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The present might precisely have been one of them, we should doubtless have gathered, had we seen fully recorded in Vanderbank's face the degree to which this prompt response embarrassed or at least stupefied him. But he could always provisionally laugh. "I like your 'in London now'!"
Longdon had turned away from the table on this, and the eyes of his companion, who after an instant had caught his meaning, watched him move along the room and approach another part of the divan. The consequence of the passage was that Vanderbank's only rejoinder was presently to say: "I can't tell you how long I've imagined have asked myself.
"Ah," laughed the subject of Vanderbank's information, "I'm afraid 'pursuit, with me, is over." "Why, you're at the age," Mitchy returned, "of the most exquisite form of it. Observation." "Yet it's a form, I seem to see, that you've not waited for my age to cultivate." This was followed by a decisive headshake. "I'm not an observer. I'm a hater."
Longdon, with Vanderbank's covert aid, had begun to appear to have pulled himself together, dropping back on his sofa and attending in a manner to his tea. It might have been with the notion of showing himself at ease that he turned, on this, a benevolent smile to the girl. "But what, my dear, is the objection ?"
Vanderbank broke in. "Not in the least." He seemed to look for a way to express the distinction which suddenly occurred to him. "He wasn't in love with Mitchy's mother." "No" Nanda turned it over. "Mitchy's mother, it appears, was awful. Mr. Cashmore knew her." Vanderbank's smoke-puffs were profuse and his pauses frequent. "Awful to Mr. Cashmore? I'm glad to hear it he must have deserved it.
Brook had for some minutes played no audible part, but the acute observer we are constantly taking for granted would perhaps have detected in her, as one of the effects of the special complexion to-day of Vanderbank's presence, a certain smothered irritation.
His host, with an irresistible hand, confirmed him in his position and pressed upon him another cigarette. His resistance rang hollow it was clearly, he judged, such an occasion for sacrifices. Vanderbank's view of it meanwhile was quite as marked. "You see there's ever so much more you must in common kindness tell me." Mr. Longdon sat there like a shy singer invited to strike up.
This move ministered apparently to Vanderbank's mere silence, for it was still without speaking that, after a little, he turned away from his friend and dropped once more into the same seat. "I've shown you already, you of course remember," Vanderbank presently said to him, "that I'm perfectly aware of how much better Mrs. Brook would like YOU for the position."
Longdon distinguishes her is quite the sort of thing that gives a girl, as Harold says, a 'leg up. It's awfully curious and has made me think: he isn't anything whatever, as London estimates go, in himself so that what is it, pray, that makes him, when 'added on' to her, so double Nanda's value? Vanderbank's eyes were on the ceiling.
Hearing the stir of the door by which he had entered he looked round; but it opened at first only to admit Vanderbank's servant. "Miss Brookenham!" the man announced; on which the two gentlemen in the room were audibly, almost violently precipitated into a union of surprise.
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