which circumstances somehow gave a high effect of
suddenness and strangeness, was listened to by the others in a quick
silence that was like the sense of a blast of cold air, though with the
difference between the spectators that Vanderbank attached his eyes hard
to Mrs. Brook and that the Duchess looked as straight at Mr. Longdon, to
whom clearly she wished to convey that if he had wondered a short time
before how Mrs. Brook would do it he must now be quite at his ease. He
indulged in fact, after this lady's last words, in a pause that might
have signified some of the fulness of a new light. He only said very
quietly: "I thought you liked it."

At this his neighbour broke in. "The care you take of the child? They
DO!" The Duchess, as she spoke, became aware of the nearer presence of
Edward Brookenham, who within a minute had come in from the other room;
and her decision of character leaped forth in her quick signal to him.
"Edward will tell you." He was already before their semicircle. "DO you,
dear," she appealed, "want Nanda back from Mr. Longdon?"

Edward plainly could be trusted to feel in his quiet way that the oracle
must be a match for the priestess. "'Want' her, Jane? We wouldn't TAKE
her." And as if knowing quite what he was about he looked at his wife
only after he had spoken.

IV

His reply had complete success, to which there could scarce have
afterwards been a positive denial that some sound of amusement even from
Mr. Longdon himself had in its degree contributed. Certain it was
that Mrs. Brook found, as she exclaimed that her husband was always so
awfully civil, just the right note of resigned understanding; whereupon
he for a minute presented to them blankly enough his fine dead face.
"'Civil' is just what I was afraid I wasn't. I mean, you know," he
continued to Mr. Longdon, "that you really mustn't look to us to let you
off--!"

"From a week or a day"--Mr. Longdon took him up--"of the time to which
you consider I've pledged myself? My dear sir, please don't imagine it's
for ME the Duchess appeals."

"It's from your wife, you delicious dull man," that lady elucidated. "If
you wished to be stiff with our friend here you've really been so with
HER; which comes, no doubt, from the absence between you of proper
preconcerted action. You spoke without your cue."

"Oh!" said Edward Brookenham.

"That's it, Jane"--Mrs. Brook continued to take it beautifully. "We
dressed to-day in a hurry and hadn