Vanderbank met it without confusion. “Whom haven’t I observed? Do you like her?” he then rather oddly and abruptly asked.
The old man broke away again. “How can I tell—with such disparities?”
“The manner must be different,” Vanderbank suggested. “And the things she says.”
His visitor was before him again. “I don’t know what to make of them. They don’t go with the rest of her. Lady Julia,” said Mr. Longdon, “was rather shy.”
On this too his host could meet him. “She must have been. And Nanda—yes, certainly—doesn’t give that impression.”
“On the contrary. But Lady Julia was gay!” he added with an eagerness that made Vanderbank smile.
“I can also see that. Nanda doesn’t joke. And yet,” Vanderbank continued with his exemplary candour, “we mustn’t speak of her, must we? as if she were bold and grim.”
Mr. Longdon fixed him. “Do you think she’s sad?”
They had preserved their lowered tone and might, with their heads together, have been conferring as the party “out” in some game with the couple in the other room. “Yes. Sad.” But Vanderbank broke off. “I’ll send her to you.” Thus it was he had come back to her.
Nanda, on joining the elder man, went straight to the point. “He says it’s so beautiful—what you feel on seeing me: if that IS what he meant.” Mr. Longdon kept silent again at first, only smiling at her, but less strangely now, and then appeared to look about him for some place where she could sit near him. There was a sofa in this room too, on which, observing it, she quickly sank down, so that they were presently together, placed a little sideways and face to face. She had shown perhaps that she supposed him to have wished to take her hand, but he forbore to touch her, though letting her feel all the kindness of his eyes and their long backward vision. These things she evidently felt soon enough; she went on before he had spoken. “I know how well you knew my grandmother. Mother has told me—and I’m so glad. She told me to say to you that she wants YOU to tell me.” Just a shade, at this, might have appeared to drop over his face, but who was there to know if the girl observed it? It didn’t prevent at any rate her completing her statement. “That’s why she wished me to-day to come alone. She said she wished you to have me all to yourself.”