"Don't--don't." "You mean it's too hopeless?
There's no way of effacing the bad impression or of starting a good one ?" On this, with a drop of his mirth, he met her eyes, and for an instant, through the superficial levity of their talk, they might have appeared to sound each other.

It lasted till Mrs.Brook went on: "I should really like not to lose him." Vanderbank seemed to understand and at last said: "I think you won't lose him." "Do you mean you'll help me, Van, you WILL ?" Her voice had at moments the most touching tones of any in England, and humble, helpless, affectionate, she spoke with a familiarity of friendship.

"It's for the sense of the link with mamma," she explained.

"He's simply full of her." "Oh I know.

He's prodigious." "He has told you more--he comes back to it ?" Mrs.Brook eagerly asked.
"Well," the young man replied a trifle evasively, "we've had a great deal of talk, and he's the jolliest old boy possible, and in short I like him." "I see," said Mrs.Brook blandly, "and he likes you in return as much as he despises me.