you that Lady Julia must have had
the thing we speak of. But that dear sweet blessed thing is very much
the same lost secret as the dear sweet blessed OTHER thing that went
away with it--the decent leisure that, for the most part, we've also
seen the last of. It's the thing at any rate that poor Nanda and all
her kind have most effectually got rid of. Oh if you'd trust me a little
more you'd see that I'm quite at one with you on all the changes for the
worse. I bear up, but I'm old enough to have known. All the same Mrs.
Brook has something--say what you like--when she bends that little brown
head. Dieu sait comme elle se coiffe, but what she gets out of it! Only
look."

Mr. Longdon conveyed in an indescribable manner that he had retired to
a great distance; yet even from this position he must have launched a
glance that arrived at a middle way. "They both know you're watching
them."

"And don't they know YOU are? Poor Mr. Van has a consciousness!"

"So should I if two terrible women--"

"Were admiring you both at once?" The Duchess folded the big feathered
fan that had partly protected their vision. "Well, SHE, poor dear, can't
help it. She wants him herself."

At the drop of the Duchess's fan he restored his nippers. "And he
doesn't--not a bit--want HER!"

"There it is. She has put down her money, as it were, without a return.
She has given Mitchy up and got nothing instead."

There was delicacy, yet there was distinctness, in Mr. Longdon's
reserve. "Do you call ME nothing?"

The Duchess, at this, fairly swelled with her happy stare. "Then it IS
an adoption?" She forbore to press, however; she only went on: "It isn't
a question, my dear man, of what _I_ call it. YOU don't make love to
her."

"Dear me," said Mr. Longdon, "what would she have had?"

"That could be more charming, you mean, than your famous 'loyalty'?
Oh, caro mio, she wants it straighter! But I shock you," his companion
quickly added.

The manner in which he firmly rose was scarce a denial; yet he stood for
a moment in place. "What after all can she do?"

"She can KEEP Mr. Van."

Mr. Longdon wondered. "Where?"

"I mean till it's too late. She can work on him."

"But how?"

Covertly again the Duchess had followed the effect of her friend's
perceived movement on Mrs. Brook, who also got up. She gave a rap with
her fan on his leg. "Sit down--you'll see."

III

He mechanically obeyed her although it happened to lend him the air