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Longdon's face reflected for a minute something he could scarcely have supposed her acute enough to make out, the struggle between his real mistrust of her, founded on the unconscious violence offered by her nature to his every memory of her mother, and his sense on the other hand of the high propriety of his liking her; to which latter force his interest in Vanderbank was a contribution, inasmuch as he was obliged to recognise on the part of the pair an alliance it would have been difficult to explain at Beccles.
Longdon's delivering his full thought. "Very horrid of two sisters to be both, in their marriages, so wretched." "Ah but Tishy, I maintain," Mrs. Brook returned, "ISN'T wretched at all. If I were satisfied that she's really so I'd never let Nanda come to her." "That's the most extraordinary doctrine, love," the Duchess interposed.
"He thinks he hasn't the means. He has great ideas of what a fellow must offer a woman." Mr. Longdon's eyes travelled a while over the amenities about him. "He hasn't such a view of himself alone ?" "As to make him think he's enough as he stands? No," said Mitchy, "I don't fancy he has a very awful view of himself alone.
Longdon's momentary mystification was perhaps partly but the natural effect of constitutional prudence. "A finger?" "I mean let me help." "Oh!" breathed the old man thoughtfully and without meeting his eyes. Mitchy, as if with more to say, watched him an instant, then before speaking caught himself up. "Look out here he comes."
Brook hesitated it was, however, clearly not because she had noticed. "Not better surely than by dear Mitchy? Or even if you come to that by Tishy herself." Nanda's simplicity maintained itself. "Oh Mr. Longdon's different from Tishy." Her mother again hesitated. "You mean of course he knows more?" The girl considered it. "He doesn't know MORE. But he knows other things.
"If you trust me for the greater you can trust me for the less. Good-night." Vanderbank had offered his hand. "Good-night." But Mr. Longdon kept him a moment. "You DON'T care for my figure?" "Not yet not yet. PLEASE." Vanderbank seemed really to fear it, but on Mr. Longdon's releasing him with a little drop of disappointment they went together to the door of the room, where they had another pause.
People wouldn't look at me " "Well, WE shall look at you," Vanderbank declared. Then he added: "What people do you mean?" And before his friend could reply: "Lady Julia?" Mr. Longdon's assent was mute. "Ah she was not the worst! I mean that what made it so bad," he continued, "was that they all really liked me.
Now, you see, I don't cough any more I just rush at you and grab you. You don't call on me so I call on YOU. There isn't any indecency moreover that I won't commit for my child." Mr. Longdon's impenetrability crashed like glass at the elbow-touch of this large handsome practised woman, who walked for him, like some brazen pagan goddess, in a cloud of queer legend.
Longdon's school of manners, a foreign tour might be treated, and Mitchy, no doubt, plentifully showed that none of his frequent returns had encountered a curiosity at once so explicit and so discreet.
"I said to you just now that I knew the mothers, but it would have been more to the point to say the grandmothers." He stopped before his young friend, then nodded at the image of Nanda. "I knew HERS. She put it at something less." Vanderbank rather failed to understand. "The old lady? Put what?" Mr. Longdon's face showed him as for a moment feeling his way. "I'm speaking of Mrs. Brookenham.
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