You'd be much worse to us if it wasn't for the still warm ashes of your old passion." It was an immense pity for Vanderbank's amusement that he was at this moment too far off to fit to the expression of his old friend's face so much of the cause of it as had sprung from the deeply informed tone of Mrs.Brook's allusion.

To what degree the speaker herself made the connexion will never be known to history, nor whether as she went on she thought she bettered her case or she simply lost her head.

"The great thing for us is that we can never be for you quite like other ordinary people." "And what's the great thing for ME ?" "Oh for you, there's nothing, I'm afraid, but small things--so small that they can scarcely be worth the trouble of your making them out.

Our being so happy that you've come back to us--if only just for a glimpse and to leave us again, in no matter what horror, for ever; our positive delight in your being exactly so different; the pleasure we have in talking about you, and shall still have--or indeed all the more--even if we've seen you only to lose you: whatever all this represents for ourselves it's for none of us to pretend to say how much or how little YOU may pick out of it.

And yet," Mrs.Brook wandered on, "however much we may disappoint you some little spark of the past can't help being in us--for the past is the one thing beyond all spoiling: there it is, don't you think ?--to speak for itself and, if need be, only OF itself." She pulled up, but she appeared to have destroyed all power of speech in him, so that while she waited she had time for a fresh inspiration.