Mitchy, speaking for the first time, faced her with extravagant gloom. “Do you really think so?” “That’s HER innocence!” the Duchess laughed to him. “And don’t you suppose he has found it YET?” Mrs. Brook pursued earnestly to Tishy. “Isn’t it something we might ALL play at if--?” On which however, abruptly checking herself, she changed her note. “Nanda love, please go and invite them to join us.” Mitchy, at this, on his ottoman, wheeled straight round to the girl, who looked at him before speaking. “I’ll go if Mitchy tells me.” “But if he does fear,” said her mother, “that there may be something in it--?” Mitchy jerked back to Mrs. Brook. “Well, you see, I don’t want to give way to my fear. Suppose there SHOULD be something! Let me not know.” She dealt with him tenderly. “I see. You couldn’t--so soon--bear it.” “Ah but, savez-vous,” the Duchess interposed with some majesty, “you’re horrid!” “Let them alone,” Mitchy continued. “We don’t want at all events a general romp.” “Oh I thought just that,” said Mrs. Brook, “was what the Duchess wished the door locked for! Perhaps moreover”--she returned to Tishy--“he hasn’t yet found the book.” “He can’t,” Tishy said with simplicity. “But why in the world--?” “You see she’s sitting on it”--Tishy felt, it was plain, the responsibility of explanation. “So that unless he pulls her off--” “He can’t compass his desperate end? Ah I hope he won’t pull her off!” Mrs. Brook wonderfully murmured. It was said in a manner that stirred the circle, and unanimous laughter seemed already to have crowned her invocation, lately uttered, to the social spirit. “But what in the world,” she pursued, “is the book selected for such a position? I hope it’s not a very big one.” “Oh aren’t the books that are sat upon,” Mr. Cashmore freely speculated, “as a matter of course the bad ones?” “Not a bit as a matter of course,” Harold as freely replied to him. “They sit, all round, nowadays--I mean in the papers and places--on some awfully good stuff. Why I myself read books that I couldn’t--upon my honour I wouldn’t risk it!--read out to you here.” “What a pity,” his father dropped with the special shade of dryness that was all Edward’s own, “what a pity you haven’t got one of your favourites to try on us!” Harold looked about as if it might have been after all a happy thought. “Well, Nanda’s the only girl.” “And one’s sister doesn’t count,” said the Duchess. “It’s just because the thing’s bad,” Tishy resumed for Mrs. Brook’s more particular benefit, “that Lord Petherton’s trying to wrest it.” Mrs. Brook’s pale interest deepened. “Then it’s a real hand-to-hand struggle?” “He says she shan’t read it--she says she will.” “Ah that’s because--isn’t it, Jane?” Mrs. Brook appealed--“he so long overlooked and advised her in those matters. Doesn’t he feel by this time--so awfully clever as he is--the extraordinary way she has come out?”