Vanderbank took time to answer. “I’ve still to decide.” Mitchy became again on this, in the sociable dusk, a slow-circling vaguely-agitated element, and his companion continued: “Is your idea very generously and handsomely to help that by letting me know—?”
“That I do definitely renounce”—Mitchy took him up—“any pretension and any hope? Well, I’m ready with a proof of it. I’ve passed my word that I’ll apply elsewhere.”
Vanderbank turned more round to him. “Apply to the Duchess for her niece?”
“It’s practically settled.”
“But since when?”
Mitchy barely faltered. “Since this afternoon.”
“Ah then not with the Duchess herself.”
“With Nanda—whose plan from the first, you won’t have forgotten, the thing has so charmingly been.”
Vanderbank could show that his not having in the least forgotten was yet not a bar to his being now mystified. “But, my dear man, what can Nanda ‘settle’?”
“My fate,” Mitchy said, pausing well before him.