the sort of
person--!"

"That she didn't even suspect herself," Nanda broke in, "to be? I'm
equally positive now. It's quite what I believed, only there's ever so
much more of it. More HAS come--and more will yet. You see, when there
has been nothing before, it all has to come with a rush. So that if even
I'm surprised of course she is."

"And of course _I_ am!" Mitchy's interest, though even now not wholly
unqualified with amusement, had visibly deepened. "You admit then," he
continued, "that you're surprised?"

Nanda just hesitated. "At the mere scale of it. I think it's splendid.
The only person whose astonishment I don't quite understand," she added,
"is Cousin Jane."

"Oh Cousin Jane's astonishment serves her right!"

"If she held so," Nanda pursued, "that marriage should do everything--!"

"She shouldn't be in such a funk at finding what it IS doing? Oh no,
she's the last one!" Mitchy declared. "I vow I enjoy her scare."

"But it's very bad, you know," said Nanda.

"Oh too awful!"

"Well, of course," the girl appeared assentingly to muse, "she couldn't
after all have dreamed--!" But she took herself up. "The great thing is
to be helpful."

"And in what way--?" Mitchy asked with his wonderful air of inviting
competitive suggestions.

"Toward Aggie's finding herself. Do you think," she immediately
continued, "that Lord Petherton really is?"

Mitchy frankly considered. "Helpful? Oh he does his best, I gather.
Yes," he presently added--"Petherton's all right."

"It's you yourself, naturally," his companion threw off, "who can help
most."

"Certainly, and I'm doing my best too. So that with such good
assistance"--he seemed at last to have taken it all from her--"what is
it, I again ask, that, as you request, I'm to 'leave' to you?"

Nanda required, while he still waited, some time to reply. "To keep my
promise."

"Your promise?"

"Not to abandon you."

"Ah," cried Mitchy, "that's better!"

"Then good-bye," she said.

"Good-bye." But he came a few steps forward. "I MAYN'T kiss your hand?"

"Never."

"Never?"

"Never."

"Oh!" he oddly sounded as he quickly went out.

IV

The interval he had represented as likely to be useful to her was in
fact, however, not a little abbreviated by a punctuality of arrival
on Mr. Longdon's part so extreme as to lead the first thing to a word
almost of apology. "You can't say," her new visitor immediately began,
"that I haven't left you alone, thes