"From the point of view of the immense interest it--just now, for instance--makes for you and me?
Oh yes, it's one of our best things yet.

It places him a little with Lady Fanny--'He will, he won't; he won't, he will!' Only, to be perfect, it lacks, as I say, the element of real suspense." Mitchy frankly wondered.

"It does, you think?
Not for me--not wholly." He turned again quite pleadingly to their friend.

"I hope it doesn't for yourself totally either ?" Vanderbank, cultivating his detachment, made at first no more reply than if he had not heard, and the others meanwhile showed faces that testified perhaps less than their respective speeches had done to the absence of anxiety.

The only token he immediately gave was to get up and approach Mitchy, before whom he stood a minute laughing kindly enough, though not altogether gaily.