I've no wish," she added, "to keep on boring you with Mitchy--" "Don't, don't!" Nanda pleaded.
Her mother stopped as short as if there had been something in her tone to set the limit the more utterly for being unstudied.

Yet poor Mrs.
Brook couldn't leave it there.

"Then what do you get instead ?" "Instead of Mitchy?
Oh," said Nanda, "I shall never marry." Mrs.Brook at this turned away, moving over to the window with quickened weariness.

Nanda, on her side, as if their talk had ended, went across to the sofa to take up her parasol before leaving the room, an impulse rather favoured than arrested by the arrival of her brother Harold, who came in at the moment both his relatives had turned a back to the door and who gave his sister, as she faced him, a greeting that made their mother look round.

"Hallo, Nan--you ARE lovely! Ain't she lovely, mother ?" "No!" Mrs.Brook answered, not, however, otherwise noticing him.