"Apply to the Duchess for her niece ?" "It's practically settled." "But since when ?" Mitchy barely faltered.

"Since this afternoon." "Ah then not with the Duchess herself." "With Nanda--whose plan from the first, you won't have forgotten, the thing has so charmingly been." Vanderbank could show that his not having in the least forgotten was yet not a bar to his being now mystified.

"But, my dear man, what can Nanda 'settle' ?" "My fate," Mitchy said, pausing well before him.
Vanderbank sat now a minute with raised eyes, catching the indistinctness of the other's strange expression.

"You're both beyond me!" he exclaimed at last.

"I don't see what you in particular gain." "I didn't either till she made it all out to me.