that, in
respect to any subject, closed up the rear of the procession. It had
been said of her indeed that when processions were at all rapid she was
usually to be found, on a false impression of her whereabouts, mixed up
with the next; so that now, for instance, by the time she had reached
the point of saying to Vanderbank "Are you REALLY hungry?" Nanda had
begun to appeal to him for some praise of their hostess's appearance.
This was of course with soft looks up and down at her clothes. "Isn't
she too nice? Did you ever see anything so lovely?"

"I'm so faint with inanition," Van replied to Mrs. Grendon, "that--like
the traveller in the desert, isn't it?--I only make out, as an oasis or
a mirage, a sweet green rustling blur. I don't trust you."

"I don't trust YOU," Nanda said on her friend's behalf. "She isn't
'green'--men are amazing: they don't know the dearest old blue that ever
was seen."

"IS it your 'OLD blue'?" Vanderbank, monocular, very earnestly asked. "I
can imagine it was 'dear,' but I should have thought--!"

"It was yellow"--Nanda helped him out--"if I hadn't kindly told
you." Tishy's figure showed the confidence of objects consecrated by
publicity; bodily speaking a beautiful human plant, it might have taken
the last November gale to account for the completeness with which,
in some quarters, she had shed her leaves. Her companions could
only emphasise by the direction of their eyes the nature of the
responsibility with which a spectator would have seen them saddled--a
choice, as to consciousness, between the effect of her being and the
effect of her not being dressed. "Oh I'm hideous--of course I know it,"
said Tishy. "I'm only just clean. Here's Nanda now, who's beautiful,"
she vaguely continued, "and Nanda--"

"Oh but, darling, Nanda's clean too!" the young lady in question
interrupted; on which her fellow guest could only laugh with her as in
relief from the antithesis of which her presence of mind had averted
the completion, little indeed as in Mrs. Grendon's talk that element of
style was usually involved.

"There's nothing in such a matter," Vanderbank observed as if it were
the least he could decently say, "like challenging enquiry; and here's
Harold, precisely," he went on in the next breath, "as clear and crisp
and undefiled as a fresh five-pound note."

"A fresh one?"--Harold had passed in a flash from his hostess. "A man
who like me hasn't seen one for six months could perfectly do,