ou don't
suffer by my freedom."

Mr. Longdon put by with a mere drop of his eyes the question of his
suffering: there was so clearly for him an issue more relevant. "What do
you know of my 'plan'?"

"Why, my dear man, haven't I told you that ever since Mertle I've made
out your hand? What on earth for other people can your action look like
but an adoption?"

"Of--a--HIM?"

"You're delightful. Of--a--HER! If it does come to the same thing for
you, so much the better. That at any rate is what we're all taking
it for, and Mrs. Brook herself en tete. She sees--through your
generosity--Nanda's life more or less, at the worst, arranged for, and
that's just what gives her a good conscience."

If Mr. Longdon breathed rather hard it seemed to show at least that he
followed. "What does she want of a good conscience?"

From under her high tiara an instant she almost looked down at him. "Ah
you do hate her!"

He coloured, but held his ground. "Don't you tell me yourself she's to
be feared?"

"Yes, and watched. But--if possible--with amusement."

"Amusement?" Mr. Longdon faintly gasped.

"Look at her now," his friend went on with an indication that was indeed
easy to embrace. Separated from them by the width of the room, Mrs.
Brook was, though placed in profile, fully presented; the satisfaction
with which she had lately sunk upon a light gilt chair marked itself
as superficial and was moreover visibly not confirmed by the fact that
Vanderbank's high-perched head, arrested before her in a general survey
of opportunity, kept her eyes too far above the level of talk. Their
companions were dispersed, some in the other room, and for the occupants
of the Duchess's sofa they made, as a couple in communion, a picture,
framed and detached, vaguely reduplicated in the high polish of the
French floor. "She IS tremendously pretty." The Duchess appeared to
drop this as a plea for indulgence and to be impelled in fact by the
interlocutor's silence to carry it further. "I've never at all thought,
you know, that Nanda touches her."

Mr. Longdon demurred. "Do you mean for beauty?"

His friend, for his simplicity, discriminated. "Ah they've neither of
them 'beauty.' That's not a word to make free with. But the mother has
grace."

"And the daughter hasn't

"Not a line. You answer me of course, when I say THAT, you answer me
with your adored Lady Julia, and will want to know what then becomes of
the lucky resemblance. I quite grant