She gave a rap with her fan on his leg.

"Sit down--you'll see." III He mechanically obeyed her although it happened to lend him the air of taking Mrs.Brook's approach for a signal to resume his seat.

She came over to them, Vanderbank followed, and it was without again moving, with a vague upward gape in fact from his place, that Mr.Longdon received as she stood before him a challenge of a sort to flash a point into what the Duchess had just said.

"Why do you hate me so ?" Vanderbank, who, beside Mrs.Brook, looked at him with attention, might have suspected him of turning a trifle pale; though even Vanderbank, with reasons of his own for an observation of the sharpest, could scarce have read into the matter the particular dim vision that would have accounted for it--the flicker of fear of what Mrs.Brook, whether as daughter or as mother, was at last so strangely and differently to show herself.
"I should warn you, sir," the young man threw off, "how little we consider that--in Buckingham Crescent certainly--a fair question.

It isn't playing the game--it's hitting below the belt.