THE AWKWARD AGE
enough, I see"—she caught herself up: "we may take them all for granted. I've seen perfectly from the first that the only difficulty would come from her mother—but also that that would be stiff."
The movement with which Mr. Longdon removed his glasses might have denoted a certain fear to participate in too much of what the Duchess could see. "I've not been ignorant that Mrs. Brookenham favors Mr. Mitchett."
But he was not to be let off with that. "Then you've not been blind, I suppose, to her reason for doing so." He might not have been blind, but his vision, at this, scarce showed sharpness, and it determined in his interlocutress the shortest of short-cuts. "She favors Mr. Mitchett because she wants 'old Van' herself."
He was evidently conscious of looking at her hard. "In what sense—herself?"
"Ah, you must supply the sense; I can give you only the fact—and it's the fact that concerns us. Voyons," she almost impatiently broke out; "don't try to create unnecessary obscurities by being unnecessarily modest. Besides, I'm not touching your modesty. Supply any sense whatever that may miraculously satisfy your fond English imagination: I don't insist in the least on a bad one. She does want him for herself—that's all I say. 'Pourquoi faire?' you ask—or rather, being too shy, don't ask, but would like to if you dared, or didn't fear I'd be shocked. I can't be shocked, but, frankly, I can't tell you either. The situation belongs, I think, to an order I don't understand. I understand either one thing or the other—I understand taking a man up or letting him alone. But I don't, really, get at Mrs. Brook. You must judge, at any rate, for yourself. He could, of course, tell you if he would—but it wouldn't be right that he should. So the one thing we have to do with is that she's in fact against us. I can only work Mitchy
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