“If you should do anything so hideously vulgar,” she instantly replied, “I’d leave your house the next hour. Do you expect,” she asked, “to be able to force your child down his throat?” He was clearly not prepared with an account of his expectations, but he had a general memory that imposed itself. “Then why in the world did he make up to us?” “He didn’t. We made up to HIM.” “But why in the world--?” “Well,” said Mrs. Brook, really to finish, “we were in love with him.” “Oh!” Edward jerked. He had by this time opened the door, and the sound was partly the effect of the disclosure of a servant preceding a visitor. His greeting of the visitor before edging past and away was, however, of the briefest; it might have implied that they had met but yesterday. “How d’ye do, Mitchy?--At home? Oh rather!” III Very different was Mrs. Brook’s welcome of the restored wanderer to whom, in a brief space, she addressed every expression of surprise and delight, though marking indeed at last, as a qualification of these things, her regret that he declined to partake of her tea or to allow her to make him what she called “snug for a talk” in his customary corner of her sofa. He pleaded frankly agitation and embarrassment, reminded her even that he was awfully shy and that after separations, complications, whatever might at any time happen, he was conscious of the dust that had settled on intercourse and that he couldn’t blow away in a single breath. She was only, according to her nature, to indulge him if, while he walked about and changed his place, he came to the surface but in patches and pieces. There was so much he wanted to know that--well, as they had arrived only the night before, she could judge. There was knowledge, it became clear, that Mrs. Brook almost equally craved, so that it even looked at first as if, on either side, confidence might be choked by curiosity. This disaster was finally barred by the fact that the spirit of enquiry found for Mitchy material that was comparatively plastic. That was after all apparent enough when at the end of a few vain passes he brought out sociably: “Well, has he done it?” Still indeed there was something in Mrs. Brook’s face that seemed to reply “Oh come--don’t rush it, you know!” and something in the movement with which she turned away that described the state of their question as by no means so simple as that. On his refusal of tea she had rung for the removal of the table, and the bell was at this moment answered by the two men. Little ensued then, for some minutes, while the servants were present; she spoke only as the butler was about to close the door. “If Mr. Longdon presently comes show him into Mr. Brookenham’s room if Mr. Brookenham isn’t there. If he is show him into the dining-room and in either case let me immediately know.” The man waited expressionless. “And in case of his asking for Miss Brookenham--?”