Awfully fine at any rate--and yet awfully odd too--her feeling for Aggie's type, which is divided by such abysses from her own." "Ah," laughed Mitchy, "but think then of her feeling for mine!" Vanderbank, still more at his ease now and with his head back, had his eyes aloft and far.

"Oh there are things in Nanda--!" The others exchanged a glance at this, while their companion added: "Little Aggie's really the sort of creature she would have liked to be able to be." "Well," Mitchy said, "I should have adored her even if she HAD been able." Mrs.Brook had for some minutes played no audible part, but the acute observer we are constantly taking for granted would perhaps have detected in her, as one of the effects of the special complexion to-day of Vanderbank's presence, a certain smothered irritation.

"She couldn't possibly have been able," she now interposed, "with so loose--or rather, to express it more properly, with so perverse--a mother." "And yet, my dear lady," Mitchy promptly qualified, "how if in little Aggie's case the Duchess hasn't prevented-- ?" Mrs.Brook was full of wisdom.

"Well, it's a different thing.

I'm not, as a mother--am I, Van ?--bad ENOUGH.