
pressed her so to pay him a visit."

Vanderbank's assent was marked. "I see: so that if you do go abroad
she'll be provided for by that engagement."

"And by lots of other invitations."

These were such things as, for the most part, the young man could turn
over. "Do you mean you'd let her go alone--?"

"To wherever she's asked?" said Mrs. Brook. "Why not? Don't talk like
the Duchess."

Vanderbank seemed for a moment to try not to. "Couldn't Mr. Longdon take
her? Why not?"

His friend looked really struck with it. "That WOULD be working him. But
to a beautiful end!" she meditated. "The only thing would be to get him
also asked."

"Ah but there you are, don't you see? Fancy 'getting' Mr. Longdon
anything or anywhere whatever! Don't you feel," Vanderbank threw out,
"how the impossibility of exerting that sort of patronage for him
immediately places him?"

Mrs. Brook gave her companion one of those fitful glances of almost
grateful appreciation with which their intercourse was even at its
darkest hours frequently illumined. "As if he were the Primate or the
French Ambassador? Yes, you're right--one couldn't do it; though it's
very odd and one doesn't quite see why. It does place him. But he
becomes thereby exactly the very sort of person with whom it would
be most of an advantage for her to go about. What a pity," Mrs. Brook
sighed, "he doesn't know more people!"

"Ah well, we ARE, in our way, bringing that to pass. Only we mustn't
rush it. Leave it to Nanda herself," Vanderbank presently added; on
which his companion so manifestly left it that she touched after a
moment's silence on quite a different matter. "I dare say he'd tell
YOU--wouldn't he?--if he were to give her any considerable sum."

She had only obeyed his injunction, b