"At the Grendons'." "So you do go there ?" "I went over from Hicks the other day for an hour." "And Carrie was there ?" "Yes.

It was a dreadful horrid bore.

But I talked only to your daughter." She got up--the others were at hand--and offered Mr.Cashmore an expression that might have struck him as strange.

"It's serious." "Serious ?"--he had no eyes for the others.
"She didn't tell me." He gave a sound, controlled by discretion, which sufficed none the less to make Mr.Longdon--beholding him for the first time--receive it with a little of the stiffness of a person greeted with a guffaw.

Mr.Cashmore visibly liked this silence of Nanda's about their meeting.
II Mrs.Brookenham, who had introduced him to the elder of her visitors, had also found in serving these gentlemen with tea, a chance to edge at him with an intensity not to be resisted: "Talk to Mr.Longdon--take him off THERE." She had indicated the sofa at the opposite end of the room and had set him an example by possessing herself, in the place she already occupied, of her "adored" Vanderbank.