THE AWKWARD AGE
XI
Whatever she was, it would have seemed, Nanda was not easily abashed, for, though she drew up an instant on failing to find in the room the person whose invitation she had obeyed, she advanced the next moment as if either of the gentlemen before her would answer as well. "How do you do Mr. Mitchy? How do you do Mr. Longdon?" She made no difference for them, speaking to the elder, whom she had not yet seen, as if they were already acquainted. There was, moreover, in the air of that personage at this juncture little to invite such a confidence: he appeared to have been startled, in the oddest manner, into stillness, and, holding out no hand to meet her, only stared rather stiffly and without a smile. An observer disposed to interpret the scene might have fancied him a trifie put off by the girl's familiarity, or even, as by a singular effect of her self-possession, stricken into deeper diffidence. This self-possession, however, took, on her own part, no account of any awkwardness; it seemed the greater from the fact that she was almost unnaturally grave; and it overflowed in the immediate challenge: "Do you mean to say Van isn't here?—I've come without mother—she said I could, to see him," she went on, addressing herself more particularly to Mitchy. "But she didn't say I might do anything of that sort to see you."
If there was something serious in Nanda and something blank in their companion, there was, superficially at least, nothing in Mr. Mitchett but his usual flush of gaiety. "Did she really send you off, this way, alone?" Then while the girl's face met his own with the clear confession of it, "Isn't she too splendid for anything?" he asked with immense enjoyment. "What do you suppose is her idea?" Nanda's eyes had now turned to Mr.
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