uch a thing doesn't affect you as 'immodest.' One never
knows--but I don't much care if it does. I suppose it WOULD be immodest
if I were to say that I verily believe she's in love with you. Not, for
that matter, that father would mind--he wouldn't mind, as he says, a
tuppenny rap. So"--she extraordinarily kept it up--"you're welcome to
any good the information may have for you: though that, I dare say, does
sound hideous. No matter--if I produce any effect on you. That's
the only thing I want. When I think of her downstairs there so often
nowadays practically alone I feel as if I could scarcely bear it. She's
so fearfully young."

This time at least her speech, while she went from point to point,
completely hushed him, though after a full glimpse of the direction it
was taking he ceased to meet her eyes and only sat staring hard at the
pattern of the rug. Even when at last he spoke it was without looking
up. "You're indeed, as she herself used to say, the modern daughter! It
takes that type to wish to make a career for her parents."

"Oh," said Nanda very simply, "it isn't a 'career' exactly, is
it--keeping hold of an old friend? but it may console a little, mayn't
it, for the absence of one? At all events I didn't want not to have
spoken before it's too late. Of course I don't know what's the matter
between you, or if anything's really the matter at all. I don't care
at any rate WHAT is--it can't be anything very bad. Make it up, make it
up--forget it. I don't pretend that's a career for YOU any more than for
her; but there it is. I know how I sound--most patronising and pushing;
but nothing venture nothing have. You CAN'T know how much you are to
her. You're more to her, I verily believe, than any one EVER was. I hate
to have the appearance of plotting anything about her behind her back;
so I'll just say it once for all. She said once, in speaking of it to
a person who repeated it to me, that you had done more for her than any
one, because it was you who had really brought her out. It WAS. You
did. I saw it at the time myself. I was very small, but I COULD see it.
You'll say I must have been a most uncanny little wretch, and I dare
say I was and am keeping now the pleasant promise. That doesn't prevent
one's feeling that when a person has brought a person out--"

"A person should take the consequences," Vanderbank broke in, "and see a
person through?" He could meet her now perfectly and proceeded admirably
to do it