er do--!"

"You never do?" Mrs. Brook broke in as with the glimpse of a new light.

The girl showed an indulgence for this interest that was for a moment
almost elderly. "I enjoy awfully with him seeing just how to take him."

Her tone and her face evidently put forth for her companion at this
juncture something freshly, even quite supremely suggestive; and yet the
effect of them on Mrs. Brook's part was only a question so off-hand that
it might already often have been asked. The mother's eyes, to ask it,
we may none the less add, attached themselves closely to the daughter's,
and her face just glowed. "You like him so very awfully?"

It was as if the next instant Nanda felt herself on her guard. Yet she
spoke with a certain surrender. "Well, it's rather intoxicating to be
one's self--!" She had only a drop over the choice of her term.

"So tremendously made up to, you mean--even by a little fussy ancient
man? But DOESN'T he, my dear," Mrs. Brook continued with encouragement,
"make up to you?"

A supposititious spectator would certainly on this have imagined in the
girl's face the delicate dawn of a sense that her mother had suddenly
become vulgar, together with a general consciousness that the way
to meet vulgarity was always to be frank and simple and above all to
ignore. "He makes one enjoy being liked so much--liked better, I do
think, than I've ever been liked by any one."

If Mrs. Brook hesitated it was, however, clearly not because she had
noticed. "Not better surely than by dear Mitchy? Or even if you come to
that by Tishy herself."

Nanda's simplicity maintained itself. "Oh Mr. Longdon's different from
Tishy."

Her mother again hesitated. "You mean of course he knows more?"

The girl considered it. "He doesn't know MORE. But he knows other
things. And he's pleasanter than Mitchy."

"You mean because he doesn't want to marry you?"

It was as if she had not heard that Nanda continued: "Well, he's more
beautiful."

"O-oh!" cried Mrs. Brook, with a drawn-out extravagance of comment that
amounted to an impugnment of her taste even by herself.

It contributed to Nanda's quietness. "He's one of the most beautiful
people in the world."

Her companion at this, with a quick wonder, fixed her. "DOES he, my
dear, want to marry you?"

"Yes--to all sorts of ridiculous people."

"But I mean--would you take HIM?"

Nanda, rising, met the question with a short ironic "Yes!" that showed
her first impatience