nd your head only,
by good fortune, to leave it unscathed. Still, you have after all your
own strange wit, and I'm not sure that any of ours ever compares with
it. Only, confronted also with ours, how can poor Mr. Longdon really
choose which of the two he'll meet?"

Poor Mr. Longdon now looked hard at Edward. "Oh Mr. Brookenham's, I
feel, any day. It's even with YOU, I confess," he said to him, "that I'd
rather have that private half-hour."

"Done!" Mrs. Brook declared. "I'll send him to you. But we HAVE, you
know, as Van says, gone to pieces," she went on, twisting her pretty
head and tossing it back over her shoulder to an auditor of whose
approach to her from behind, though it was impossible she should have
seen him, she had visibly within a minute become aware. "It's your
marriage, Mitchy, that has darkened our old bright air, changed us
more than we even yet know, and most grossly and horribly, my dear man,
changed YOU. You steal up in a way that gives one the creeps, whereas
in the good time that's gone you always burst in with music and song.
Go round where I can see you: I mayn't love you now, but at least, I
suppose, I may look at you. Direct your energies," she pursued while
Mitchy obeyed her, "as much as possible, please, against our uncanny
chill. Pile on the fire and close up the ranks; this WAS our best hour,
you know--and all the more that Tishy, I see, is getting rid of her
superfluities. Here comes back old Van," she wound up, "vanquished, I
judge, in the attempt to divert Nanda from her prey. Won't Nanda sit
with poor US?" she asked of Vanderbank, who now, meeting Mitchy in range
of the others, remained standing with him and as at her commands.

"I didn't of course ask her," the young man replied.

"Then what did you do?"

"I only took a little walk."

Mrs. Brook, on this, was woeful at Mitchy. "See then what we've come
to. When did we ever 'walk' in YOUR time save as a distinct part of
the effect of our good things? Please return to Nanda," she said to
Vanderbank, "and tell her I particularly wish her to come in for this
delightful evening's end."

"She's joining us of herself now," the Duchess noted, "and so's Mr.
Cashmore and so's Tishy--VOYEZ!--who has kept on--(bless her little bare
back!)--no one she oughtn't to keep. As nobody else will now arrive it
would be quite cosey if she locked the door."

"But what on earth, my dear Jane," Mrs. Brook plaintively wondered, "are
you proposing we