His reply had complete success, to which there could scarce have afterwards been a positive denial that some sound of amusement even from Mr. Longdon himself had in its degree contributed. Certain it was that Mrs. Brook found, as she exclaimed that her husband was always so awfully civil, just the right note of resigned understanding; whereupon he for a minute presented to them blankly enough his fine dead face. “‘Civil’ is just what I was afraid I wasn’t. I mean, you know,” he continued to Mr. Longdon, “that you really mustn’t look to us to let you off--!” “From a week or a day”--Mr. Longdon took him up--“of the time to which you consider I’ve pledged myself? My dear sir, please don’t imagine it’s for ME the Duchess appeals.” “It’s from your wife, you delicious dull man,” that lady elucidated. “If you wished to be stiff with our friend here you’ve really been so with HER; which comes, no doubt, from the absence between you of proper preconcerted action. You spoke without your cue.” “Oh!” said Edward Brookenham. “That’s it, Jane”--Mrs. Brook continued to take it beautifully. “We dressed to-day in a hurry and hadn’t time for our usual rehearsal. Edward, when we dine out, generally brings three pocket-handkerchiefs and six jokes. I leave the management of the handkerchiefs to his own taste, but we mostly try together in advance to arrange a career for the other things. It’s some charming light thing of my own that’s supposed to give him the sign.” “Only sometimes he confounds”--Vanderbank helped her out--“your light and your heavy!” He had got up to make room for his host of so many occasions and, having forced him into the empty chair, now moved vaguely off to the quarter of the room occupied by Nanda and Mr. Cashmore. “That’s very well,” the Duchess resumed, “but it doesn’t at all clear you, cara mia, of the misdemeanour of setting up as a felt domestic need something of which Edward proves deeply unconscious. He has put his finger on Nanda’s true interest. He doesn’t care a bit how it would LOOK for you to want her.” “Don’t you mean rather, Jane, how it looks for us NOT to want her?” Mrs. Brook amended with a detachment now complete. “Of course, dear old friend,” she continued to Mr. Longdon, “she quite puts me with my back to the wall when she helps you to see--what you otherwise mightn’t guess--that Edward and I work it out between us to show off as tender parents and yet to get from you everything you’ll give. I do the sentimental and he the practical; so that we, after one fashion and another, deck ourselves in the glory of our sacrifice without forfeiting the ‘keep’ of our daughter. This must appeal to you as another useful illustration of what London manners have come to; unless indeed,” Mrs. Brook prattled on, “it only strikes you still more--and to a degree that blinds you to its other possible bearings--as the last proof that I’m too tortuous for you to know what I’d be at!”