“Not so much either. That of course is now very different.” Vanderbank demurred. “But not for YOU, I gather--is it? Don’t you expect to see them?” “Oh yes--I hope they’ll come down.” He moved away a little--not straight to the door. “To Beccles? Funny place for them, a little though, isn’t it?” He had put the question as if for amusement, but Nanda took it literally. “Ah not when they’re invited so very very charmingly. Not when he wants them so.” “Mr. Longdon? Then that keeps up?” “‘That’?”--she was at a loss. “I mean his intimacy--with Mitchy.” “So far as it IS an intimacy.” “But didn’t you, by the way”--and he looked again at his watch--“tell me they’re just about to turn up together?” “Oh not so very particularly together.” “Mitchy first alone?” Vanderbank asked. She had a smile that was dim, that was slightly strange. “Unless you’ll stay for company.” “Thanks--impossible. And then Mr. Longdon alone?” “Unless Mitchy stays.” He had another pause. “You haven’t after all told me about the ‘evolution’--or the evolutions--of his wife.” “How can I if you don’t give me time?” “I see--of course not.” He seemed to feel for an instant the return of his curiosity. “Yet it won’t do, will it? to have her out before HIM? No, I must go.” He came back to her and at present she gave him a hand. “But if you do see Mr. Longdon alone will you do me a service? I mean indeed not simply today, but with all other good chances?” She waited. “Any service whatever. But which first?” “Well,” he returned in a moment, “let us call it a bargain. I look after your mother--” “And I--?” She had had to wait again. “Look after my good name. I mean for common decency to HIM. He has been of a kindness to me that, when I think of my failure to return it, makes me blush from head to foot. I’ve odiously neglected him--by a complication of accidents. There are things I ought to have done that I haven’t. There’s one in particular--but it doesn’t matter. And I haven’t even explained about THAT. I’ve been a brute and I didn’t mean it and I couldn’t help it. But there it is. Say a good word for me. Make out somehow or other that I’m NOT a beast. In short,” the young man said, quite flushed once more with the intensity of his thought, “let us have it that you may quite trust ME if you’ll let me a little--just for my character as a gentleman--trust YOU.” “Ah you may trust me,” Nanda replied with her handshake. “Good-bye then!” he called from the door. “Good-bye,” she said after he had closed it. III