"I shall never let you go," he repeated.
"Oh you angel!" She sprang up more quickly and the others were by this
time on their feet. "I've done it, I've done it!" she joyously cried to
Vanderbank; "he likes me, or at least he can bear me--I've found him the
way; and now I don't care even if he SAYS I haven't." Then she turned
again to her old friend. "We can manage about Nanda--you needn't ever
see her. She's 'down' now, but she can go up again. We can arrange it at
any rate--c'est la moindre des choses."
"Upon my honour I protest," Mr. Cashmore exclaimed, "against anything of
the sort! I defy you to 'arrange' that young lady in any such manner
without also arranging ME. I'm one of her greatest admirers," he gaily
announced to Mr. Longdon.
Vanderbank said nothing, and Mr. Longdon seemed to show he would have
preferred to do the same: that visitor's eyes might have represented an
appeal to him somehow to intervene, to show the due acquaintance,
springing from practice and wanting in himself, with the art of
conversation developed to the point at which it could thus sustain a
lady in the upper air. Vanderbank's silence might, without his mere kind
pacific look, have seemed almost inhuman. Poor Mr. Longdon had finally
to do his own simple best. "Will you bring your daughter to see me?" he
asked of Mrs. Brookenham.
"Oh, oh--that's an idea: will you bring her to see ME?" Mr. Cashmore
again broke out.
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