What was in his face so suddenly and strangely—was the look of rising tears—at sight of which, as from a compunction as prompt, she showed a lovely flush. “There it is, there it is,” she repeated. “You ask me for a reason, and it’s the only one I see. Of course if you don’t care,” she added, “he needn’t come up. He can go straight to Nanda.”
Mitchy had turned away again as with the impulse of hiding the tears that had risen and that had not wholly disappeared even by the time he faced about. “Did Nanda know he was to come?”
“Mr. Longdon?”
“No, no. Was she expecting Van—?”
“My dear man,” Mrs. Brook mildly wailed, “when can she have NOT been?”
Mitchy looked hard for an instant at the floor. “I mean does she know he has been and gone?”
Mrs. Brook, from where she stood and through the window, looked rather at the sky. “Her father will have told her.”
“Her father?” Mitchy frankly wondered. “Is HE in it?”
Mrs. Brook had at this a longer pause. “You assume, I suppose, Mitchy dear,” she then quavered “that I put him up—!”
“Put Edward up?” he broke in.