“You shall never, never find out--not if you were never to speak to me again,” Mr. Mitchett replied with extravagant firmness. “Harold’s one of my great amusements--I really have awfully few; and if you deprive me of him you’ll be a fiend. There are only one or two things I want to live for, but one of them is to see how far Harold will go. Please give me some more tea.” “Do you positively swear?” she asked with intensity as she helped him. Then without waiting for his answer: “You have the common charity to US, I suppose, to see the position you’d put us in. Fancy Edward!” she quite austerely threw off. Mr. Mitchett, at this, had on his side a wonder. “Does Edward imagine--?” “My dear man, Edward never ‘imagined’ anything in life.” She still had her eyes on him. “Therefore if he SEES a thing, don’t you know? it must exist.” Mitchy for a little fixed the person mentioned as he sat with his other guest, but whatever this person saw he failed just then to see his wife’s companion, whose eyes he never met. His face only offered itself after the fashion of a clean domestic vessel, a receptacle with the peculiar property of constantly serving yet never filling, to Lord Petherton’s talkative splash. “Well, only don’t let him take it up. Let it be only between you and me,” Mr. Mitchett pleaded; “keep him quiet--don’t let him speak to me.” He appeared to convey with his pleasant extravagance that Edward looked dangerous, and he went on with a rigour of levity: “It must be OUR little quarrel.” There were different ways of meeting such a tone, but Mrs. Brookenham’s choice was remarkably prompt. “I don’t think I quite understand what dreadful joke you may be making, but I dare say if you HAD let Harold borrow you’d have another manner, and I was at any rate determined to have the question out with you.” “Let us always have everything out--that’s quite my own idea. It’s you,” said Mr. Mitchett, “who are by no means always so frank with me as I recognise--oh, I do THAT!--what it must have cost you to be over this little question of Harold. There’s one thing, Mrs. Brook, you do dodge.” “What do I ever dodge, dear Mitchy?” Mrs. Brook quite tenderly asked. “Why, when I ask you about your other child you’re off like a frightened fawn. When have you ever, on my doing so, said ‘my darling Mitchy, I’ll ring for her to be asked to come down so that you can see her for yourself’--when have you ever said anything like that?” “I see,” Mrs. Brookenham mused; “you think I sacrifice her. You’re very interesting among you all, and I’ve certainly a delightful circle. The Duchess has just been letting me have it most remarkably hot, and as she’s presently coming back you’ll be able to join forces with her.” Mitchy looked a little at a loss. “On the subject of your sacrifice--”