you."

No collapse of Mr. Longdon's was ever incompatible with his sitting well
forward. "'Again'?"

"Do you look so blank," she demanded, "because you've really forgotten
the gratitude I expressed to you when you were so good as to bring
Nanda up for Aggie's marriage?--or because you don't think it a matter
I should trouble myself to return to? How can I help it," she went on
without waiting for his answer, "if I see your hand in everything that
has happened since the so interesting talk I had with you last summer
at Mertle? There have been times when I've really thought of writing
to you; I've even had a bold bad idea of proposing myself to you for a
Sunday. Then the crisis, my momentary alarm, has struck me as blowing
over, and I've felt I could wait for some luck like this, which would
sooner or later come." Her companion, however, appeared to leave the
luck so on her hands that she could only snatch up, to cover its nudity,
the next handsomest assumption. "I see you cleverly guess that what I've
been worried about is the effect on Mrs. Brook of the loss of her dear
Mitchy. If you've not at all events had your own impression of this
effect, isn't that only because these last months you've seen so little
of her? I'VE seen," said the Duchess, "enough and to spare." She waited
as if for her vision, on this, to be flashed back at her, but the only
result of her speech was that her friend looked hard at somebody else.
It was just this symptom indeed that perhaps sufficed her, for in a
minute she was again afloat. "Things have turned out so much as I
desire them that I should really feel wicked not to have a humble heart.
There's a quarter indeed," she added with a noble unction, "to which I
don't fear to say for myself that no day and no night pass without my
showing it. However, you English, I know, don't like one to speak of
one's religion. I'm just as simply thankful for mine--I mean with as
little sense of indecency or agony about it--as I am for my health or
my carriage. My point is at any rate that I say in no cruel spirit of
triumph, yet do none the less very distinctly say, that the person Mr.
Mitchett's marriage has inevitably pleased least may be now rather to be
feared." These words had the sound of a climax, and she had brought them
out as if, with her duty done, to leave them; but something that took
place, for her eye, in the face Mr. Longdon had half-averted gave her
after an instant what he might have ca