all he turns his back and will have nothing to
say to it."

It was on the back Vanderbank turned that Mrs. Brook's eyes now rested.
"That's precisely why he shouldn't be afraid of her."

He faced straight about. "Oh I don't deny my part."

He shone at them brightly enough, and Mrs. Brook, thoughtful, wistful,
candid, took in for a moment the radiance. "And yet to think that after
all it has been mere TALK!"

Something in her tone again made her hearers laugh out; so it was still
with the air of good humour that Vanderbank answered: "Mere, mere, mere.
But perhaps it's exactly the 'mere' that has made us range so wide."

Mrs. Brook's intelligence abounded. "You mean that we haven't had the
excuse of passion?"

Her companions once more gave way to mirth, but "There you are!"
Vanderbank said after an instant less sociably. With it too he held out
his hand.

"You ARE afraid," she answered as she gave him her own; on which, as
he made no rejoinder, she held him before her. "Do you mean you REALLY
don't know if she gets it?"

"The money, if he DOESN'T go in?"--Mitchy broke almost with an air
of responsibility into Vanderbank's silence. "Ah but, as we said,
surely--!"

It was Mitchy's eyes that Vanderbank met. "Yes, I should suppose she
gets it."

"Perhaps then, as a compensation, she'll even get MORE--!"

"If I don't go in? Oh!" said Vanderbank. And he changed colour.

He was by this time off, but Mrs. Brook kept Mitchy a moment. "Now--by
that suggestion--he has something to show. He won't go in."

III

Her visitors had been gone half an hour, but she was still in the
drawing-room when Nanda came back. The girl found her, on the sofa, in a
posture that might have represented restful oblivion, but that, after
a glance, our young lady appeared to interpret as mere intensity of
thought. It was a condition from which at all events Mrs. Brook was
quickly roused by her daughter's presence: she opened her eyes and put
down her feet, so that the two were confronted as closely as persons
may be when it is only one of them who looks at the other. Nanda, gazing
vaguely about and not seeking a seat, slowly drew off her gloves while
her mother's sad eyes considered her from top to toe. "Tea's gone,"
Mrs. Brook then said as if there were something in the loss peculiarly
irretrievable. "But I suppose," she added, "he gave you all you want."

"Oh dear yes, thank you--I've had lots."

Nanda hovered there slim and charm