THE AWKWARD AGE
up his mind how to meet her. "What will you have—when he loved my mother?"
Nothing could have been droller than the gloom of her surprise. "Yours too?"
"I didn't tell you the other day—out of delicacy."
Mrs. Brookenham darkly thought. "He didn't tell me either."
"The same consideration deterred him. But if I didn't speak of it," Vanderbank continued, "when I arranged with you, after meeting him here at dinner, that you should come to tea with him at my rooms—if I didn't mention it then it wasn't because I hadn't learnt it early."
Mrs. Brook more deeply sounded this affair, but she spoke with the exaggerated mildness which was the form her gaiety mostly took. "It was because, of course, it makes him out such a wretch! What becomes in that case of his loyalty—?"
"To your mother's memory? Oh, it's all right—he has it quite clear. She came later—mine, after my father's death, had refused him. But, you see, he might have been my step-father."
Mrs. Brookenham took it in, but she had suddenly a brighter light. "He might have been my own father! Besides," she went on, "if his line is to love the mothers, why on earth doesn't he love me? I'm in all conscience enough of one."
"Ah, but isn't there in your case the fact of a daughter?" Vanderbank asked with a slight embarrassment.
Mrs. Brookenham stared. "What good does that do me?"
"Why, didn't she tell you?"
"Nanda? She told me he doesn't like her any better than he likes me."
Vanderbank, in his turn, showed surprise. "That's really what she said?"
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