“Nanda,” said the Duchess, “has told him. But I thought,” she went on to Mrs. Brook, “that Lady Fanny, by this time, MUST have gone.” “Petherton then,” Mrs. Brook returned, “doesn’t keep you au courant?” The Duchess blandly wondered. “I seem to remember he had positively said so. And that she had come back.” “Because this looks so like a fresh start? No. WE know. You assume besides,” Mrs. Brook asked, “that Mr. Cashmore would have received her again?” The Duchess fixed a little that gentleman and his actual companion. “What will you have? He mightn’t have noticed.” “Oh you’re out of step, Duchess,” Vanderbank said. “We used all to march abreast, but we’re falling to pieces. It’s all, saving your presence, Mitchy’s marriage.” “Ah,” Mrs. Brook concurred, “how thoroughly I feel that! Oh I knew. The spell’s broken; the harp has lost a string. We’re not the same thing. HE’S not the same thing.” “Frankly, my dear,” the Duchess answered, “I don’t think that you personally are either.” “Oh as for that--which is what matters least--we shall perhaps see.” With which Mrs. Brook turned again to Mr. Longdon. “I haven’t explained to you what I meant just now. We want Nanda.” Mr. Longdon stared. “At home again?” “In her little old nook. You must give her back.” “Do you mean altogether?” “Ah that will be for you in a manner to arrange. But you’ve had her practically these five months, and with no desire to be unreasonable we yet have our natural feelings.” This interchange, to which circumstances somehow gave a high effect of suddenness and strangeness, was listened to by the others in a quick silence that was like the sense of a blast of cold air, though with the difference between the spectators that Vanderbank attached his eyes hard to Mrs. Brook and that the Duchess looked as straight at Mr. Longdon, to whom clearly she wished to convey that if he had wondered a short time before how Mrs. Brook would do it he must now be quite at his ease. He indulged in fact, after this lady’s last words, in a pause that might have signified some of the fulness of a new light. He only said very quietly: “I thought you liked it.” At this his neighbour broke in. “The care you take of the child? They DO!” The Duchess, as she spoke, became aware of the nearer presence of Edward Brookenham, who within a minute had come in from the other room; and her decision of character leaped forth in her quick signal to him. “Edward will tell you.” He was already before their semicircle. “DO you, dear,” she appealed, “want Nanda back from Mr. Longdon?” Edward plainly could be trusted to feel in his quiet way that the oracle must be a match for the priestess. “‘Want’ her, Jane? We wouldn’t TAKE her.” And as if knowing quite what he was about he looked at his wife only after he had spoken. IV