They waited
another minute, and then he dropped into a chair where, leaning forward,
his elbows on the arms and his gaze attached to the carpet, he drew out
the silence. Finally he looked at Mrs. Brook. "YOU make it clear."

The appeal called up for some reason her most infantine manner. "I don't
think I CAN, dear Van--really CLEAR. You know however yourself," she
continued to Mitchy, "enough by this time about Mr. Longdon and mamma."

"Oh rather!" Mitchy laughed.

"And about mamma and Nanda."

"Oh perfectly: the way Nanda reminds him, and the 'beautiful loyalty'
that has made him take such a fancy to her. But I've already embraced
the facts--you needn't dot any i's." With another glance at his fellow
visitor Mitchy jumped up and stood there florid. "He has offered you
money to marry her." He said this to Vanderbank as if it were the most
natural thing in the world.

"Oh NO" Mrs. Brook interposed with promptitude: "he has simply let him
know before any one else that the money's there FOR Nanda, and that
therefore--!"

"First come first served?" Mitchy had already taken her up. "I see, I
see. Then to make her sure of the money," he put to Vanderbank, "you
MUST marry her?"

"If it depends upon that she'll never get it," Mrs. Brook returned.
"Dear Van will think conscientiously a lot about it, but he won't do
it."

"Won't you, Van, really?" Mitchy asked from the hearth-rug.

"Never, never. We shall be very kind to him, we shall help him, hope and
pray for him, but we shall be at the end," said Mrs. Brook, "just where
we are now. Dear Van will have done his best, and we shall have done
ours. Mr. Longdon will have done his--poor Nanda even will have done
hers. But it will all have been in vain. However," Mrs. Brook continued
to expound, "she'll probably have the money. Mr. Longdon will surely
consider that she'll want it if she doesn't marry still more than if she
does. So we shall be SO much at least," she wound up--"I mean Edward and
I and the child will be--to the good."

Mitchy, for an equal certainty, required but an instant's thought. "Oh
there can be no doubt about THAT. The things about which your mind may
now be at ease--!" he cheerfully exclaimed.

"It does make a great difference!" Mrs. Brook comfortably sighed. Then
in a different tone: "What dear Van will find at the end that he
can't face will be, don't you see? just this fact of appearing to have
accepted a bribe. He won't want, on the one hand--