The Duchess, her head all in the air, considered an instant her little ivory princess. “I’m always ready, Mr. Mitchett, to defend my opinions; but if it’s a question of going much into the things that are the subjects of some of them perhaps we had better, if you don’t mind, choose our time and our place.” “No ‘time,’ gracious lady, for my impatience,” Mr. Mitchett replied, “could be better than the present--but if you’ve reasons for wanting a better place why shouldn’t we go on the spot into another room?” Lord Petherton, at this enquiry, broke into instant mirth. “Well, of all the coolness, Mitchy!--he does go at it, doesn’t he, Mrs. Brook? What do you want to do in another room?” he demanded of his friend. “Upon my word, Duchess, under the nose of those--” The Duchess, on the first blush, lent herself to the humour of the case. “Well, Petherton, of ‘those’?--I defy him to finish his sentence!” she smiled to the others. “Of those,” said his lordship, “who flatter themselves that when you do happen to find them somewhere your first idea is not quite to jump at a pretext for getting off somewhere else. Especially,” he continued to jest, “with a man of Mitchy’s vile reputation.” “Oh!” Edward Brookenham exclaimed at this, but only as with quiet relief. “Mitchy’s offer is perfectly safe, I may let him know,” his wife remarked, “for I happen to be sure that nothing would really induce Jane to leave Aggie five minutes among us here without remaining herself to see that we don’t become improper.” “Well then if we’re already pretty far on the way to it,” Lord Petherton resumed, “what on earth MIGHT we arrive at in the absence of your control? I warn you, Duchess,” he joyously pursued, “that if you go out of the room with Mitchy I shall rapidly become quite awful.” The Duchess during this brief passage never took her eyes from her niece, who rewarded her attention with the sweetness of consenting dependence. The child’s foreign origin was so delicately but unmistakeably written in all her exquisite lines that her look might have expressed the modest detachment of a person to whom the language of her companions was unknown. Her protectress then glanced round the circle. “You’re very odd people all of you, and I don’t think you quite know how ridiculous you are. Aggie and I are simple stranger-folk; there’s a great deal we don’t understand, yet we’re none the less not easily frightened. In what is it, Mr. Mitchett,” the Duchess asked, “that I’ve wounded your susceptibilities?” Mr. Mitchett cast about; he had apparently found time to reflect on his precipitation. “I see what Petherton’s up to, and I won’t, by drawing you aside just now, expose your niece to anything that might immediately oblige Mrs. Brook to catch her up and flee with her. But the first time I find you more isolated--well,” he laughed, though not with the clearest ring, “all I can say is Mind your eyes dear Duchess!”