't time for our usual rehearsal.
Edward, when we dine out, generally brings three pocket-handkerchiefs
and six jokes. I leave the management of the handkerchiefs to his own
taste, but we mostly try together in advance to arrange a career for the
other things. It's some charming light thing of my own that's supposed
to give him the sign."

"Only sometimes he confounds"--Vanderbank helped her out--"your light
and your heavy!" He had got up to make room for his host of so many
occasions and, having forced him into the empty chair, now moved vaguely
off to the quarter of the room occupied by Nanda and Mr. Cashmore.

"That's very well," the Duchess resumed, "but it doesn't at all clear
you, cara mia, of the misdemeanour of setting up as a felt domestic
need something of which Edward proves deeply unconscious. He has put his
finger on Nanda's true interest. He doesn't care a bit how it would LOOK
for you to want her."

"Don't you mean rather, Jane, how it looks for us NOT to want her?"
Mrs. Brook amended with a detachment now complete. "Of course, dear old
friend," she continued to Mr. Longdon, "she quite puts me with my back
to the wall when she helps you to see--what you otherwise mightn't
guess--that Edward and I work it out between us to show off as tender
parents and yet to get from you everything you'll give. I do the
sentimental and he the practical; so that we, after one fashion and
another, deck ourselves in the glory of our sacrifice without forfeiting
the 'keep' of our daughter. This must appeal to you as another useful
illustration of what London manners have come to; unless indeed," Mrs.
Brook prattled on, "it only strikes you still more--and to a degree that
blinds you to its other possible bearings--as the last proof that I'm
too tortuous for you to know what I'd be at!"

Mr. Longdon faced her, across his interval, with his original terror
represented now only by such a lingering flush as might have formed a
natural tribute to a brilliant scene. "I haven't the glimmering of an
idea of what you'd be at. But please understand," he added, "that I
don't at all refuse you the private half-hour you referred to a while
since."

"Are you really willing to put the child up for the rest of the year?"
Edward placidly demanded, speaking as if quite unaware that anything
else had taken place.

His wife fixed her eyes on him. "The ingenuity of your companions, love,
plays in the air like the lightning, but flashes rou