“No—that of course. Put Van up to ideas—!”
He caught it again. “About ME—what you call his suspicions?” He seemed to weigh the charge, but it ended, while he passed his hand hard over his eyes, in weariness and in the nearest approach to coldness he had ever shown Mrs. Brook. “It doesn’t matter. It’s every one’s fate to be in one way or another the subject of ideas. Do then,” he continued, “let Mr. Longdon come up.”
She instantly rang the bell. “Then I’ll go to Nanda. But don’t look frightened,” she added as she came back, “as to what we may—Edward or I—do next. It’s only to tell her that he’ll be with her.”
“Good. I’ll tell Tatton,” Mitchy replied.
Still, however, she lingered. “Shall you ever care for me more?”
He had almost the air, as he waited for her to go, of the master of the house, for she had made herself before him, as he stood with his back to the fire, as humble as a tolerated visitor. “Oh just as much. Where’s the difference? Aren’t our ties in fact rather multiplied?”
“That’s the way I want to feel it. And from the moment you recognise with me—”
“Yes?”
“Well, that he never, you know, really WOULD—”
He took her mercifully up. “There’s no harm done?” Mitchy thought of it.