Mr. Longdon, focussing the effect of the sketch, pointed its moral with an indulgent: “Oh well, a FOREIGN duchess!” He could make his distinctions. “Yes, she’s invidiously, cruelly foreign,” Vanderbank agreed: “I’ve never indeed seen a woman avail herself so cleverly, to make up for the obloquy of that state, of the benefits and immunities it brings with it. She has bloomed in the hot-house of her widowhood--she’s a Neapolitan hatched by an incubator.” “A Neapolitan?”--Mr. Longdon seemed all civilly to wish he had only known it. “Her husband was one; but I believe that dukes at Naples are as thick as princes at Petersburg. He’s dead, at any rate, poor man, and she has come back here to live.” “Gloomily, I should think--after Naples?” Mr. Longdon threw out. “Oh it would take more than even a Neapolitan past--! However”--and the young man caught himself up--“she lives not in what’s behind her, but in what’s before--she lives in her precious little Aggie.” “Little Aggie?” Mr. Longdon risked a cautious interest. “I don’t take a liberty there,” Vanderbank smiled: “I speak only of the young Agnesina, a little girl, the Duchess’s niece, or rather I believe her husband’s, whom she has adopted--in the place of a daughter early lost--and has brought to England to marry.” “Ah to some great man of course!” Vanderbank thought. “I don’t know.” He gave a vague but expressive sigh. “She’s rather lovely, little Aggie.” Mr. Longdon looked conspicuously subtle. “Then perhaps YOU’RE the man!” “Do I look like a ‘great’ one?” Vanderbank broke in. His visitor, turning away from him, again embraced the room. “Oh dear, yes!” “Well then, to show how right you are, there’s the young lady.” He pointed to an object on one of the tables, a small photograph with a very wide border of something that looked like crimson fur. Mr. Longdon took up the picture; he was serious now. “She’s very beautiful--but she’s not a little girl.” “At Naples they develop early. She’s only seventeen or eighteen, I suppose; but I never know how old--or at least how young--girls are, and I’m not sure. An aunt, at any rate, has of course nothing to conceal. She IS extremely pretty--with extraordinary red hair and a complexion to match; great rarities I believe, in that race and latitude. She gave me the portrait--frame and all. The frame is Neapolitan enough and little Aggie’s charming.” Then Vanderbank subjoined: “But not so charming as little Nanda.” “Little Nanda?--have you got HER?” The old man was all eagerness. “She’s over there beside the lamp--also a present from the original.” II Mr. Longdon had gone to the place--little Nanda was in glazed white wood. He took her up and held her out; for a moment he said nothing, but presently, over his glasses, rested on his host a look intenser even than his scrutiny of the faded image. “Do they give their portraits now?” “Little girls--innocent lambs? Surely--to old friends. Didn’t they in your time?”