"I don't
know. I give it up. The thing was of a strangeness!"

Her friend also paused, and it was as if for a little, on either side of
a gate on which they might have had their elbows, they remained looking
at each other over it and over what was unsaid between them. "It WAS
'rum'!" he at last merely dropped.

It was scarce for Mrs. Brook, all the same--she seemed to feel after a
moment--to surround the matter with an excess of silence.

"He did what a man does--especially in that business--when he doesn't do
what he wants."

"Do you mean what somebody else wanted?"

"Well, what he himself DIDN'T. And if he's unhappy," she went on, "he'll
know whom to pitch into."

"Ah," said Vanderbank, "even if he is he won't be the man to what you
might call 'vent' it on her. He'll seek compensations elsewhere and
won't mind any ridicule--!"

"Whom are you speaking of as 'her'?" Mrs. Brook asked as on feeling
that something in her face had made him stop. "I wasn't referring," she
explained, "to his wife."

"Oh!" said Vanderbank.

"Aggie doesn't matter," she went on.

"Oh!" he repeated. "You meant the Duchess?" he then threw off.

"Don't be silly!" she rejoined. "He MAY not become unhappy--God grant
NOT!" she developed. "But if he does he'll take it out of Nanda."

Van appeared to challenge this. "'Take it out' of her?"

"Well, want to know, as some American asked me the other day of
somebody, what she's 'going to do' about it."

Vanderbank, who had remained on his feet, stood still at this for a
longer time than at anything yet. "But what CAN she 'do'--?"

"That's again just what I'm curious to see." Mrs. Brook then spoke with
a glance at the clock. "But if you don't go up to her--!"

"My notion of seeing her alone may be defeated by her coming down on
learning that I'm here?" He had taken out his watch. "I'll go in a
moment. But, as a light on that danger, would YOU, in the circumstances,
come down?"

Mrs. Brook, however, could for light only look darkness. "Oh you don't
love ME!"

Vanderbank, still with his watch, stared then as an alternative at the
fire. "You haven't yet told me you know, if Mr. Cashmore now comes EVERY
day."

"My dear man, how can I say? You've just your occasion to find out."

"From HER, you mean?"

Mrs. Brook hesitated. "Unless you prefer the footman. Must I again
remind you that, with her own sitting-room and one of the men, in
addition to her maid, wholly at her orders, her indep