?"

"Well, that he never, you know, really WOULD--"

He took her mercifully up. "There's no harm done?" Mitchy thought of it.

It made her still hover. "Nanda will be rich. Toward that you CAN help,
and it's really, I may now tell you, what it came into my head you
should see our friend here FOR."

He maintained his waiting attitude. "Thanks, thanks."

"You're our guardian angel!" she exclaimed.

At this he laughed out. "Wait till you see what Mr. Longdon does!"

But she took no notice. "I want you to see before I go that I've done
nothing for myself. Van, after all--!" she mused.

"Well?"

"Only hates me. It isn't as with you," she said. "I've really lost him."

Mitchy for an instant, with the eyes that had shown his tears, glared
away into space. "He can't very positively, you know, now like ANY of
us. He misses a fortune."

"There it is!" Mrs. Brook once more observed. Then she had a comparative
brightness. "I'm so glad YOU don't!" He gave another laugh, but she was
already facing Mr. Tatton, who had again answered the bell. "Show Mr.
Longdon up."

"I'm to tell him then it's at your request?" Mitchy asked when the
butler had gone.

"That you receive him? Oh yes. He'll be the last to quarrel with that.
But there's one more thing."

It was something over which of a sudden she had one of her returns of
anxiety. "I've been trying for months and months to remember to find out
from you--"

"Well, what?" he enquired, as she looked odd.

"Why if Harold ever gave back to you, as he swore to me on his honour he
would, that five-pound note--!"

"But which, dear lady?" The sense of other incongruities than those they
had been dealing with seemed to arrive now for Mitchy's aid.

"The one that, ages ago, one day when you and Van were here, we had the
joke about. You produced it, in sport, as a 'fine' for something, and
put it on that table; after which, before I knew what you were about,
before I could run after you, you had gone off and ridiculously left it.
Of course the next minute--and again before I could turn round--Harold
had pounced on it, and I tried in vain to recover it from him. But all I
could get him to do--"

"Was to promise to restore it straight to its owner?" Mitchy had
listened so much less in surprise than in amusement that he had
apparently after a moment re-established the scene. "Oh I recollect--he
did settle with me. THAT'S all right."

She fixed him from the door of the next room.