“My dear Nanda,” said Vanderbank, “it’s all very simple. Don’t believe a word of anything of the sort.” He had spoken as with the intention of a large vague optimism; but there was plainly something in the girl that would always make for lucidity. “Do you mean about Carrie Donner? I DON’T believe it, and at any rate I don’t think it’s any one’s business. I shouldn’t have a very high opinion of a person who would give up a friend.” She stopped short with the sense apparent that she was saying more than she meant, though, strangely, as if it had been an effect of her type and of her voice, there was neither pertness nor passion in the profession she had just made. Curiously wanting as she seemed both in timidity and in levity, she was to a certainty not self-conscious--she was extraordinarily simple. Mr. Longdon looked at her now with an evident surrender to his extreme interest, and it might well have perplexed him to see her at once so downright as from experience and yet of so fresh and sweet a tenderness of youth. “That’s right, that’s right, my dear young lady: never, never give up a friend for anything any one says!” It was Mitchy who rang out with this lively wisdom, the action of which on Mr. Longdon--unless indeed it was the action of something else--was to make that personage, in a manner that held the others watching him in slight suspense, suddenly spring to his feet again, put down his teacup carefully on a table near and then without a word, as if no one had been present, quietly wander away and disappear through the door left open on Vanderbank’s entrance. It opened into a second, a smaller sitting-room, into which the eyes of his companions followed him. “What’s the matter?” Nanda asked. “Has he been taken ill?” “He IS ‘rum,’ my dear Van,” Mitchy said; “but you’re right--of a charm, a distinction! In short just the sort of thing we want.” “The sort of thing we ‘want’--I dare say!” Vanderbank laughed. “But it’s not the sort of thing that’s to be had for the asking--it’s a sort we shall be mighty lucky if we can get!” Mitchy turned with amusement to Nanda. “Van has invented him and, with the natural greed of the inventor, won’t let us have him cheap. Well,” he went on, “I’ll ‘stand’ my share.” “The difficulty is that he’s so much too good for us,” Vanderbank explained. “Ungrateful wretch,” his friend cried, “that’s just what I’ve been telling him that YOU are! Let the return you make not be to deprive me--!” “Mr. Van’s not at all too good for ME, if you mean that,” Nanda broke in. She had finished her tea-making and leaned back in her chair with her hands folded on the edge of the tray.