“Dear Mrs. Brook, you’re so admirable,” he returned with gaiety, “that if by any chance you did, upon my honour, I don’t see how I should be able not to say ‘All right.’” But he spoke too more responsibly. “I was shy of really bringing out to you what has happened to me, for a reason that I’ve of course to look in the face. Whatever you want yourself, for Nanda you want Mitchy.”
“I see, I see.” She did full justice to his explanation. “And what did you say about a ‘basis’? The blessed man offers to settle--?”
“You’re a real prodigy,” her visitor answered, “and your imagination takes its fences in a way that, when I’m out with you, quite puts mine to shame. When he mentioned it to me I was quite surprised.”
“And I,” Mrs. Brook asked, “am not surprised a bit? Isn’t it only,” she modestly suggested, “because I’ve taken him in more than you? Didn’t you know he WOULD?” she quavered.
Vanderbank thought or at least pretended to. “Make ME the condition? How could I be sure of it?”
But the point of his question was lost for her in the growing light. “Oh then the condition’s ‘you’ only--?”
“That, at any rate, is all I have to do with. He’s ready to settle if I’m ready to do the rest.”
“To propose to her straight, you mean?” She waited, but as he said nothing she went on: “And you’re not ready. Is that it?”
“Of course you know,” said Mrs. Brook, “that she’d jump at you.”
He turned away from her now, but after some steps came back. “Then you do admit it.”
He had a strange faint smile. “Well, as I don’t speak of it--!”
“No--only to me. What is it he settles?” Mrs. Brook demanded.
“Oh then,” Mrs. Brook exclaimed, “that’s what I call declining.”
The words appeared for an instant to strike her companion. “Is it? Is it?” he almost musingly repeated. But he shook himself the next moment free of his wonder, was more what would have been called in Buckingham Crescent on the spot. “Isn’t there rather something in my having thus thought it my duty to warn you that I’m definitely his candidate?”
Mrs. Brook turned impatiently away. “You’ve certainly--with your talk about ‘warning’--the happiest expressions!” She put her face into the flowers as he had done just before; then as she raised it: “What kind of a monster are you trying to make me out?”