ngdon,
"is only the kinder way taken by these ladies to speak of Mrs. Grendon's
broken heart. You must know all about that."

"Oh yes--ALL." Mr. Longdon spoke very simply, with the consequence this
time, on the part of his companions, of a silence of some minutes, which
he himself had at last to break. "Mr. Grendon doesn't like her." The
addition of these words apparently made the difference--as if they
constituted a fresh link with the irresistible comedy of things. That
he was unexpectedly diverting was, however, no check to Mr. Longdon's
delivering his full thought. "Very horrid of two sisters to be both, in
their marriages, so wretched."

"Ah but Tishy, I maintain," Mrs. Brook returned, "ISN'T wretched at all.
If I were satisfied that she's really so I'd never let Nanda come to
her."

"That's the most extraordinary doctrine, love," the Duchess interposed.
"When you're satisfied a woman's 'really' poor you never give her a
crust?"

"Do you call Nanda a crust, Duchess?" Vanderbank amusedly asked.

"She's all at any rate, apparently, just now, that poor Tishy has to
live on."

"You're severe then," the young man said, "on our dinner of to-night."

"Oh Jane," Mrs. Brook declared, "is never severe: she's only
uncontrollably witty. It's only Tishy moreover who gives out that her
husband doesn't like her. HE, poor man, doesn't say anything of the
sort."

"Yes, but, after all, you know"--Vanderbank just put it to her--"where
the deuce, all the while, IS he?"

"Heaven forbid," the Duchess remarked, "that we should too rashly
ascertain."

"There it is--exactly," Mr. Longdon subjoined.

He had once more his success of hilarity, though not indeed to the
injury of the Duchess's next word. "It's Nanda, you know, who speaks,
and loud enough, for Harry Grendon's dislikes."

"That's easy for her," Mrs. Brook declared, "when she herself isn't one
of them."

"She isn't surely one of anybody's," Mr. Longdon gravely observed.

Mrs. Brook gazed across at him. "You ARE too dear! But I've none the
less a crow to pick with you."

Mr. Longdon returned her look, but returned it somehow to Van. "You
frighten me, you know, out of my wits."

"_I_ do?" said Vanderbank.

Mr. Longdon just hesitated. "Yes."

"It must be the sacred terror," Mrs. Brook suggested to Van, "that
Mitchy so often speaks of. I'M not trying with you," she went on to Mr.
Longdon, "for anything of that kind, but only for the short half-hour
in private