I'm in it by my cynicisms--those that circumstances somehow from the first, when I began for myself to look at life and the world, committed me to and steeped me in; I'm in it by a kind of desperation that I shouldn't have felt perhaps if you had got hold of me sooner with just this touch with which you've got hold of me to-day; and I'm in it more than all--you'll yourself admit--by the very fact that her aunt desires, as you know, much more even than you do, to bring the thing about.

Then we SHOULD be--the Duchess and I--shoulder to shoulder!" Nanda heard him motionless to the end, taking also another minute to turn over what he had said.

"What is it you like so in Lord Petherton ?" she asked as she came to him.
"My dear child, if you only could tell me! It would be, wouldn't it ?--it must have been--the subject of some fairy-tale, if fairy-tales were made now, or better still of some Christmas pantomime: 'The Gnome and the Giant.'" Nanda appeared to try--not with much success--to see it.

"Do you find Lord Petherton a Gnome ?" Mitchy at first, for all reward, only glared at her.

"Charming, Nanda--charming!" "A man's giant enough for Lord Petherton," she went on, "when his fortune's gigantic.