of
taking Mrs. Brook's approach for a signal to resume his seat. She came
over to them, Vanderbank followed, and it was without again moving, with
a vague upward gape in fact from his place, that Mr. Longdon received
as she stood before him a challenge of a sort to flash a point into what
the Duchess had just said. "Why do you hate me so?"

Vanderbank, who, beside Mrs. Brook, looked at him with attention, might
have suspected him of turning a trifle pale; though even Vanderbank,
with reasons of his own for an observation of the sharpest, could scarce
have read into the matter the particular dim vision that would have
accounted for it--the flicker of fear of what Mrs. Brook, whether as
daughter or as mother, was at last so strangely and differently to show
herself.

"I should warn you, sir," the young man threw off, "how little we
consider that--in Buckingham Crescent certainly--a fair question. It
isn't playing the game--it's hitting below the belt. We hate and we
love--the latter especially; but to tell each other why is to break that
little tacit rule of finding out for ourselves which is the delight of
our lives and the source of our triumphs. You can say, you know, if you
like, but you're not obliged."

Mr. Longdon transferred to him something of the same colder
apprehension, looking at him manifestly harder than ever before and
finding in his eyes also no doubt a consciousness more charged. He
presently got up, but, without answering Vanderbank, fixed again Mrs.
Brook, to whom he echoed without expression: "Hate you?"

The next moment, while he remained in presence with Vanderbank, Mrs.
Brook was pointing out her meaning to him from the cushioned corner he
had quitted. "Why, when you come back to town you come straight, as it
were, here."

"Ah what's that," the Duchess asked in his interest, "but to follow
Nanda as closely as possible, or at any rate to keep well with her?"

Mrs. Brook, however, had no ear for this plea. "And when I, coming here
too and thinking only of my chance to 'meet' you, do my very sweetest to
catch your eye, you're entirely given up--!"

"To trying of course," the Duchess broke in afresh, "to keep well with
ME!"

Mrs. Brook now had a smile for her. "Ah that takes precautions then that
I shall perhaps fail of if I too much interrupt your conversation."

"Isn't she nice to me," the Duchess asked of Mr. Longdon, "when I was in
the very act of praising her to the skies?"

Their int