, or perhaps indeed in the full act of it, poor
Mitchy glared as never before. "Do you mean Van's JEALOUS of me?"

Pressed as she was, there was something in his face that momentarily
hushed her. "There it is!" she achieved however at last.

"Of ME?" Mitchy went on.

What was in his face so suddenly and strangely--was the look of rising
tears--at sight of which, as from a compunction as prompt, she showed a
lovely flush. "There it is, there it is," she repeated. "You ask me for
a reason, and it's the only one I see. Of course if you don't care," she
added, "he needn't come up. He can go straight to Nanda."

Mitchy had turned away again as with the impulse of hiding the tears
that had risen and that had not wholly disappeared even by the time he
faced about. "Did Nanda know he was to come?"

"Mr. Longdon?"

"No, no. Was she expecting Van--?"

"My dear man," Mrs. Brook mildly wailed, "when can she have NOT been?"

Mitchy looked hard for an instant at the floor. "I mean does she know he
has been and gone?"

Mrs. Brook, from where she stood and through the window, looked rather
at the sky. "Her father will have told her."

"Her father?" Mitchy frankly wondered. "Is HE in it?"

Mrs. Brook had at this a longer pause. "You assume, I suppose, Mitchy
dear," she then quavered "that I put him up--!"

"Put Edward up?" he broke in.

"No--that of course. Put Van up to ideas--!"

He caught it again. "About ME--what you call his suspicions?" He seemed
to weigh the charge, but it ended, while he passed his hand hard over
his eyes, in weariness and in the nearest approach to coldness he had
ever shown Mrs. Brook. "It doesn't matter. It's every one's fate to be
in one way or another the subject of ideas. Do then," he continued, "let
Mr. Longdon come up."

She instantly rang the bell. "Then I'll go to Nanda. But don't look
frightened," she added as she came back, "as to what we may--Edward or
I--do next. It's only to tell her that he'll be with her."

"Good. I'll tell Tatton," Mitchy replied.

Still, however, she lingered. "Shall you ever care for me more?"

He had almost the air, as he waited for her to go, of the master of the
house, for she had made herself before him, as he stood with his back
to the fire, as humble as a tolerated visitor. "Oh just as much. Where's
the difference? Aren't our ties in fact rather multiplied?"

"That's the way _I_ want to feel it. And from the moment you recognise
with me--"

"Yes