I'll be hanged"-- he appealed to the company again--"if he shall have her for nothing!" "See rather," Vanderbank said to Mrs.Grendon, "how little it's like your really losing her that she should be able this evening fairly to bring the dear man to you.

At this rate we don't lose her--we simply get him as well." "Ah but is it quite the dear man's COMPANY we want ?"--and Harold looked anxious and acute.

"If that's the best arrangement Nanda can make--!" "If he hears us talking in this way, which strikes me as very horrible," Nanda interposed very simply and gravely, "I don't think we're likely to get anything." "Oh Harold's talk," Vanderbank protested, "offers, I think, an extraordinary interest; only I'm bound to say it crushes me to the earth.

I've to make at least, as I listen to him, a big effort to bear up.

It doesn't seem long ago," he pursued to his young friend, "that I used to feel I was in it; but the way you bring home to me, dreadful youth, that I'm already NOT--!" Harold looked earnest to understand.