"I go on Thursday to my sister's, where I shall find Nanda Brookenham.

Can I take her any message from you ?" Mr.Mitchett showed a rosiness that might positively have been reflected.

"Why should you dream of her expecting one ?" "Oh," said the Duchess with a cheer that but half carried off her asperity, "Mrs.Brook must have told Mrs.Donner to ask you!" The latter lady, at this, rested strange eyes on the speaker, and they had perhaps something to do with a quick flare of Mitchy's wit.

"Tell her, please--if, as I suppose, you came here to ask the same of her mother--that I adore her still more for keeping in such happy relations with you as enable me thus to meet you." Mrs.Donner, overwhelmed, took flight with a nervous laugh, leaving Mr.
Mitchett and the Duchess still confronted.

Nothing had passed between the two ladies, yet it was as if there were a trace of something in the eyes of the elder, which, during a moment's silence, moved from the retreating visitor, now formally taken over at the door by Edward Brookenham, to Lady Fanny and her hostess, who, in spite of the embraces just performed, had again subsided together while Mrs.Brook gazed up in exalted intelligence.