"Mr. Grendon's not
here."

"Where is he then?"

"Yachting--but she doesn't know."

"Then she and you are just doing this together?"

"Well," said Nanda, "she's dreadfully frightened."

"Oh she mustn't allow herself," he returned, "to be too much carried
away by it. But we're to have your mother?"

"Yes, and papa. It's really for Mitchy and Aggie," the girl went
on--"before they go abroad."

"Ah then I see what you've come up for! Tishy and I aren't in it. It's
all for Mitchy."

"If you mean there's nothing I wouldn't do for him you're quite right.
He has always been of a kindness to me--!"

"That culminated in marrying your friend?" Vanderbank asked. "It was
charming certainly, and I don't mean to diminish the merit of it. But
Aggie herself, I gather, is of a charm now--!"

"Isn't she?"--Nanda was eager. "Hasn't she come out?"

"With a bound--into the arena. But when a young person's out with
Mitchy--!"

"Oh you mustn't say anything against that. I've been out with him
myself."

"Ah but my dear child--!" Van frankly argued.

It was not, however, a thing to notice. "I knew it would be just so. It
always is when they've been like that."

"Do you mean as she apparently WAS? But doesn't it make one wonder a
little IF she was?"

"Oh she was--I know she was. And we're also to have Harold," Nanda
continued--"another of Mitchy's beneficiaries. It WOULD be a banquet,
wouldn't it? if we were to have them all."

Vanderbank hesitated, and the look he fixed on the door might have
suggested a certain open attention to the arrival of their hostess or
the announcement of other guests. "If you haven't got them all, the
beneficiaries, you've got, in having me, I should suppose, about the
biggest."

"Ah what has he done for you?" Nanda asked.

Again her friend hung fire. "Do you remember something you said to me
down there in August?"

She looked vague but quite unembarrassed. "I remember but too well that
I chattered."

"You declared to me that you knew everything."

"Oh yes--and I said so to Mitchy too."

"Well, my dear child, you don't."

"Because I don't know--?"

"Yes, what makes ME the victim of his insatiable benevolence."

"Ah well, if you've no doubt of it yourself that's all that's required.
I'm quite GLAD to hear of something I don't know," Nanda pursued. "And
we're to have Harold too," she repeated.

"As a beneficiary? Then we SHALL fill up! Harold will give us a stamp."

"Won't he? I h