out of kindness for
Nanda--to have the money suppressed; and yet he won't want to have the
pecuniary question mixed up with the matter: to look in short as if he
had had to be paid. He's like you, you know--he's proud; and it will be
there we shall break down."

Mitchy had been watching his friend, who, a few minutes before
perceptibly embarrassed, had quite recovered himself and, at his ease,
though still perhaps with a smile a trifle strained, leaned back and let
his eyes play everywhere but over the faces of the others. Vanderbank
evidently wished now to show a good-humoured detachment.

"See here," Mitchy said to him: "I remember your once submitting to me a
case of some delicacy."

"Oh he'll submit it to you--he'll submit it even to ME" Mrs. Brook broke
in. "He'll be charming, touching, confiding--above all he'll be awfully
INTERESTING about it. But he'll make up his mind in his own way, and his
own way won't be to accommodate Mr. Longdon."

Mitchy continued to study their companion in the light of these remarks,
then turned upon his hostess his sociable glare. "Splendid, isn't it,
the old boy's infatuation with him?"

Mrs. Brook just delayed. "From the point of view of the immense interest
it--just now, for instance--makes for you and me? Oh yes, it's one of
our best things yet. It places him a little with Lady Fanny--'He will,
he won't; he won't, he will!' Only, to be perfect, it lacks, as I say,
the element of real suspense."

Mitchy frankly wondered. "It does, you think? Not for me--not wholly."
He turned again quite pleadingly to their friend. "I hope it doesn't for
yourself totally either?"

Vanderbank, cultivating his detachment, made at first no more reply
than if he had not heard, and the others meanwhile showed faces that
testified perhaps less than their respective speeches had done to the
absence of anxiety. The only token he immediately gave was to get up and
approach Mitchy, before whom he stood a minute laughing kindly enough,
though not altogether gaily. As if then for a better proof of gaiety
he presently seized him by the shoulders and, still without speaking,
pushed him backward into the chair he himself had just quitted. Mrs.
Brook's eyes, from the sofa, while this went on, attached themselves to
her visitors. It took Vanderbank, as he moved about and his companions
waited, a minute longer to produce what he had in mind. "What IS
splendid, as we call it, is this extraordinary freedom and