“That’s easy for her,” Mrs. Brook declared, “when she herself isn’t one of them.”
“She isn’t surely one of anybody’s,” Mr. Longdon gravely observed.
Mrs. Brook gazed across at him. “You ARE too dear! But I’ve none the less a crow to pick with you.”
Mr. Longdon returned her look, but returned it somehow to Van. “You frighten me, you know, out of my wits.”
“I do?” said Vanderbank.
Mr. Longdon just hesitated. “Yes.”
“It must be the sacred terror,” Mrs. Brook suggested to Van, “that Mitchy so often speaks of. I’M not trying with you,” she went on to Mr. Longdon, “for anything of that kind, but only for the short half-hour in private that I think you won’t for the world grant me. Nothing will induce you to find yourself alone with me.”
“Why what on earth,” Vanderbank asked, “do you suspect him of supposing you want to do?”
“Oh it isn’t THAT,” Mrs. Brook sadly said.
“It isn’t what?” laughed the Duchess.