. Longdon and her mother, who entered the room together. When she
looked back to her companion she had had time to drop a consciousness
of his question. "If I'm proud, to you, I'm not good," she said, "and if
I'm good--always to you--I'm not proud. I know at all events perfectly
how immensely you're occupied, what a quantity of work you get through
and how every minute counts for you. Don't make it a crime to me that
I'm reasonable."

"No, that would show, wouldn't it? that there isn't much else. But how it
all comes back--!"

"Well, to what?" she asked.

"To the old story. You know how I'm occupied. You know how I work. You
know how I manage my time."

"Oh I see," said Nanda. "It IS my knowing, after all, everything."

"Everything. The book I just mentioned is one that, months ago---I
remember now--I lent your mother."

"Oh a thing in a blue cover? I remember then too." Nanda's face cleared
up. "I had forgotten it was lying about here, but I must have brought
it--in fact I remember I did--for Tishy. And I wrote your name on it so
that we might know--"

"That I hadn't lent it to either of you? It didn't occur to you to write
your own?" Vanderbank went on.

"Well, but if it isn't mine? It ISN'T mine, I'm sure."

"Therefore also if it can't be Tishy's--"

"The thing's simple enough--it's mother's."

"'Simple'?" Vanderbank laughed. "I like you! And may I ask if you've
read the remarkable work?"

"Oh yes." Then she wonderfully said: "For Tishy."

"To see if it would do?"

"I've often done that," the girl returned.

"And she takes your word?"

"Generally. I think I remember she did that time."

"And read the confounded thing?"

"Oh no!" said Nanda.

He looked at her a moment longer. "You're too particular!" he rather
oddly sounded, turning away with it to meet Mr. Longdon.

II

When after dinner the company was restored to the upper rooms the
Duchess was on her feet as soon as the door opened for the entrance of
the gentlemen. Then it might have been seen that she had a purpose,
for as soon as the elements had again, with a due amount of the usual
shuffling and mismatching, been mixed, her case proved the first to have
been settled. She had got Mr. Longdon beside her on a sofa that was just
right for two. "I've seized you without a scruple," she frankly said,
"for there are things I want to say to you as well as very particularly
to ask. More than anything else of course I want again to thank