succeeded
in making him uncomfortable. "I always become aware with you sooner or
later that they don't go at all--in your sense: but how am I, after all,
so far out if you HAVE put your money on another man?"

"You keep coming back to that?" she wearily sighed.

He thought a little. "No, then. You've only to tell me not to, and I'll
never speak of it again."

"You'll be in an odd position for speaking of it if you do really go in.
You deny that you've declined," said Mrs. Brook; "which means then that
you've allowed our friend to hope."

Vanderbank met it bravely. "Yes, I think he hopes."

"And communicates his hope to my child?"

This arrested the young man, but only for a moment. "I've the most
perfect faith in his wisdom with her. I trust his particular delicacy.
He cares more for her," he presently added, "even than we do."

Mrs. Brook gazed away at the infinite of space. "'We,' my dear Van,"
she at last returned, "is one of your own real, wonderful touches. But
there's something in what you say: I HAVE, as between ourselves--between
me and him--been backing Mitchy. That is I've been saying to him 'Wait,
wait: don't at any rate do anything else.' Only it's just from the
depth of my thought for my daughter's happiness that I've clung to this
resource. He would so absolutely, so unreservedly do anything for her."
She had reached now, with her extraordinary self-control, the pitch of
quiet bland demonstration. "I want the poor thing, que diable, to have
another string to her bow and another loaf, for her desolate old age, on
the shelf. When everything else is gone Mitchy will still be there. Then
it will be at least her own fault--!" Mrs. Brook continued. "What can
relieve me of the primary duty of taking precautions," she wound up,
"when I know as well as that I stand here and look at you--"

"Yes, what?" he asked as she just paused.

"Why that so far as they count on you they count, my dear Van, on a
blank." Holding him a minute as with the soft low voice of his fate, she
sadly but firmly shook her head. "You won't do it."

"Oh!" he almost too loudly protested.

"You won't do it," she went on.

"I SAY!"--he made a joke of it.

"You won't do it," she repeated.

It was as if he couldn't at last but show himself really struck; yet
what he exclaimed on was what might in truth most have impressed him.
"You ARE magnificent, really!"

"Mr. Mitchett!" the butler, appearing at the door, almost familiarly
d