“Why, what’s pleasant for yourself,” she simply said.
“Oh dear, that’s poor bliss!” he returned. “How does it come then,” he next said, “that with this barrenness of our intercourse I know so well YOUR hand?”
A series of announcements had meanwhile been made, with guests arriving to match them, and Nanda’s eyes at this moment engaged themselves with Mr. Longdon and her mother, who entered the room together. When she looked back to her companion she had had time to drop a consciousness of his question. “If I’m proud, to you, I’m not good,” she said, “and if I’m good—always to you—I’m not proud. I know at all events perfectly how immensely you’re occupied, what a quantity of work you get through and how every minute counts for you. Don’t make it a crime to me that I’m reasonable.”
“No, that would show, wouldn’t it? that there isn’t much else. But how it all comes back—!”
“Well, to what?” she asked.
“To the old story. You know how I’m occupied. You know how I work. You know how I manage my time.”
“Oh I see,” said Nanda. “It IS my knowing, after all, everything.”
“Everything. The book I just mentioned is one that, months ago—-I remember now—I lent your mother.”
“Oh a thing in a blue cover? I remember then too.” Nanda’s face cleared up. “I had forgotten it was lying about here, but I must have brought it—in fact I remember I did—for Tishy. And I wrote your name on it so that we might know—”
“That I hadn’t lent it to either of you? It didn’t occur to you to write your own?” Vanderbank went on.