life that so many
of us have so long led together"--and she showed that it was for Mr.
Longdon she more particularly brought this out--"is precisely that
nobody has ever had one. Nobody has dreamed of it--it would have been
such a rough false note, a note of violence out of all keeping. Did
YOU ever hear of one, Van? Did you, my poor Mitchy? But you see for
yourselves," she wound up with a sigh and before either could answer,
"how inferior we've become when we have even in our defence to assert
such things."

Mitchy, who for a while past had sat gazing at the floor, now raised his
good natural goggles and stretched his closed mouth to its widest. "Oh I
think we're pretty good still!" he then replied.

Mrs. Brook indeed appeared, after a pause and addressing herself again
to Tishy, to give a reluctant illustration of it, coming back as from
an excursion of the shortest to the question momentarily dropped. "I'm
bound to say--all the more you know--that I don't quite see what Aggie
mayn't now read." Suddenly, however, her look at their informant took on
an anxiety. "Is the book you speak of something VERY awful?"

Mrs. Grendon, with so much these past minutes to have made her so, was
at last visibly more present. "That's what Lord Petherton says of it.
From what he knows of the author."

"So that he wants to keep her--?"

"Well, from trying it first. I think he wants to see if it's good for
her."

"That's one of the most charming soins, I think," the Duchess said,
"that a gentleman may render a young woman to whom he desires to be
useful. I won't say that Petherton always knows how good a book may be,
but I'd trust him any day to say how bad."

Mr. Longdon, who had sat throughout silent and still, quitted his seat
at this and evidently in so doing gave Mrs. Brook as much occasion as
she required. She also got up and her movement brought to her view
at the door of the further room something that drew from her a quick
exclamation. "He can tell us now then--for here they come!" Lord
Petherton, arriving with animation and followed so swiftly by his young
companion that she presented herself as pursuing him, shook triumphantly
over his head a small volume in blue paper. There was a general movement
at the sight of them, and by the time they had rejoined their friends
the company, pushing back seats and causing a variety of mute expression
smoothly to circulate, was pretty well on its feet. "See--he HAS pulled
her off!