affairs of a gentleman whom she can never get rid of on the
specious plea that he's only her husband or her lover or her father or
her son or her brother or her uncle or her cousin. There, as none of
these characters, he just stands."

"Yes," Nanda kindly mused, "he's simply her Mitchy."

"Precisely. And a Mitchy, you see, is--what do you call it?--simply
indissoluble. He's moreover inordinately inquisitive. He goes to the
length of wondering whether Van also learned that you were expecting
ME."

"Oh yes--I told him everything."

Mitchy smiled. "Everything?"

"I told him--I told him," she replied with impatience.

Mitchy hesitated. "And did he then leave me also a message?"

"No, nothing. What I'm to do for him with Mr. Longdon," she immediately
explained, "is to make practically a kind of apology."

"Ah and for me"--Mitchy quickly took it up--"there can be no question of
anything of that kind. I see. He has done me no wrong."

Nanda, with her eyes now on the window, turned it over. "I don't much
think he would know even if he had."

"I see, I see. And we wouldn't tell him."

She turned with some abruptness from the outer view. "We wouldn't tell
him. But he was beautiful all round," she went on. "No one could have
been nicer about having for so long, for instance, come so little to the
house. As if he hadn't only too many other things to do! He didn't even
make them out nearly the good reasons he might. But fancy, with his
important duties--all the great affairs on his hands--our making vulgar
little rows about being 'neglected'! He actually made so little of what
he might easily plead--speaking so, I mean, as if he were all in the
wrong--that one had almost positively to SHOW him his excuses. As
if"--she really kept it up--"he hasn't plenty!"

"It's only people like me," Mitchy threw out, "who have none?"

"Yes--people like you. People of no use, of no occupation and no
importance. Like you, you know," she pursued, "there are so many."
Then it was with no transition of tone that she added: "If you're bad,
Mitchy, I won't tell you anything."

"And if I'm good what will you tell me? What I want really most to KNOW
is why he should be, as you said just now, 'apologetic' to Mr. Longdon.
What's the wrong he allows he has done HIM?"

"Oh he has 'neglected' him--if that's any comfort to us--quite as much."

"Hasn't looked him up and that sort of thing?"

"Yes--and he mentioned some other matter."

Mitch