“You’ll have it now,” Mrs. Brook kindly said. “They’re coming back.” “And when do they arrive?” “Any day, I believe.” “Has he written you?” “No,” said Mrs. Brook--“there it is. That’s just the way we’ve fallen to pieces. But you’ll of course have heard something.” “Never a word.” “Ah then it’s complete.” Vanderbank thought a moment. “Not quite, is it?--I mean it won’t be altogether unless he hasn’t written to Nanda.” “Then HAS he?”--she was keen again. “Oh I’m assuming. Don’t YOU know?” “How should I?” This too he turned over. “Just as a consequence of your having, at Tishy’s, so abruptly and wonderfully tackled the question that a few days later, as I afterwards gathered, was to be crowned with a measure of success not yet exhausted. Why, in other words--if it was to know so little about her and to get no nearer to her--did you bring about Nanda’s return?” There was a clear reason, her face said, if she could only remember it. “Why did I--?” Then as catching a light: “Fancy your asking me--at this time of day!” “Ah you HAVE noticed that I haven’t asked before? However,” Van promptly added, “I know well enough what you notice. Nanda hasn’t mentioned to you whether or no she has heard?” “Absolutely not. But you don’t suppose, I take it, that it was to pry into her affairs I called her in.” Vanderbank, on this, lighted for the first time with a laugh. “‘Called her in’? How I like your expressions!” “I do then, in spite of all,” she eagerly asked, “remind you a little of the bon temps? Ah,” she sighed, “I don’t say anything good now. But of course I see Jane--though not so often either. It’s from Jane I’ve heard of what she calls her ‘young things.’ It seems so odd to think of Mitchy as a young thing. He’s as old as all time, and his wife, who the other day was about six, is now practically about forty. And I also saw Petherton,” Mrs. Brook added, “on his return.” “His return from where?” “Why he was with them at Corfu, Malta, Cyprus--I don’t know where; yachting, spending Mitchy’s money, ‘larking,’ he called it--I don’t know what. He was with them for weeks.” “Till Jane, you mean, called him in?” “I think it must have been that.” “Well, that’s better,” said Van, “than if Mitchy had had to call him out.” “Oh Mitchy--!” Mrs. Brook comprehensively sounded. Her visitor quite assented. “Isn’t he amazing?” “Unique.” He had a short pause. “But what’s she up to?” It was apparently for Mrs. Brook a question of such variety of application that she brought out experimentally: “Jane?” “Dear no. I think we’ve fathomed ‘Jane,’ haven’t we?” “Well,” mused Mrs. Brook, “I’m by no means sure I have. Just of late I’ve had a new sense!” “Yes, of what now?” Van amusedly put it as she held the note.