girl briskly, "he came simply for the purpose of doing
what he HAD to do. After my letter how could he not come? Then he met
most kindly what I said to him for mother and what he quite understood
to be all my business with him; so that his appeal to me to plead with
you for--well, for his credit--was only thrown in because he had so good
a chance."

This speech brought Mr. Longdon abruptly to his feet, but before she
could warn him again of the patience she continued to need he had
already, as if what she evoked for him left him too stupefied, dropped
back into submission. "The man stood there for you to render him a
service?--for you to help him and praise him?"

"Ah but it wasn't to go out of my way, don't you see? He knew you were
presently to be here." Her anxiety that he should understand gave her a
rare strained smile. "I mustn't make--as a request from him--too much of
it, and I've not a doubt that, rather than that you should think any
ill of him for wishing me to say a word, he would gladly be left with
whatever bad appearance he may actually happen to have." She pulled
up on these words as with a quick sense of their really, by their mere
sound, putting her in deeper; and could only give her friend one of the
looks that expressed: "If I could trust you not to assent even more than
I want, I should say 'You know what I mean!'" She allowed him at all
events--or tried to allow him--no time for uttered irony before going
on: "He was everything you could have wished; quite as beautiful about
YOU--"

"As about you?"--Mr. Longdon took her up.

She demurred. "As about mother." With which she turned away as if it
handsomely settled the question.

But it only left him, as she went to the window, sitting there sombre.
"I like, you know," he brought out as his eyes followed her, "your
saying you're not proud! Thank God you ARE, my dear. Yes--it's better
for us."

At this, after a moment, in her place, she turned round to him. "I'm
glad I'm anything--whatever you may call it and though I can't call it
the same--that's good for YOU."

He said nothing more for a little, as if by such a speech something in
him were simplified and softened. "It would be good for me--by which I
mean it would be easier for me--if you didn't quite so immensely care
for him."

"Oh!" came from Nanda with an accent of attenuation at once so
precipitate and so vague that it only made her attitude at first rather
awkward. "Oh!" she immediat