II
Mrs. Brookenham, who had introduced him to the elder of her visitors, had also found in serving these gentlemen with tea, a chance to edge at him with an intensity not to be resisted: “Talk to Mr. Longdon—take him off THERE.” She had indicated the sofa at the opposite end of the room and had set him an example by possessing herself, in the place she already occupied, of her “adored” Vanderbank. This arrangement, however, constituted for her, in her own corner, as soon as she had made it, the ground of an appeal. “Will he hate me any worse for doing that?”
Vanderbank glanced at the others. “Will Cashmore, do you mean?”
“Dear no—I don’t care whom HE hates. But with Mr. Longdon I want to avoid mistakes.”
“Then don’t try quite so hard!” Vanderbank laughed. “Is that your reason for throwing him into Cashmore’s arms?”
“Yes, precisely—so that I shall have these few moments to ask you for directions: you must know him by this time so well. I only want, heaven help me, to be as nice to him as I possibly can.”
“That’s quite the best thing for you and altogether why, this afternoon, I brought him: he might have better luck in finding you—it was he who suggested it—than he has had by himself. I’m in a general way,” Vanderbank added, “watching over him.”
“I see—and he’s watching over you.” Mrs. Brook’s sweet vacancy had already taken in so much. “He wants to judge of what I may be doing to you—he wants to save you from me. He quite detests me.”
Vanderbank, with the interest as well as the amusement, fairly threw himself back. “There’s nobody like you—you’re too magnificent!”
“I AM; and that I can look the truth in the face and not be angry or silly about it is, as you know, the one thing in the world for which I think a bit well of myself.”