Read The Wings of the Dove, Volume II Page 2

  BOOK SEVENTH

  I

  When Kate and Densher abandoned her to Mrs. Stringham on the day of hermeeting them together and bringing them to luncheon, Milly, face toface with that companion, had had one of those moments in which thewarned, the anxious fighter of the battle of life, as if once againfeeling for the sword at his side, carries his hand straight to thequarter of his courage. She laid hers firmly on her heart, and the twowomen stood there showing each other a strange front. Susan Shepherdhad received their great doctor's visit, which had been clearly nosmall affair for her; but Milly had since then, with insistence, keptin place, against communication and betrayal, as she now practicallyconfessed, the barrier of their invited guests. "You've been too dear.With what I see you're full of you treated them beautifully. _Isn't_Kate charming when she wants to be?"

  Poor Susie's expression, contending at first, as in a high fine spasm,with different dangers, had now quite let itself go. She had to make aneffort to reach a point in space already so remote. "Miss Croy? Oh shewas pleasant and clever. She knew," Mrs. Stringham added. "She knew."

  Milly braced herself--but conscious above all, at the moment, of a highcompassion for her mate. She made her out as struggling--struggling inall her nature against the betrayal of pity, which in itself, given hernature, could only be a torment. Milly gathered from the struggle howmuch there was of the pity, and how therefore it was both in hertenderness and in her conscience that Mrs. Stringham suffered.Wonderful and beautiful it was that this impression instantly steadiedthe girl. Ruefully asking herself on what basis of ease, with the dropof their barrier, they were to find themselves together, she felt thequestion met with a relief that was almost joy. The basis, theinevitable basis, was that she was going to be sorry for Susie, who, toall appearance, had been condemned in so much more uncomfortable amanner to be sorry for _her_. Mrs. Stringham's sorrow would hurt Mrs.Stringham, but how could her own ever hurt? She had, the poor girl, atall events, on the spot, five minutes of exaltation in which she turnedthe tables on her friend with a pass of the hand, a gesture of anenergy that made a wind in the air. "Kate knew," she asked, "that youwere full of Sir Luke Strett?"

  "She spoke of nothing, but she was gentle and nice; she seemed to wantto help me through." Which the good lady had no sooner said, however,than she almost tragically gasped at herself. She glared at Milly witha pretended pluck. "What I mean is that she saw one had been taken upwith something. When I say she knows I should say she's a person whoguesses." And her grimace was also, on its side, heroic. "But _she_doesn't matter, Milly."

  The girl felt she by this time could face anything. "Nobody matters,Susie. Nobody." Which her next words, however, rather contradicted."Did he take it ill that I wasn't here to see him? Wasn't it reallyjust what he wanted--to have it out, so much more simply, with _you_?"

  "We didn't have anything 'out,' Milly," Mrs. Stringham delicatelyquavered.

  "Didn't he awfully like you," Milly went on, "and didn't he think youthe most charming person I could possibly have referred him to for anaccount of me? Didn't you hit it off tremendously together and in factfall quite in love, so that it will really be a great advantage for youto have me as a common ground? You're going to make, I can see, no endof a good thing of me."

  "My own child, my own child!" Mrs. Stringham pleadingly murmured; yetshowing as she did so that she feared the effect even of deprecation.

  "Isn't he beautiful and good too himself?--altogether, whatever he maysay, a lovely acquaintance to have made? You're just the right peoplefor me--I see it now; and do you know what, between you, you must do?"Then as Susie still but stared, wonderstruck and holding herself: "Youmust simply see me through. Any way you choose. Make it out together.I, on my side, will be beautiful too, and we'll be--the three of us,with whatever others, oh as many as the case requires, any one youlike!--a sight for the gods. I'll be as easy for you as carrying afeather." Susie took it for a moment in such silence that her youngfriend almost saw her--and scarcely withheld the observation--as takingit for "a part of the disease." This accordingly helped Milly to be, asshe judged, definite and wise. "He's at any rate awfully interesting,isn't he?--which is so much to the good. We haven't at least--as wemight have, with the way we tumbled into it--got hold of one of thedreary."

  "Interesting, dearest?"--Mrs. Stringham felt her feet firmer. "I don'tknow if he's interesting or not; but I do know, my own," she continuedto quaver, "that he's just as much interested as you could possiblydesire."

  "Certainly--that's it. Like all the world."

  "No, my precious, not like all the world. Very much more deeply andintelligently."

  "Ah there you are!" Milly laughed. "That's the way, Susie, I want you.So 'buck' up, my dear. We'll have beautiful times with him. Don'tworry."

  "I'm not worrying, Milly." And poor Susie's face registered thesublimity of her lie.

  It was at this that, too sharply penetrated, her companion went to her,met by her with an embrace in which things were said that exceededspeech. Each held and clasped the other as if to console her for thisunnamed woe, the woe for Mrs. Stringham of learning the torment ofhelplessness, the woe for Milly of having _her_, at such a time, tothink of. Milly's assumption was immense, and the difficulty for herfriend was that of not being able to gainsay it without bringing itmore to the proof than tenderness and vagueness could permit. Nothingin fact came to the proof between them but that they could thus clingtogether--except indeed that, as we have indicated, the pledge ofprotection and support was all the younger woman's own. "I don't askyou," she presently said, "what he told you for yourself, nor what hetold you to tell me, nor how he took it, really, that I had left him toyou, nor what passed between you about me in any way. It wasn't to getthat out of you that I took my means to make sure of your meetingfreely--for there are things I don't want to know. I shall see himagain and again and shall know more than enough. All I do want is thatyou shall see me through on _his_ basis, whatever it is; which it'senough--for the purpose--that you yourself should know: that is withhim to show you how. I'll make it charming for you--that's what I mean;I'll keep you up to it in such a way that half the time you won't knowyou're doing it. And for that you're to rest upon me. There. It'sunderstood. We keep each other going, and you may absolutely feel of methat I shan't break down. So, with the way you haven't so much as a digof the elbow to fear, how could you be safer?"

  "He told me I _can_ help you--of course he told me that," Susie, on herside, eagerly contended. "Why shouldn't he, and for what else have Icome out with you? But he told me nothing dreadful--nothing, nothing,nothing," the poor lady passionately protested. "Only that you must doas you like and as he tells you--which _is_ just simply to do as youlike."

  "I must keep in sight of him. I must from time to time go to him. Butthat's of course doing as I like. It's lucky," Milly smiled, "that Ilike going to him."

  Mrs. Stringham was here in agreement; she gave a clutch at the accountof their situation that most showed it as workable. "That's what _will_be charming for me, and what I'm sure he really wants of me--to helpyou to do as you like."

  "And also a little, won't it be," Milly laughed, "to save me from theconsequences? Of course," she added, "there must first _be_ things Ilike."

  "Oh I think you'll find some," Mrs. Stringham more bravely said. "Ithink there _are_ some--as for instance just this one. I mean," sheexplained, "really having us so."

  Milly thought. "Just as if I wanted you comfortable about _him_, andhim the same about you? Yes--I shall get the good of it."

  Susan Shepherd appeared to wander from this into a slight confusion."Which of them are you talking of?"

  Milly wondered an instant--then had a light. "I'm not talking of Mr.Densher." With which moreover she showed amusement. "Though if you canbe comfortable about Mr. Densher too so much the better."

  "Oh you meant Sir Luke Strett? Certainly he's a fine type. Do youknow," Susie continued, "whom he reminds me of? Of _our_ great man--Dr.Buttrick of Boston."
/>
  Milly recognised Dr. Buttrick of Boston, but she dropped him after atributary pause. "What do you think, now that you've seen him, of Mr.Densher?"

  It was not till after consideration, with her eyes fixed on herfriend's, that Susie produced her answer. "I think he's very handsome."

  Milly remained smiling at her, though putting on a little the manner ofa teacher with a pupil. "Well, that will do for the first time. I_have_ done," she went on, "what I wanted."

  "Then that's all _we_ want. You see there are plenty of things."

  Milly shook her head for the "plenty." "The best is not to know--thatincludes them all. I don't--I don't know. Nothing aboutanything--except that you're _with_ me. Remember that, please. Therewon't be anything that, on my side, for you, I shall forget. So it'sall right."

  The effect of it by this time was fairly, as intended, to sustainSusie, who dropped in spite of herself into the reassuring. "Mostcertainly it's all right. I think you ought to understand that he seesno reason--"

  "Why I shouldn't have a grand long life?" Milly had taken it straightup, as to understand it and for a moment consider it. But she disposedof it otherwise. "Oh of course I know _that_." She spoke as if herfriend's point were small.

  Mrs. Stringham tried to enlarge it. "Well, what I mean is that hedidn't say to me anything that he hasn't said to yourself."

  "Really?--I would in his place!" She might have been disappointed, butshe had her good humour. "He tells me to _live_"--and she oddly limitedthe word.

  It left Susie a little at sea. "Then what do you want more?"

  "My dear," the girl presently said, "I don't 'want,' as I assure you,anything. Still," she added, "I _am_ living. Oh yes, I'm living."

  It put them again face to face, but it had wound Mrs. Stringham up. "Soam I then, you'll see!"--she spoke with the note of her recovery. Yetit was her wisdom now--meaning by it as much as she did--not to saymore than that. She had risen by Milly's aid to a certain command ofwhat was before them; the ten minutes of their talk had in fact madeher more distinctly aware of the presence in her mind of a new idea. Itwas really perhaps an old idea with a new value; it had at all eventsbegun during the last hour, though at first but feebly, to shine with aspecial light. That was because in the morning darkness had so suddenlydescended--a sufficient shade of night to bring out the power of astar. The dusk might be thick yet, but the sky had comparativelycleared; and Susan Shepherd's star from this time on continued totwinkle for her. It was for the moment, after her passage with Milly,the one spark left in the heavens. She recognised, as she continued towatch it, that it had really been set there by Sir Luke Strett's visitand that the impressions immediately following had done no more thanfix it. Milly's reappearance with Mr. Densher at her heels--or, sooddly perhaps, at Miss Croy's heels, Miss Croy being at Milly's--hadcontributed to this effect, though it was only with the lapse of thegreater obscurity that Susie made that out. The obscurity had reignedduring the hour of their friends' visit, faintly clearing indeed while,in one of the rooms, Kate Croy's remarkable advance to her intensifiedthe fact that Milly and the young man were conjoined in the other. Ifit hadn't acquired on the spot all the intensity of which it wascapable, this was because the poor lady still sat in her primary gloom,the gloom the great benignant doctor had practically left behind him.

  The intensity the circumstance in question _might_ wear to the informedimagination would have been sufficiently revealed for us, no doubt--andwith other things to our purpose--in two or three of those confidentialpassages with Mrs. Lowder that she now permitted herself. She hadn'tyet been so glad that she believed in her old friend; for if she hadn'thad, at such a pass, somebody or other to believe in she shouldcertainly have stumbled by the way. Discretion had ceased to consist ofsilence; silence was gross and thick, whereas wisdom should taper,however tremulously, to a point. She betook herself to Lancaster Gatethe morning after the colloquy just noted; and there, in MaudManningham's own sanctum, she gradually found relief in giving anaccount of herself. An account of herself was one of the things thatshe had long been in the habit of expecting herself regularly togive--the regularity depending of course much on such tests of merit asmight, by laws beyond her control, rise in her path. She never sparedherself in short a proper sharpness of conception of how she hadbehaved, and it was a statement that she for the most part foundherself able to make. What had happened at present was that nothing, asshe felt, was left of her to report to; she was all too sunk in theinevitable and the abysmal. To give an account of herself she must giveit to somebody else, and her first instalment of it to her hostess wasthat she must please let her cry. She couldn't cry, with Milly inobservation, at the hotel, which she had accordingly left for thatpurpose; and the power happily came to her with the good opportunity.She cried and cried at first--she confined herself to that; it was forthe time the best statement of her business. Mrs. Lowder moreoverintelligently took it as such, though knocking off a note or two more,as she said, while Susie sat near her table. She could resist thecontagion of tears, but her patience did justice to her visitor's mostvivid plea for it. "I shall never be able, you know, to cry again--atleast not ever with _her;_ so I must take it out when I can. Even ifshe does herself it won't be for me to give away; for what would thatbe but a confession of despair? I'm not with her for that--I'm with herto be regularly sublime. Besides, Milly won't cry herself."

  "I'm sure I hope," said Mrs. Lowder, "that she won't have occasion to."

  "She won't even if she does have occasion. She won't shed a tear.There's something that will prevent her."

  "Oh!" said Mrs. Lowder.

  "Yes, her pride," Mrs. Stringham explained in spite of her friend'sdoubt, and it was with this that her communication took consistentform. It had never been pride, Maud Manningham had hinted, that kept_her_ from crying when other things made for it; it had only been thatthese same things, at such times, made still more for business,arrangements, correspondence, the ringing of bells, the marshalling ofservants, the taking of decisions. "I might be crying now," she said,"if I weren't writing letters"--and this quite without harshness forher anxious companion, to whom she allowed just the administrativemargin for difference. She had interrupted her no more than she wouldhave interrupted the piano-tuner. It gave poor Susie time; and whenMrs. Lowder, to save appearances and catch the post, had, with heraddressed and stamped notes, met at the door of the room the footmansummoned by the pressure of a knob, the facts of the case weresufficiently ready for her. It took but two or three, however, giventheir importance, to lay the ground for the great one--Mrs. Stringham'sinterview of the day before with Sir Luke, who had wished to see herabout Milly.

  "He had wished it himself?"

  "I think he was glad of it. Clearly indeed he was. He stayed a quarterof an hour. I could see that for _him_ it was long. He's interested,"said Mrs. Stringham.

  "Do you mean in her case?"

  "He says it _isn't_ a case."

  "What then is it?"

  "It isn't, at least," Mrs. Stringham explained, "the case she believedit to be--thought it at any rate _might_ be--when, without myknowledge, she went to see him. She went because there was somethingshe was afraid of, and he examined her thoroughly--he has made sure.She's wrong--she hasn't what she thought."

  "And what did she think?" Mrs. Lowder demanded.

  "He didn't tell me."

  "And you didn't ask?"

  "I asked nothing," said poor Susie--"I only took what he gave me. Hegave me no more than he had to--he was beautiful," she went on. "He_is_, thank God, interested."

  "He must have been interested in _you_, dear," Maud Manningham observedwith kindness.

  Her visitor met it with candour. "Yes, love, I think he _is_. I meanthat he sees what he can do with me."

  Mrs. Lowder took it rightly. "For _her_."

  "For her. Anything in the world he will or he must. He can use me tothe last bone, and he likes at least that. He says the great thing forher is to be happy."

  "It's sur
ely the great thing for every one. Why, therefore," Mrs.Lowder handsomely asked, "should we cry so hard about it?"

  "Only," poor Susie wailed, "that it's so strange, so beyond us. I meanif she can't be."

  "She must be." Mrs. Lowder knew no impossibles. "She _shall_ be."

  "Well--if you'll help. He thinks, you know, we _can_ help."

  Mrs. Lowder faced a moment, in her massive way, what Sir Luke Strettthought. She sat back there, her knees apart, not unlike a picturesqueear-ringed matron at a market-stall; while her friend, before her,dropped their items, tossed the separate truths of the matter one byone, into her capacious apron. "But is that all he came to you for--totell you she must be happy?"

  "That she must be _made_ so--that's the point. It seemed enough, as hetold me," Mrs. Stringham went on; "he makes it somehow such a grandpossible affair."

  "Ah well, if he makes it possible!"

  "I mean especially he makes it grand. He gave it to me, that is, as_my_ part. The rest's his own."

  "And what's the rest?" Mrs. Lowder asked.

  "I don't know. _His_ business. He means to keep hold of her."

  "Then why do you say it isn't a 'case'? It must be very much of one."

  Everything in Mrs. Stringham confessed to the extent of it. "It's onlythat it isn't _the_ case she herself supposed."

  "It's another?"

  "It's another."

  "Examining her for what she supposed he finds something else?"

  "Something else."

  "And what does he find?"

  "Ah," Mrs. Stringham cried, "God keep me from knowing!"

  "He didn't tell you that?"

  But poor Susie had recovered herself. "What I mean is that if it'sthere I shall know in time. He's considering, but I can trust him forit--because he does, I feel, trust me. He's considering," she repeated.

  "He's in other words not sure?"

  "Well, he's watching. I think that's what he means. She's to get awaynow, but to come back to him in three months."

  "Then I think," said Maud Lowder, "that he oughtn't meanwhile to scareus."

  It roused Susie a little, Susie being already enrolled in the greatdoctor's cause. This came out at least in her glimmer of reproach."Does it scare us to enlist us for her happiness?"

  Mrs. Lowder was rather stiff for it. "Yes; it scares _me_. I'm alwaysscared--I may call it so--till I understand. What happiness is hetalking about?"

  Mrs. Stringham at this came straight. "Oh you know!"

  She had really said it so that her friend had to take it; which thelatter in fact after a moment showed herself as having done. A strangelight humour in the matter even perhaps suddenly aiding, she met itwith a certain accommodation. "Well, say one seems to see. The pointis--!" But, fairly too full now of her question, she dropped.

  "The point is will it _cure?_"

  "Precisely. Is it absolutely a remedy--the specific?"

  "Well, I should think we might know!" Mrs. Stringham delicatelydeclared.

  "Ah but we haven't the complaint."

  "Have you never, dearest, been in love?" Susan Shepherd enquired.

  "Yes, my child; but not by the doctor's direction."

  Maud Manningham had spoken perforce with a break into momentary mirth,which operated--and happily too--as a challenge to her visitor'sspirit. "Oh of course we don't ask his leave to fall. But it'ssomething to know he thinks it good for us."

  "My dear woman," Mrs. Lowder cried, "it strikes me we know it withouthim. So that when _that's_ all he has to tell us--!"

  "Ah," Mrs. Stringham interposed, "it isn't 'all.' I feel Sir Luke willhave more; he won't have put me off with anything inadequate. I'm tosee him again; he as good as told me that he'll wish it. So it won't befor nothing."

  "Then what will it be for? Do you mean he has somebody of his own topropose? Do you mean you told him nothing?"

  Mrs. Stringham dealt with these questions. "I showed him I understoodhim. That was all I could do. I didn't feel at liberty to be explicit;but I felt, even though his visit so upset me, the comfort of what Ihad from you night before last."

  "What I spoke to you of in the carriage when we had left her with Kate?"

  "You had _seen_, apparently, in three minutes. And now that he's here,now that I've met him and had my impression of him, I feel," said Mrs.Stringham, "that you've been magnificent."

  "Of course I've been magnificent. When," asked Maud Manningham, "was Ianything else? But Milly won't be, you know, if she marries MertonDensher."

  "Oh it's always magnificent to marry the man one loves. But we're goingfast!" Mrs. Stringham woefully smiled.

  "The thing _is_ to go fast if I see the case right. What had I afterall but my instinct of that on coming back with you, night before last,to pick up Kate? I felt what I felt--I knew in my bones the man hadreturned."

  "That's just where, as I say, you're magnificent. But wait," said Mrs.Stringham, "till you've seen him."

  "I shall see him immediately"--Mrs. Lowder took it up with decision."What is then," she asked, "your impression?"

  Mrs. Stringham's impression seemed lost in her doubts. "How can he evercare for her?"

  Her companion, in her companion's heavy manner, sat on it. "By beingput in the way of it."

  "For God's sake then," Mrs. Stringham wailed, "_put_ him in the way!You have him, one feels, in your hand."

  Maud Lowder's eyes at this rested on her friend's. "Is that yourimpression of him?"

  "It's my impression, dearest, of you. You handle every one."

  Mrs. Lowder's eyes still rested, and Susan Shepherd now felt, for awonder, not less sincere by seeing that she pleased her. But there wasa great limitation. "I don't handle Kate."

  It suggested something that her visitor hadn't yet had fromher--something the sense of which made Mrs. Stringham gasp. "Do youmean Kate cares for _him?_"

  That fact the lady of Lancaster Gate had up to this moment, as we know,enshrouded, and her friend's quick question had produced a change inher face. She blinked--then looked at the question hard; after which,whether she had inadvertently betrayed herself or had only reached adecision and then been affected by the quality of Mrs. Stringham'ssurprise, she accepted all results. What took place in her for SusanShepherd was not simply that she made the best of them, but that shesuddenly saw more in them to her purpose than she could have imagined.A certain impatience in fact marked in her this transition: she hadbeen keeping back, very hard, an important truth, and wouldn't haveliked to hear that she hadn't concealed it cleverly. Susie neverthelessfelt herself pass as not a little of a fool with her for not havingthought of it. What Susie indeed, however, most thought of at present,in the quick, new light of it, was the wonder of Kate's dissimulation.She had time for that view while she waited for an answer to her cry."Kate thinks she cares. But she's mistaken. And no one knows it." Thesethings, distinct and responsible, were Mrs. Lowder's retort. Yet theyweren't all of it. "_You_ don't know it--that must be your line. Orrather your line must be that you deny it utterly."

  "Deny that she cares for him?"

  "Deny that she so much as thinks that she does. Positively andabsolutely. Deny that you've so much as heard of it."

  Susie faced this new duty. "To Milly, you mean--if she asks?"

  "To Milly, naturally. No one else _will_ ask."

  "Well," said Mrs. Stringham after a moment, "Milly won't."

  Mrs. Lowder wondered. "Are you sure?"

  "Yes, the more I think of it. And luckily for _me_. I lie badly."

  "_I_ lie well, thank God," Mrs. Lowder almost snorted, "when, assometimes will happen, there's nothing else so good. One must always dothe best. But without lies then," she went on, "perhaps we can work itout." Her interest had risen; her friend saw her, as within someminutes, more enrolled and inflamed--presently felt in her what hadmade the difference. Mrs. Stringham, it was true, descried this at thetime but dimly; she only made out at first that Maud had found a reasonfor helping her. The reason was that, strangely, she might he
lp Maudtoo, for which she now desired to profess herself ready even to lying.What really perhaps most came out for her was that her hostess was alittle disappointed at her doubt of the social solidity of thisappliance; and that in turn was to become a steadier light. The truthabout Kate's delusion, as her aunt presented it, the delusion about thestate of her affections, which might be removed--this was apparentlythe ground on which they now might more intimately meet. Mrs. Stringhamsaw herself recruited for the removal of Kate's delusion--by arts,however, in truth, that she as yet quite failed to compass. Or was itperhaps to be only for the removal of Mr. Densher's?--success in whichindeed might entail other successes. Before that job, unfortunately,her heart had already failed. She felt that she believed in her boneswhat Milly believed, and what would now make working for Milly such adreadful upward tug. All this within her was confusedly present--acloud of questions out of which Maud Manningham's large seated selfloomed, however, as a mass more and more definite, taking in fact forthe consultative relation something of the form of an oracle. From theoracle the sound did come--or at any rate the sense did, a sense allaccordant with the insufflation she had just seen working. "Yes," thesense was, "I'll help you for Milly, because if that comes off I shallbe helped, by its doing so, for Kate"--a view into which Mrs. Stringhamcould now sufficiently enter. She found herself of a sudden, strange tosay, quite willing to operate to Kate's harm, or at least to Kate'sgood as Mrs. Lowder with a noble anxiety measured it. She found herselfin short not caring what became of Kate--only convinced at bottom ofthe predominance of Kate's star. Kate wasn't in danger, Kate wasn'tpathetic; Kate Croy, whatever happened, would take care of Kate Croy.She saw moreover by this time that her friend was travelling evenbeyond her own speed. Mrs. Lowder had already, in mind, drafted a roughplan of action, a plan vividly enough thrown off as she said: "You muststay on a few days, and you must immediately, both of you, meet him atdinner." In addition to which Maud claimed the merit of having by aninstinct of pity, of prescient wisdom, done much, two nights before, toprepare that ground. "The poor child, when I was with her there whileyou were getting your shawl, quite gave herself away to me."

  "Oh I remember how you afterwards put it to me. Though it was nothingmore," Susie did herself the justice to observe, "than what I too hadquite felt."

  But Mrs. Lowder fronted her so on this that she wondered what she hadsaid. "I suppose I ought to be edified at what you can so beautifullygive up."

  "Give up?" Mrs. Stringham echoed. "Why, I give up nothing--I cling."

  Her hostess showed impatience, turning again with some stiffness to hergreat brass-bound cylinder-desk and giving a push to an object or twodisposed there. "I give up then. You know how little such a person asMr. Densher was to be my idea for her. You know what I've been thinkingperfectly possible."

  "Oh you've been great"--Susie was perfectly fair. "A duke, a duchess, aprincess, a palace: you've made me believe in them too. But where webreak down is that _she_ doesn't believe in them. Luckily for her--asit seems to be turning out--she doesn't want them. So what's one to do?I assure you I've had many dreams. But I've only one dream now."

  Mrs. Stringham's tone in these last words gave so fully her meaningthat Mrs. Lowder could but show herself as taking it in. They sat amoment longer confronted on it. "Her having what she does want?"

  "If it _will_ do anything for her."

  Mrs. Lowder seemed to think what it might do; but she spoke for theinstant of something else. "It does provoke me a bit, you know--for ofcourse I'm a brute. And I had thought of all sorts of things. Yet itdoesn't prevent the fact that we must be decent."

  "We must take her"--Mrs. Stringham carried that out--"as she is."

  "And we must take Mr. Densher as _he_ is." With which Mrs. Lowder gavea sombre laugh. "It's a pity he isn't better!"

  "Well, if he were better," her friend rejoined, "you'd have liked himfor your niece; and in that case Milly would interfere. I mean," Susieadded, "interfere with _you_."

  "She interferes with me as it is--not that it matters now. But I sawKate and her--really as soon as you came to me--set up side by side. Isaw your girl--I don't mind telling--you helping my girl; and when Isay that," Mrs. Lowder continued, "you'll probably put in for yourselfthat it was part of the reason of my welcome to you. So you see what Igive up. I do give it up. But when I take that line," she further setforth, "I take it handsomely. So good-bye to it all. Good-day to Mrs.Densher! Heavens!" she growled.

  Susie held herself a minute. "Even as Mrs. Densher my girl will besomebody."

  "Yes, she won't be nobody. Besides," said Mrs. Lowder, "we're talkingin the air."

  Her companion sadly assented. "We're leaving everything out."

  "It's nevertheless interesting." And Mrs. Lowder had another thought."_He's_ not quite nobody either." It brought her back to the questionshe had already put and which her friend hadn't at the time dealt with."What in fact do you make of him?"

  Susan Shepherd, at this, for reasons not clear even to herself, wasmoved a little to caution. So she remained general. "He's charming."

  She had met Mrs. Lowder's eyes with that extreme pointedness in her ownto which people resort when they are not quite candid--a circumstancethat had its effect. "Yes; he's charming."

  The effect of the words, however, was equally marked; they almostdetermined in Mrs. Stringham a return of amusement. "I thought youdidn't like him!"

  "I don't like him for Kate."

  "But you don't like him for Milly either."

  Mrs. Stringham rose as she spoke, and her friend also got up. "I likehim, my dear, for myself."

  "Then that's the best way of all."

  "Well, it's one way. He's not good enough for my niece, and he's notgood enough for you. One's an aunt, one's a wretch and one's a fool."

  "Oh _I'm_ not--not either," Susie declared.

  But her companion kept on. "One lives for others. _You_ do that. If Iwere living for myself I shouldn't at all mind him."

  But Mrs. Stringham was sturdier. "Ah if I find him charming it'showever I'm living."

  Well, it broke Mrs. Lowder down. She hung fire but an instant, givingherself away with a laugh. "Of course he's all right in himself."

  "That's all I contend," Susie said with more reserve; and the note inquestion--what Merton Densher was "in himself"--closed practically,with some inconsequence, this first of their councils.

  II

  It had at least made the difference for them, they could feel, of aninformed state in respect to the great doctor, whom they were now totake as watching, waiting, studying, or at any rate as proposing tohimself some such process before he should make up his mind. Mrs.Stringham understood him as considering the matter meanwhile in aspirit that, on this same occasion, at Lancaster Gate, she had comeback to a rough notation of before retiring. She followed the course ofhis reckoning. If what they had talked of _could_ happen--if Milly,that is, could have her thoughts taken off herself--it wouldn't do anyharm and might conceivably do much good. If it couldn't happen--if,anxiously, though tactfully working, they themselves, conjoined, coulddo nothing to contribute to it--they would be in no worse a box thanbefore. Only in this latter case the girl would have had her free rangefor the summer, for the autumn; she would have done her best in thesense enjoined on her, and, coming back at the end to her eminent man,would--besides having more to show him--find him more ready to go onwith her. It was visible further to Susan Shepherd--as well as beingground for a second report to her old friend--that Milly did her partfor a working view of the general case, inasmuch as she mentionedfrankly and promptly that she meant to go and say good-bye to Sir LukeStrett and thank him. She even specified what she was to thank him for,his having been so easy about her behaviour.

  "You see I didn't know that--for the liberty I took--I shouldn'tafterwards get a stiff note from him."

  So much Milly had said to her, and it had made her a trifle rash. "Ohyou'll never get a stiff note from him in your life."

  She felt her rashn
ess, the next moment, at her young friend's question."Why not, as well as any one else who has played him a trick?"

  "Well, because he doesn't regard it as a trick. He could understandyour action. It's all right, you see."

  "Yes--I do see. It _is_ all right. He's easier with me than with anyone else, because that's the way to let me down. He's only makingbelieve, and I'm not worth hauling up."

  Rueful at having provoked again this ominous flare, poor Susie graspedat her only advantage. "Do you really accuse a man like Sir Luke Strettof trifling with you?"

  She couldn't blind herself to the look her companion gave her--astrange half-amused perception of what she made of it. "Well, so far asit's trifling with me to pity me so much."

  "He doesn't pity you," Susie earnestly reasoned. "He just--the same asany one else--likes you."

  "He has no business then to like me. He's not the same as any one else."

  "Why not, if he wants to work for you?"

  Milly gave her another look, but this time a wonderful smile. "Ah thereyou are!" Mrs. Stringham coloured, for there indeed she was again. ButMilly let her off. "Work for me, all the same--work for me! It's ofcourse what I want." Then as usual she embraced her friend. "I'm notgoing to be as nasty as this to _him_."

  "I'm sure I hope not!"--and Mrs. Stringham laughed for the kiss. "I'veno doubt, however, he'd take it from you! It's _you_, my dear, who arenot the same as any one else."

  Milly's assent to which, after an instant, gave her the last word. "No,so that people can take anything from me." And what Mrs. Stringham didindeed resignedly take after this was the absence on her part of anyaccount of the visit then paid. It was the beginning in fact betweenthem of an odd independence--an independence positively of action andcustom--on the subject of Milly's future. They went their separate wayswith the girl's intense assent; this being really nothing but what shehad so wonderfully put in her plea for after Mrs. Stringham's firstencounter with Sir Luke. She fairly favoured the idea that Susie had orwas to have other encounters--private pointed personal; she favouredevery idea, but most of all the idea that she herself was to go on asif nothing were the matter. Since she was to be worked for that wouldbe her way; and though her companions learned from herself nothing ofit this was in the event her way with her medical adviser. She put hervisit to him on the simplest ground; she had come just to tell him howtouched she had been by his good nature. That required littleexplaining, for, as Mrs. Stringham had said, he quite understood hecould but reply that it was all right.

  "I had a charming quarter of an hour with that clever lady. You've gotgood friends."

  "So each one of them thinks of all the others. But so I also think,"Milly went on, "of all of them together. You're excellent for eachother. And it's in that way, I dare say, that you're best for me."

  There came to her on this occasion one of the strangest of herimpressions, which was at the same time one of the finest of heralarms--the glimmer of a vision that if she should go, as it were, toofar, she might perhaps deprive their relation of facility if not ofvalue. Going too far was failing to try at least to remain simple. Hewould be quite ready to hate her if she did, by heading him off atevery point, embarrass his exercise of a kindness that, no doubt,rather constituted for him a high method. Susie wouldn't hate her,since Susie positively wanted to suffer for her; Susie had a noble ideathat she might somehow so do her good. Such, however, was not the wayin which the greatest of London doctors was to be expected to wish todo it. He wouldn't have time even should he wish; whereby, in a word,Milly felt herself intimately warned. Face to face there with hersmooth strong director, she enjoyed at a given moment quite suchanother lift of feeling as she had known in her crucial talk withSusie. It came round to the same thing; him too she would help to helpher if that could possibly be; but if it couldn't possibly be she wouldassist also to make this right.

  It wouldn't have taken many minutes more, on the basis in question,almost to reverse for her their characters of patient and physician.What _was_ he in fact but patient, what was she but physician, from themoment she embraced once for all the necessity, adopted once for allthe policy, of saving him alarms about her subtlety? She would leavethe subtlety to him: he would enjoy his use of it, and she herself, nodoubt, would in time enjoy his enjoyment. She went so far as to imaginethat the inward success of these reflexions flushed her for the minute,to his eyes, with a certain bloom, a comparative appearance of health;and what verily next occurred was that he gave colour to thepresumption. "Every little helps, no doubt!"--he noticedgood-humouredly her harmless sally. "But, help or no help, you'relooking, you know, remarkably well."

  "Oh I thought I was," she answered; and it was as if already she sawhis line. Only she wondered what he would have guessed. If he hadguessed anything at all it would be rather remarkable of him. As forwhat there _was_ to guess, he couldn't--if this was present tohim--have arrived at it save by his own acuteness. That acuteness wastherefore immense; and if it supplied the subtlety she thought ofleaving him to, his portion would be none so bad. Neither, for thatmatter, would hers be--which she was even actually enjoying. Shewondered if really then there mightn't be something for her. She hadn'tbeen sure in coming to him that she was "better," and he hadn't used,he would be awfully careful not to use, that compromising term abouther; in spite of all of which she would have been ready to say, for theamiable sympathy of it, "Yes, I _must_ be," for he had this unaidedsense of something that had happened to her. It was a sense unaided,because who could have told him of anything? Susie, she was certain,hadn't yet seen him again, and there were things it was impossible shecould have told him the first time. Since such was his penetration,therefore, why shouldn't she gracefully, in recognition of it, acceptthe new circumstance, the one he was clearly wanting to congratulateher on, as a sufficient cause? If one nursed a cause tenderly enough itmight produce an effect; and this, to begin with, would be a way ofnursing. "You gave me the other day," she went on, "plenty to thinkover, and I've been doing that--thinking it over--quite as you'll haveprobably wished me. I think I must be pretty easy to treat," shesmiled, "since you've already done me so much good."

  The only obstacle to reciprocity with him was that he looked in advanceso closely related to all one's possibilities that one missed thepleasure of really improving it. "Oh no, you're extremely difficult totreat. I've need with you, I assure you, of all my wit."

  "Well, I mean I do come up." She hadn't meanwhile a bit believed in hisanswer, convinced as she was that if she _had_ been difficult it wouldbe the last thing he would have told her. "I'm doing," she said, "as Ilike."

  "Then it's as _I_ like. But you must really, though we're having such adecent month, get straight away." In pursuance of which, when she hadreplied with promptitude that her departure--for the Tyrol and then forVenice--was quite fixed for the fourteenth, he took her up withalacrity. "For Venice? That's perfect, for we shall meet there. I've adream of it for October, when I'm hoping for three weeks off; threeweeks during which, if I can get them clear, my niece, a young personwho has quite the whip hand of me, is to take me where she prefers. Iheard from her only yesterday that she expects to prefer Venice."

  "That's lovely then. I shall expect you there. And anything that, inadvance or in any way, I can do for you--!"

  "Oh thank you. My niece, I seem to feel, does for me. But it will becapital to find you there."

  "I think it ought to make you feel," she said after a moment, "that I_am_ easy to treat."

  But he shook his head again; he wouldn't have it. "You've not come tothat _yet_."

  "One has to be so bad for it?"

  "Well, I don't think I've ever come to it--to 'ease' of treatment. Idoubt if it's possible. I've not, if it is, found any one bad enough.The ease, you see, is for _you_."

  "I see--I see."

  They had an odd friendly, but perhaps the least bit awkward pause onit; after which Sir Luke asked: "And that clever lady--she goes withyou?"

  "Mrs. Stringham? Oh dear, yes. Sh
e'll stay with me, I hope, to the end."

  He had a cheerful blankness. "To the end of what?"

  "Well--of everything."

  "Ah then," he laughed, "you're in luck. The end of everything is faroff. This, you know, I'm hoping," said Sir Luke, "is only thebeginning." And the next question he risked might have been a part ofhis hope. "Just you and she together?"

  "No, two other friends; two ladies of whom we've seen more here than ofany one and who are just the right people for us."

  He thought a moment. "You'll be four women together then?"

  "Ah," said Milly, "we're widows and orphans. But I think," she added asif to say what she saw would reassure him, "that we shall not beunattractive, as we move, to gentlemen. When you talk of 'life' Isuppose you mean mainly gentlemen."

  "When I talk of 'life,'" he made answer after a moment during which hemight have been appreciating her raciness--"when I talk of life I thinkI mean more than anything else the beautiful show of it, in itsfreshness, made by young persons of your age. So go on as you are. Isee more and more _how_ you are. You can't," he went so far as to sayfor pleasantness, "better it."

  She took it from him with a great show of peace. "One of our companionswill be Miss Croy, who came with me here first. It's in _her_ that lifeis splendid; and a part of that is even that she's devoted to me. Butshe's above all magnificent in herself. So that if you'd like," shefreely threw out, "to see _her_--"

  "Oh I shall like to see any one who's devoted to you, for clearly itwill be jolly to be 'in' it. So that if she's to be at Venice I _shall_see her?"

  "We must arrange it--I shan't fail. She moreover has a friend who mayalso be there"--Milly found herself going on to this. "He's likely tocome, I believe, for he always follows her."

  Sir Luke wondered. "You mean they're lovers?"

  "_He_ is," Milly smiled; "but not she. She doesn't care for him."

  Sir Luke took an interest. "What's the matter with him?"

  "Nothing but that she doesn't like him."

  Sir Luke kept it up. "Is he all right?"

  "Oh he's very nice. Indeed he's remarkably so."

  "And he's to be in Venice?"

  "So she tells me she fears. For if he is there he'll be constantlyabout with her."

  "And she'll be constantly about with you?"

  "As we're great friends--yes."

  "Well then," said Sir Luke, "you won't be four women alone."

  "Oh no; I quite recognise the chance of gentlemen. But he won't," Millypursued in the same wondrous way, "have come, you see, for me."

  "No--I see. But can't you help him?"

  "Can't _you?_" Milly after a moment quaintly asked. Then for the jokeof it she explained. "I'm putting you, you see, in relation with myentourage."

  It might have been for the joke of it too, by this time, that hereminent friend fell in. "But if this gentleman _isn't_ of your'entourage '? I mean if he's of--what do you call her?--Miss Croy's.Unless indeed you also take an interest in him."

  "Oh certainly I take an interest in him!"

  "You think there may be then some chance for him?"

  "I like him," said Milly, "enough to hope so."

  "Then that's all right. But what, pray," Sir Luke next asked, "have Ito do with him?"

  "Nothing," said Milly, "except that if you're to be there, so may hebe. And also that we shan't in that case be simply four dreary women."

  He considered her as if at this point she a little tried his patience."_You're_ the least 'dreary' woman I've ever, ever seen. Ever, do youknow? There's no reason why you shouldn't have a really splendid life."

  "So every one tells me," she promptly returned.

  "The conviction--strong already when I had seen you once--isstrengthened in me by having seen your friend. There's no doubt aboutit. The world's before you."

  "What did my friend tell you?" Milly asked.

  "Nothing that wouldn't have given you pleasure. We talked aboutyou--and freely. I don't deny that. But it shows me I don't require ofyou the impossible."

  She was now on her feet. "I think I know what you require of me."

  "Nothing, for you," he went on, "_is_ impossible. So go on." Herepeated it again--wanting her so to feel that to-day he saw it."You're all right."

  "Well," she smiled--"keep me so."

  "Oh you'll get away from me."

  "Keep me, keep me," she simply continued with her gentle eyes on him.

  She had given him her hand for good-bye, and he thus for a moment didkeep her. Something then, while he seemed to think if there wereanything more, came back to him; though something of which there wasn'ttoo much to be made. "Of course if there's anything I _can_ do for yourfriend: I mean the gentleman you speak of--?" He gave out in short thathe was ready.

  "Oh Mr. Densher?" It was as if she had forgotten.

  "Mr. Densher--is that his name?"

  "Yes--but his case isn't so dreadful." She had within a minute got awayfrom that.

  "No doubt--if _you_ take an interest." She had got away, but it was asif he made out in her eyes--though they also had rather got away--areason for calling her back. "Still, if there's anything one can do--?"

  She looked at him while she thought, while she smiled. "I'm afraidthere's really nothing one can do."

  III

  Not yet so much as this morning had she felt herself sink intopossession; gratefully glad that the warmth of the Southern summer wasstill in the high florid rooms, palatial chambers where hard coolpavements took reflexions in their lifelong polish, and where the sunon the stirred sea-water, flickering up through open windows, playedover the painted "subjects" in the splendid ceilings--medallions ofpurple and brown, of brave old melancholy colour, medals as of oldreddened gold, embossed and beribboned, all toned with time and allflourished and scolloped and gilded about, set in their great mouldedand figured concavity (a nest of white cherubs, friendly creatures ofthe air) and appreciated by the aid of that second tier of smallerlights, straight openings to the front, which did everything, even withthe Baedekers and photographs of Milly's party dreadfully meeting theeye, to make of the place an apartment of state. This at last only,though she had enjoyed the palace for three weeks, seemed to count aseffective occupation; perhaps because it was the first time she hadbeen alone--really to call alone--since she had left London, itministered to her first full and unembarrassed sense of what the greatEugenio had done for her. The great Eugenio, recommended by grand-dukesand Americans, had entered her service during the last hours ofall--had crossed from Paris, after multiplied _pourparlers_ with Mrs.Stringham, to whom she had allowed more than ever a free hand, onpurpose to escort her to the Continent and encompass her there, and haddedicated to her, from the moment of their meeting, all the treasuresof his experience. She had judged him in advance--polyglot anduniversal, very dear and very deep--as probably but a swindler finishedto the finger-tips; for he was forever carrying one well-kept Italianhand to his heart and plunging the other straight into her pocket,which, as she had instantly observed him to recognise, fitted it like aglove. The remarkable thing was that these elements of their commonconsciousness had rapidly gathered into an indestructible link, formedthe ground of a happy relation; being by this time, strangely,grotesquely, delightfully, what most kept up confidence between themand what most expressed it.

  She had seen quickly enough what was happening--the usual thing again,yet once again. Eugenio had, in an interview of five minutes,understood her, had got hold, like all the world, of the idea not somuch of the care with which she must be taken up as of the care withwhich she must be let down. All the world understood her, all the worldhad got hold; but for nobody yet, she felt, would the idea have been soclose a tie or won from herself so patient a surrender. Gracefully,respectfully, consummately enough--always with hands in position andthe look, in his thick neat white hair, smooth fat face and blackprofessional, almost theatrical eyes, as of some famous tenor grown tooold to make love, but with an art still to make money--did he onoccasion
convey to her that she was, of all the clients of his gloriouscareer, the one in whom his interest was most personal and paternal.The others had come in the way of business, but for her his sentimentwas special. Confidence rested thus on her completely believing that:there was nothing of which she felt more sure. It passed between themevery time they conversed; he was abysmal, but this intimacy lived onthe surface. He had taken his place already for her among those whowere to see her through, and meditation ranked him, in the constantperspective, for the final function, side by side with poor Susie--whomshe was now pitying more than ever for having to be herself so sorryand to say so little about it. Eugenio had the general tact of aresiduary legatee--which was a character that could be definitely worn;whereas she could see Susie, in the event of her death, in no characterat all, Susie being insistently, exclusively concerned in her meremakeshift duration. This principle, for that matter, Milly at present,with a renewed flare of fancy, felt she should herself have liked tobelieve in. Eugenio had really done for her more than he probablyknew--he didn't after all know everything--in having, for the wind-upof the autumn, on a weak word from her, so admirably, so perfectlyestablished her. Her weak word, as a general hint, had been: "AtVenice, please, if possible, no dreadful, no vulgar hotel; but, if itcan be at all managed--you know what I mean--some fine old rooms,wholly independent, for a series of months. Plenty of them too, and themore interesting the better: part of a palace, historic andpicturesque, but strictly inodorous, where we shall be to ourselves,with a cook, don't you know?--with servants, frescoes, tapestries,antiquities, the thorough make-believe of a settlement."

  The proof of how he better and better understood her was in all theplace; as to his masterly acquisition of which she had from the firstasked no questions. She had shown him enough what she thought of it,and her forbearance pleased him; with the part of the transaction thatmainly concerned her she would soon enough become acquainted, and hisconnexion with such values as she would then find noted could scarcehelp growing, as it were, still more residuary. Charming people,conscious Venice-lovers, evidently, had given up their house to her,and had fled to a distance, to other countries, to hide their blushesalike over what they had, however briefly, alienated, and over whatthey had, however durably, gained. They had preserved and consecrated,and she now--her part of it was shameless--appropriated and enjoyed.Palazzo Leporelli held its history still in its great lap, even like apainted idol, a solemn puppet hung about with decorations. Hung aboutwith pictures and relics, the rich Venetian past, the ineffaceablecharacter, was here the presence revered and served: which brings usback to our truth of a moment ago--the fact that, more than ever, thisOctober morning, awkward novice though she might be, Milly moved slowlyto and fro as the priestess of the worship. Certainly it came from thesweet taste of solitude, caught again and cherished for the hour;always a need of her nature, moreover, when things spoke to her withpenetration. It was mostly in stillness they spoke to her best; amidvoices she lost the sense. Voices had surrounded her for weeks, and shehad tried to listen, had cultivated them and had answered back; thesehad been weeks in which there were other things they might well preventher from hearing. More than the prospect had at first promised orthreatened she had felt herself going on in a crowd and with amultiplied escort; the four ladies pictured by her to Sir Luke Strettas a phalanx comparatively closed and detached had in fact proved arolling snowball, condemned from day to day to cover more ground. SusanShepherd had compared this portion of the girl's excursion to theEmpress Catherine's famous progress across the steppes of Russia;improvised settlements appeared at each turn of the road, villagerswaiting with addresses drawn up in the language of London. Old friendsin fine were in ambush, Mrs. Lowder's, Kate Croy's, her own; when theaddresses weren't in the language of London they were in the moreinsistent idioms of American centres. The current was swollen even bySusie's social connexions; so that there were days, at hotels, atDolomite picnics, on lake steamers, when she could almost repay to AuntMaud and Kate with interest the debt contracted by the London "success"to which they had opened the door.

  Mrs. Lowder's success and Kate's, amid the shock of Milly's and Mrs.Stringham's compatriots, failed but little, really, of theconcert-pitch; it had gone almost as fast as the boom, over the sea, ofthe last great native novel. Those ladies were "sodifferent"--different, observably enough, from the ladies so appraisingthem; it being throughout a case mainly of ladies, of a dozen at oncesometimes, in Milly's apartment, pointing, also at once, that moral andmany others. Milly's companions were acclaimed not only as perfectlyfascinating in themselves, the nicest people yet known to theacclaimers, but as obvious helping hands, socially speaking, for theeccentric young woman, evident initiators and smoothers of her path,possible subduers of her eccentricity. Short intervals, to her ownsense, stood now for great differences, and this renewed inhalation ofher native air had somehow left her to feel that she already, that shemainly, struck the compatriot as queer and dissociated. She moved sucha critic, it would appear, as to rather an odd suspicion, a benevolenceinduced by a want of complete trust: all of which showed her in thelight of a person too plain and too ill-clothed for a thorough goodtime, and yet too rich and too befriended--an intuitive cunning withinher managing this last--for a thorough bad one. The compatriots, inshort, by what she made out, approved her friends for their expertwisdom with her; in spite of which judicial sagacity it was thecompatriots who recorded themselves as the innocent parties. She sawthings in these days that she had never seen before, and she couldn'thave said why save on a principle too terrible to name; whereby she sawthat neither Lancaster Gate was what New York took it for, nor New Yorkwhat Lancaster Gate fondly fancied it in coquetting with the plan of aseries of American visits. The plan might have been, humorously, onMrs. Lowder's part, for the improvement of her social position--and ithad verily in that direction lights that were perhaps but half acentury too prompt; at all of which Kate Croy assisted with the coolcontrolled facility that went so well, as the others said, with herparticular kind of good looks, the kind that led you to expect theperson enjoying them _would_ dispose of disputations, speculations,aspirations, in a few very neatly and brightly uttered words, sosimplified in sense, however, that they sounded, even when guiltless,like rather aggravated slang. It wasn't that Kate hadn't pretended toothat _she_ should like to go to America; it was only that with thisyoung woman Milly had constantly proceeded, and more than ever of late,on the theory of intimate confessions, private frank ironies that madeup for their public grimaces and amid which, face to face, they wearilyput off the mask.

  These puttings-off of the mask had finally quite become the form takenby their moments together, moments indeed not increasingly frequent andnot prolonged, thanks to the consciousness of fatigue on Milly's sidewhenever, as she herself expressed it, she got out of harness. Theyflourished their masks, the independent pair, as they might haveflourished Spanish fans; they smiled and sighed on removing them; butthe gesture, the smiles, the sighs, strangely enough, might have beensuspected the greatest reality in the business. Strangely enough, wesay, for the volume of effusion in general would have been found byeither on measurement to be scarce proportional to the paraphernalia ofrelief. It was when they called each other's attention to their ceasingto pretend, it was then that what they were keeping back was most inthe air. There was a difference, no doubt, and mainly to Kate'sadvantage: Milly didn't quite see what her friend could keep back, waspossessed of, in fine, that would be so subject to retention; whereasit was comparatively plain sailing for Kate that poor Milly had atreasure to hide. This was not the treasure of a shy, an abjectaffection--concealment, on that head, belonging to quite another phaseof such states; it was much rather a principle of pride relatively boldand hard, a principle that played up like a fine steel spring at thelightest pressure of too near a footfall. Thus insuperably guarded wasthe truth about the girl's own conception of her validity; thus was awondering pitying sister condemned wistfully to look at her from thefar side of the mo
at she had dug round her tower. Certain aspects ofthe connexion of these young women show for us, such is the twilightthat gathers about them, in the likeness of some dim scene in aMaeterlinck play; we have positively the image, in the delicate dusk,of the figures so associated and yet so opposed, so mutually watchful:that of the angular pale princess, ostrich-plumed, black-robed, hungabout with amulets, reminders, relics, mainly seated, mainly still, andthat of the upright restless slow-circling lady of her court whoexchanges with her, across the black water streaked with eveninggleams, fitful questions and answers. The upright lady, with thick darkbraids down her back, drawing over the grass a more embroidered train,makes the whole circuit, and makes it again, and the broken talk, briefand sparingly allusive, seems more to cover than to free their sense.This is because, when it fairly comes to not having others to consider,they meet in an air that appears rather anxiously to wait for theirwords. Such an impression as that was in fact grave, and might betragic; so that, plainly enough, systematically at last, they settledto a care of what they said.

  There could be no gross phrasing to Milly, in particular, of theprobability that if she wasn't so proud she might be pitied with morecomfort--more to the person pitying; there could be no spoken proof, nosharper demonstration than the consistently considerate attitude, thatthis marvellous mixture of her weakness and of her strength, her peril,if such it were, and her option, made her, kept her, irresistiblyinteresting. Kate's predicament in the matter was, after all, very muchMrs. Stringham's own, and Susan Shepherd herself indeed, in ourMaeterlinck picture, might well have hovered in the gloaming by themoat. It may be declared for Kate, at all events, that her sincerityabout her friend, through this time, was deep, her compassionateimagination strong; and that these things gave her a virtue, a goodconscience, a credibility for herself, so to speak, that were later tobe precious to her. She grasped with her keen intelligence the logic oftheir common duplicity, went unassisted through the same ordeal asMilly's other hushed follower, easily saw that for the girl to beexplicit was to betray divinations, gratitudes, glimpses of the feltcontrast between her fortune and her fear--all of which would havecontradicted her systematic bravado. That was it, Kate wonderingly saw:to recognise was to bring down the avalanche--the avalanche Milly livedso in watch for and that might be started by the lightest of breaths;though less possibly the breath of her own stifled plaint than that ofthe vain sympathy, the mere helpless gaping inference of others. Withso many suppressions as these, therefore, between them, theirwithdrawal together to unmask had to fall back, as we have hinted, on anominal motive--which was decently represented by a joy at the drop ofchatter. Chatter had in truth all along attended their steps, but theytook the despairing view of it on purpose to have ready, when face toface, some view or other of something. The relief of getting out ofharness--that was the moral of their meetings; but the moral of this,in turn, was that they couldn't so much as ask each other why harnessneed be worn. Milly wore it as a general armour.

  She was out of it at present, for some reason, as she hadn't been forweeks; she was always out of it, that is, when alone, and hercompanions had never yet so much as just now affected her as dispersedand suppressed. It was as if still again, still more tacitly andwonderfully, Eugenio had understood her, taking it from her without aword and just bravely and brilliantly in the name, for instance, of thebeautiful day: "Yes, get me an hour alone; take them off--I don't carewhere; absorb, amuse, detain them; drown them, kill them if you will:so that I may just a little, all by myself, see where I am." She wasconscious of the dire impatience of it, for she gave up Susie as wellas the others to him--Susie who would have drowned her very self forher; gave her up to a mercenary monster through whom she thus purchasedrespites. Strange were the turns of life and the moods of weakness;strange the flickers of fancy and the cheats of hope; yet lawful, allthe same--weren't they?--those experiments tried with the truth thatconsisted, at the worst, but in practising on one's self. She was nowplaying with the thought that Eugenio might _inclusively_ assist her:he had brought home to her, and always by remarks that were reallyquite soundless, the conception, hitherto ungrasped, of some completeuse of her wealth itself, some use of it as a counter-move to fate. Ithad passed between them as preposterous that with so much money sheshould just stupidly and awkwardly _want_--any more want a life, acareer, a consciousness, than want a house, a carriage or a cook. Itwas as if she had had from him a kind of expert professional measure ofwhat he was in a position, at a stretch, to undertake for her; thethoroughness of which, for that matter, she could closely compare witha looseness on Sir Luke Strett's part that--at least in PalazzoLeporelli when mornings were fine--showed as almost amateurish. SirLuke hadn't said to her "Pay enough money and leave the rest to_me_"--which was distinctly what Eugenio did say. Sir Luke had appearedindeed to speak of purchase and payment, but in reference to adifferent sort of cash. Those were amounts not to be named norreckoned, and such moreover as she wasn't sure of having at hercommand. Eugenio--this was the difference--could name, could reckon,and prices of _his_ kind were things she had never suffered to scareher. She had been willing, goodness knew, to pay enough for anything,for everything, and here was simply a new view of the sufficientquantity. She amused herself--for it came to that, since Eugenio wasthere to sign the receipt--with possibilities of meeting the bill. Shewas more prepared than ever to pay enough, and quite as much as ever topay too much. What else--if such were points at which your most trustedservant failed--was the use of being, as the dear Susies of earthcalled you, a princess in a palace?

  She made now, alone, the full circuit of the place, noble and peacefulwhile the summer sea, stirring here and there a curtain or an outerblind, breathed into its veiled spaces. She had a vision of clinging toit; that perhaps Eugenio could manage. She was _in_ it, as in the arkof her deluge, and filled with such a tenderness for it that whyshouldn't this, in common mercy, be warrant enough? She would never,never leave it--she would engage to that; would ask nothing more thanto sit tight in it and float on and on. The beauty and intensity, thereal momentary relief of this conceit, reached their climax in thepositive purpose to put the question to Eugenio on his return as shehad not yet put it; though the design, it must be added, dropped alittle when, coming back to the great saloon from which she had startedon her pensive progress, she found Lord Mark, of whose arrival inVenice she had been unaware, and who had now--while a servant wasfollowing her through empty rooms--been asked, in her absence, to wait.He had waited then, Lord Mark, he was waiting--oh unmistakeably; neverbefore had he so much struck her as the man to do that on occasion withpatience, to do it indeed almost as with gratitude for the chance,though at the same time with a sort of notifying firmness. The oddthing, as she was afterwards to recall, was that her wonder for whathad brought him was not immediate, but had come at the end of fiveminutes; and also, quite incoherently, that she felt almost as glad tosee him, and almost as forgiving of his interruption of her solitude,as if he had already been in her thought or acting at her suggestion.He was some-how, at the best, the end of a respite; one might like himvery much and yet feel that his presence tempered precious solitudemore than any other known to one: in spite of all of which, as he wasneither dear Susie, nor dear Kate, nor dear Aunt Maud, nor even, forthe least, dear Eugenio in person, the sight of him did no damage toher sense of the dispersal of her friends. She hadn't been sothoroughly alone with him since those moments of his showing her thegreat portrait at Matcham, the moments that had exactly made thehigh-water-mark of her security, the moments during which her tearsthemselves, those she had been ashamed of, were the sign of herconsciously rounding her protective promontory, quitting the blue gulfof comparative ignorance and reaching her view of the troubled sea. Hispresence now referred itself to his presence then, reminding her howkind he had been, altogether, at Matcham, and telling her,unexpectedly, at a time when she could particularly feel it, that, forsuch kindness and for the beauty of what they remembered together, shehadn't lost him--quite the contr
ary. To receive him handsomely, toreceive him there, to see him interested and charmed, as well, clearly,as delighted to have found her without some other person to spoilit--these things were so pleasant for the first minutes that they mighthave represented on her part some happy foreknowledge. She gave anaccount of her companions while he on his side failed to press herabout them, even though describing his appearance, so unheralded, asthe result of an impulse obeyed on the spot. He had been shivering atCarlsbad, belated there and blue, when taken by it; so that, knowingwhere they all were, he had simply caught the first train. He explainedhow he had known where they were; he had heard--what morenatural?--from their friends, Milly's and his. He mentioned thisbetimes, but it was with his mention, singularly, that the girl becameconscious of her inner question about his reason. She noticed hisplural, which added to Mrs. Lowder or added to Kate; but she presentlynoticed also that it didn't affect her as explaining. Aunt Maud hadwritten to him, Kate apparently--and this was interesting--had writtento him; but their design presumably hadn't been that he should come andsit there as if rather relieved, so far as _they_ were concerned, atpostponements. He only said "Oh!" and again "Oh!" when she sketchedtheir probable morning for him, under Eugenio's care and Mrs.Stringham's--sounding it quite as if any suggestion that he shouldovertake them at the Rialto or the Bridge of Sighs would leave himtemporarily cold. This precisely it was that, after a little, operatedfor Milly as an obscure but still fairly direct check to confidence. Hehad known where they all were from the others, but it was not for theothers that, in his actual dispositions, he had come. That, strange tosay, was a pity; for, stranger still to say, she could have shown himmore confidence if he himself had had less intention. His intention sochilled her, from the moment she found herself divining it, that, justfor the pleasure of going on with him fairly, just for the pleasure oftheir remembrance together of Matcham and the Bronzino, the climax ofher fortune, she could have fallen to pleading with him and toreasoning, to undeceiving him in time. There had been, for ten minutes,with the directness of her welcome to him and the way this clearlypleased him, something of the grace of amends made, even though hecouldn't know it--amends for her not having been originally sure, forinstance at that first dinner of Aunt Maud's, that he was adequatelyhuman. That first dinner of Aunt Maud's added itself to the hour atMatcham, added itself to other things, to consolidate, for her presentbenevolence, the ease of their relation, making it suddenly delightfulthat he had thus turned up. He exclaimed, as he looked about, on thecharm of the place: "What a temple to taste and an expression of thepride of life, yet, with all that, what a jolly _home!_"--so that, forhis entertainment, she could offer to walk him about though shementioned that she had just been, for her own purposes, in a generalprowl, taking everything in more susceptibly than before. He embracedher offer without a scruple and seemed to rejoice that he was to findher susceptible.

  IV

  She couldn't have said what it was, in the conditions, that renewed thewhole solemnity, but by the end of twenty minutes a kind of wistfulhush had fallen upon them, as before something poignant in which hervisitor also participated. That was nothing verily but the perfectionof the charm--or nothing rather but their excluded disinherited statein the presence of it. The charm turned on them a face that was cold inits beauty, that was full of a poetry never to be theirs, that spokewith an ironic smile of a possible but forbidden life. It all rolledafresh over Milly: "Oh the impossible romance--!" The romance for her,yet once more, would be to sit there for ever, through all her time, asin a fortress; and the idea became an image of never going down, ofremaining aloft in the divine dustless air, where she would hear butthe plash of the water against stone. The great floor on which theymoved was at an altitude, and this prompted the rueful fancy. "Ah notto go down--never, never to go down!" she strangely sighed to herfriend.

  "But why shouldn't you," he asked, "with that tremendous old staircasein your court? There ought of course always to be people at top andbottom, in Veronese costumes, to watch you do it."

  She shook her head both lightly and mournfully enough at his notunderstanding. "Not even for people in Veronese costumes. I mean thatthe positive beauty is that one needn't go down. I don't move in fact,"she added--"now. I've not been out, you know. I stay up. That's how youhappily found me."

  Lord Mark wondered--he was, oh yes, adequately human. "You don't goabout?"

  She looked over the place, the storey above the apartments in which shehad received him, the sala corresponding to the sala below and frontingthe great canal with its gothic arches. The casements between thearches were open, the ledge of the balcony broad, the sweep of thecanal, so overhung, admirable, and the flutter toward them of the loosewhite curtain an invitation to she scarce could have said what. Butthere was no mystery after a moment; she had never felt so invited toanything as to make that, and that only, just where she was, heradventure. It would be--to this it kept coming back--the adventure ofnot stirring. "I go about just here."

  "Do you mean," Lord Mark presently asked, "that you're really not well?"

  They were at the window, pausing, lingering, with the fine old fadedpalaces opposite and the slow Adriatic tide beneath; but after aminute, and before she answered, she had closed her eyes to what shesaw and unresistingly dropped her face into her arms, which rested onthe coping. She had fallen to her knees on the cushion of thewindow-place, and she leaned there, in a long silence, with herforehead down. She knew that her silence was itself too straight ananswer, but it was beyond her now to say that she saw her way. Shewould have made the question itself impossible to others--impossiblefor example to such a man as Merton Densher; and she could wonder evenon the spot what it was a sign of in her feeling for Lord Mark thatfrom his lips it almost tempted her to break down. This was doubtlessreally because she cared for him so little; to let herself go with himthus, suffer his touch to make her cup overflow, would be therelief--since it was actually, for her nerves, a question ofrelief--that would cost her least. If he had come to her moreover withthe intention she believed, or even if this intention had but beendetermined in him by the spell of their situation, he mustn't bemistaken about her value--for what value did she now have? It throbbedwithin her as she knelt there that she had none at all; though, holdingherself, not yet speaking, she tried, even in the act, to recover whatmight be possible of it. With that there came to her a light: wouldn'ther value, for the man who should marry her, be precisely in the ravageof her disease? _She_ mightn't last, but her money would. For a man inwhom the vision of her money should be intense, in whom it should bemost of the ground for "making up" to her, any prospective failure onher part to be long for this world might easily count as a positiveattraction. Such a man, proposing to please, persuade, secure her,appropriate her for such a time, shorter or longer, as nature and thedoctors should allow, would make the best of her, ill, damaged,disagreeable though she might be, for the sake of eventual benefits:she being clearly a person of the sort esteemed likely to do thehandsome thing by a stricken and sorrowing husband.

  She had said to herself betimes, in a general way, that whatever habitsher youth might form, that of seeing an interested suitor in every bushshould certainly never grow to be one of them--an attitude she hadearly judged as ignoble, as poisonous. She had had accordingly in factas little to do with it as possible and she scarce knew why at thepresent moment she should have had to catch herself in the act ofimputing an ugly motive. It didn't sit, the ugly motive, in Lord Mark'scool English eyes; the darker side of it at any rate showed, to herimagination, but briefly. Suspicion moreover, with this, simplifieditself: there was a beautiful reason--indeed there were two--why hercompanion's motive shouldn't matter. One was that even should he desireher without a penny she wouldn't marry him for the world; the other wasthat she felt him, after all, perceptively, kindly, very pleasantly andhumanly, concerned for her. They were also two things, his wishing tobe well, to be very well, with her, and his beginning to feel her asthreatened, haunted, blighted; but the
y were melting together for him,making him, by their combination, only the more sure that, as heprobably called it to himself, he liked her. That was presently whatremained with her--his really doing it; and with the natural and properincident of being conciliated by her weakness. Would she really havehad him--she could ask herself that--disconcerted or disgusted by it?If he could only be touched enough to do what she preferred, not toraise, not to press any question, he might render her a much betterservice than by merely enabling her to refuse him. Again, again it wasstrange, but he figured to her for the moment as the one safesympathiser. It would have made her worse to talk to others, but shewasn't afraid with him of how he might wince and look pale. She wouldkeep him, that is, her one easy relation--in the sense of easy forhimself. Their actual outlook had meanwhile such charm, what surroundedthem within and without did so much toward making appreciativestillness as natural as at the opera, that she could consider shehadn't made him hang on her lips when at last, instead of saying if shewere well or ill, she repeated: "I go about here. I don't get tired ofit. I never should--it suits me so. I adore the place," she went on,"and I don't want in the least to give it up."

  "Neither should I if I had your luck. Still, with that luck, for one's_all_--! Should you positively like to live here?"

  "I think I should like," said poor Milly after an instant, "to diehere."

  Which made him, precisely, laugh. That was what she wanted--when aperson did care: it was the pleasant human way, without depths ofdarkness. "Oh it's not good enough for _that!_ That requires picking.But can't you keep it? It is, you know, the sort of place to see youin; you carry out the note, fill it, people it, quite by yourself, andyou might do much worse--I mean for your friends--than show yourselfhere a while, three or four months, every year. But it's not my notionfor the rest of the time. One has quite other uses for you."

  "What sort of a use for me is it," she smilingly enquired, "to kill me?"

  "Do you mean we should kill you in England?"

  "Well, I've seen you and I'm afraid. You're too much for me--too many.England bristles with questions. This is more, as you say there, myform."

  "Oho, oho!"--he laughed again as if to humour her. "Can't you then buyit--for a price? Depend upon it they'll treat for money. That is formoney enough."

  "I've exactly," she said, "been wondering if they won't. I think Ishall try. But if I get it I shall cling to it." They were talkingsincerely. "It will be my life--paid for as that. It will become mygreat gilded shell; so that those who wish to find me must come andhunt me up."

  "Ah then you _will_ be alive," said Lord Mark.

  "Well, not quite extinct perhaps, but shrunken, wasted, wizened;rattling about here like the dried kernel of a nut."

  "Oh," Lord Mark returned, "we, much as you mistrust us, can do betterfor you than that."

  "In the sense that you'll feel it better for me really to have it over?"

  He let her see now that she worried him, and after a look at her, ofsome duration, without his glasses--which always altered the expressionof his eyes--he re-settled the nippers on his nose and went back to theview. But the view, in turn, soon enough released him. "Do you remembersomething I said to you that day at Matcham--or at least fully meantto?"

  "Oh yes, I remember everything at Matcham. It's another life."

  "Certainly it will be--I mean the kind of thing: what I then wanted itto represent for you. Matcham, you know," he continued, "is symbolic. Ithink I tried to rub that into you a little."

  She met him with the full memory of what he had tried--not an inch, notan ounce of which was lost to her. "What I meant is that it seems ahundred years ago."

  "Oh for me it comes in better. Perhaps a part of what makes me rememberit," he pursued, "is that I was quite aware of what might have beensaid about what I was doing. I wanted you to take it from me that Ishould perhaps be able to look after you--well, rather better. Ratherbetter, of course, than certain other persons in particular."

  "Precisely--than Mrs. Lowder, than Miss Croy, even than Mrs. Stringham."

  "Oh Mrs. Stringham's all right!" Lord Mark promptly amended.

  It amused her even with what she had else to think of; and she couldshow him at all events how little, in spite of the hundred years, shehad lost what he alluded to. The way he was with her at this momentmade in fact the other moment so vivid as almost to start again thetears it had started at the time. "You could do so much for me, yes. Iperfectly understood you."

  "I wanted, you see," he despite this explained, "to _fix_ yourconfidence. I mean, you know, in the right place."

  "Well, Lord Mark, you did--it's just exactly now, my confidence, whereyou put it then. The only difference," said Milly, "is that I seem nowto have no use for it. Besides," she then went on, "I do seem to feelyou disposed to act in a way that would undermine it a little."

  He took no more notice of these last words than if she hadn't saidthem, only watching her at present as with a gradual new light. "Areyou _really_ in any trouble?"

  To this, on her side, she gave no heed. Making out his light was alittle a light for herself. "Don't say, don't try to say, anythingthat's impossible. There are much better things you can do."

  He looked straight at it and then straight over it. "It's too monstrousthat one can't ask you as a friend what one wants so to know."

  "What is it you want to know?" She spoke, as by a sudden turn, with aslight hardness. "Do you want to know if I'm badly ill?"

  The sound of it in truth, though from no raising of her voice, investedthe idea with a kind of terror, but a terror all for others. Lord Markwinced and flushed--clearly couldn't help it; but he kept his attitudetogether and spoke even with unwonted vivacity. "Do you imagine I cansee you suffer and not say a word?"

  "You won't see me suffer--don't be afraid. I shan't be a publicnuisance. That's why I should have liked _this:_ it's so beautiful initself and yet it's out of the gangway. You won't know anything aboutanything," she added; and then as if to make with decision an end: "Andyou _don't!_ No, not even you." He faced her through it with theremains of his expression, and she saw him as clearly--for_him_--bewildered; which made her wish to be sure not to have beenunkind. She would be kind once for all; that would be the end. "I'mvery badly ill."

  "And you don't do anything?"

  "I do everything. Everything's _this_," she smiled. "I'm doing it now.One can't do more than live."

  "Ah than live in the right way, no. But is that what you do? Whyhaven't you advice?"

  He had looked about at the rococo elegance as if there were fiftythings it didn't give her, so that he suggested with urgency the mostabsent. But she met his remedy with a smile. "I've the best advice inthe world. I'm acting under it now. I act upon it in receiving you, intalking with you thus. One can't, as I tell you, do more than live."

  "Oh live!" Lord Mark ejaculated.

  "Well, it's immense for _me_." She finally spoke as if for amusement;now that she had uttered her truth, that he had learnt it from herselfas no one had yet done, her emotion had, by the fact, dried up. Thereshe was; but it was as if she would never speak again. "I shan't," sheadded, "have missed everything."

  "Why should you have missed _anything?_" She felt, as he sounded this,to what, within the minute, he had made up his mind. "You're the personin the world for whom that's least necessary; for whom one would callit in fact most impossible; for whom 'missing' at all will surelyrequire an extraordinary amount of misplaced good will. Since youbelieve in advice, for God's sake take _mine_. I know what you want."

  Oh she knew he would know it. But she had brought it on herself--oralmost. Yet she spoke with kindness. "I think I want not to be too muchworried."

  "You want to be adored." It came at last straight. "Nothing would worryyou less. I mean as I shall do it. It _is_ so"--he firmly kept it up."You're not loved enough."

  "Enough for what, Lord Mark?"

  "Why to get the full good of it."

  Well, she didn't after all mock at him. "I
see what you mean. That fullgood of it which consists in finding one's self forced to love inreturn." She had grasped it, but she hesitated. "Your idea is that Imight find myself forced to love _you?_"

  "Oh 'forced'--!" He was so fine and so expert, so awake to anything theleast ridiculous, and of a type with which the preaching of passionsomehow so ill consorted--he was so much all these things that he hadabsolutely to take account of them himself. And he did so, in a singleintonation, beautifully. Milly liked him again, liked him for suchshades as that, liked him so that it was woeful to see him spoiling it,and still more woeful to have to rank him among those minor charms ofexistence that she gasped at moments to remember she must give up. "Isit inconceivable to you that you might try?"

  "To be so favourably affected by you--?"

  "To believe in me. To believe in me," Lord Mark repeated.

  Again she hesitated. "To 'try' in return for your trying?"

  "Oh I shouldn't have to!" he quickly declared. The prompt neat accent,however, his manner of disposing of her question, failed of realexpression, as he himself the next moment intelligently, helplessly,almost comically saw--a failure pointed moreover by the laugh intowhich Milly was immediately startled. As a suggestion to her of ahealing and uplifting passion it _was_ in truth deficient; it wouldn'tdo as the communication of a force that should sweep them both away.And the beauty of him was that he too, even in the act of persuasion,of self-persuasion, could understand that, and could thereby show butthe better as fitting into the pleasant commerce of prosperity. The wayshe let him see that she looked at him was a thing to shut him out, ofitself, from services of danger, a thing that made a discriminationagainst him never yet made--made at least to any consciousness of hisown. Born to float in a sustaining air, this would be his firstencounter with a judgement formed in the sinister light of tragedy. Thegathering dusk of _her_ personal world presented itself to him, in hereyes, as an element in which it was vain for him to pretend he couldfind himself at home, since it was charged with depressions and withdooms, with the chill of the losing game. Almost without her needing tospeak, and simply by the fact that there could be, in such a case, nodecent substitute for a felt intensity, he had to take it from her thatpractically he was afraid--whether afraid to protest falsely enough, oronly afraid of what might be eventually disagreeable in a compromisedalliance, being a minor question. She believed she made out besides,wonderful girl, that he had never quite expected to have to protestabout anything beyond his natural convenience--more, in fine, than hisdisposition and habits, his education as well, his personal _moyens_,in short, permitted. His predicament was therefore one he couldn'tlike, and also one she willingly would have spared him hadn't hebrought it on himself. No man, she was quite aware, could enjoy thushaving it from her that he wasn't good for what she would have calledher reality. It wouldn't have taken much more to enable her positivelyto make out in him that he was virtually capable of hinting--had hisinnermost feeling spoken--at the propriety rather, in his interest, ofsome cutting down, some dressing up, of the offensive real. He wouldmeet that halfway, but the real must also meet _him_. Milly's sense ofit for herself, which was so conspicuously, so financially supported,couldn't, or wouldn't, so accommodate him, and the perception of thatfairly showed in his face after a moment like the smart of a blow. Ithad marked the one minute during which he could again be touching toher. By the time he had tried once more, after all, to insist, he hadquite ceased to be so.

  By this time she had turned from their window to make a diversion, hadwalked him through other rooms, appealing again to the inner charm ofthe place, going even so far for that purpose as to point afresh herindependent moral, to repeat that if one only had such a house forone's own and loved it and cherished it enough, it would pay one backin kind, would close one in from harm. He quite grasped for the quarterof an hour the perch she held out to him--grasped it with one hand,that is, while she felt him attached to his own clue with the other; hewas by no means either so sore or so stupid, to do him all justice, asnot to be able to behave more or less as if nothing had happened. Itwas one of his merits, to which she did justice too, that both hisnative and his acquired notion of behaviour rested on the generalassumption that nothing--nothing to make a deadly difference forhim--ever _could_ happen. It was, socially, a working view likeanother, and it saw them easily enough through the greater part of therest of their adventure. Downstairs again, however, with the limit ofhis stay in sight, the sign of his smarting, when all was said,reappeared for her--breaking out moreover, with an effect ofstrangeness, in another quite possibly sincere allusion to her state ofhealth. He might for that matter have been seeing what he could do inthe way of making it a grievance that she should snub him for acharity, on his own part, exquisitely roused. "It's true, you know, allthe same, and I don't care a straw for your trying to freeze one up."He seemed to show her, poor man, bravely, how little he cared."Everybody knows affection often makes things out when indifferencedoesn't notice. And that's why I know that _I_ notice."

  "Are you sure you've got it right?" the girl smiled. "I thought ratherthat affection was supposed to be blind."

  "Blind to faults, not to beauties," Lord Mark promptly returned.

  "And are my extremely private worries, my entirely domesticcomplications, which I'm ashamed to have given you a glimpse of--arethey beauties?"

  "Yes, for those who care for you--as every one does. Everything aboutyou is a beauty. Besides which I don't believe," he declared, "in theseriousness of what you tell me. It's too absurd you should have _any_trouble about which something can't be done. If you can't get the rightthing, who can, in all the world, I should like to know? You're thefirst young woman of your time. I mean what I say." He looked, to dohim justice, quite as if he did; not ardent, but clear--simply socompetent, in such a position, to compare, that his quiet assertion hadthe force not so much perhaps of a tribute as of a warrant. "We're allin love with you. I'll put it that way, dropping any claim of my own,if you can bear it better. I speak as one of the lot. You weren't bornsimply to torment us--you were born to make us happy. Therefore youmust listen to us."

  She shook her head with her slowness, but this time with all hermildness. "No, I mustn't listen to you--that's just what I mustn't do.The reason is, please, that it simply kills me. I must be as attachedto you as you will, since you give that lovely account of yourselves. Igive you in return the fullest possible belief of what it would be--"And she pulled up a little. "I give and give and give--there you are;stick to me as close as you like and see if I don't. Only I can'tlisten or receive or accept--I can't _agree_. I can't make a bargain. Ican't really. You must believe that from me. It's all I've wanted tosay to you, and why should it spoil anything?"

  He let her question fall--though clearly, it might have seemed,because, for reasons or for none, there was so much that _was_ spoiled."You want somebody of your own." He came back, whether in good faith orin bad, to that; and it made her repeat her headshake. He kept it up asif his faith were of the best. "You want somebody, you want somebody."

  She was to wonder afterwards if she hadn't been at this juncture on thepoint of saying something emphatic and vulgar--"Well, I don't at allevents want _you!_" What somehow happened, nevertheless, the pity of itbeing greater than the irritation--the sadness, to her vivid sense, ofhis being so painfully astray, wandering in a desert in which there wasnothing to nourish him--was that his error amounted to positivewrongdoing. She was moreover so acquainted with quite another sphere ofusefulness for him that her having suffered him to insist almostconvicted her of indelicacy. Why hadn't she stopped him off with herfirst impression of his purpose? She could do so now only by theallusion she had been wishing not to make. "Do you know I don't thinkyou're doing very right?--and as a thing quite apart, I mean, from mylistening to you. That's not right either--except that I'm _not_listening. You oughtn't to have come to Venice to see _me_--and in factyou've not come, and you mustn't behave as if you had. You've mucholder friends than I, and ever
so much better. Really, if you've comeat all, you can only have come--properly, and if I may say sohonourably--for the best friend, as I believe her to be, that you havein the world."

  When once she had said it he took it, oddly enough, as if he had beenmore or less expecting it. Still, he looked at her very hard, and theyhad a moment of this during which neither pronounced a name, eachapparently determined that the other should. It was Milly's finecoercion, in the event, that was the stronger. "Miss Croy?" Lord Markasked.

  It might have been difficult to make out that she smiled. "Mrs.Lowder." He did make out something, and then fairly coloured for itsattestation of his comparative simplicity. "I call _her_ on the wholethe best. I can't imagine a man's having a better."

  Still with his eyes on her he turned it over. "Do you want me to marryMrs. Lowder?"

  At which it seemed to her that it was he who was almost vulgar! But shewouldn't in any way have that. "You know, Lord Mark, what I mean. Oneisn't in the least turning you out into the cold world. There's no coldworld for you at all, I think," she went on; "nothing but a very warmand watchful and expectant world that's waiting for you at any momentyou choose to take it up."

  He never budged, but they were standing on the polished concrete and hehad within a few minutes possessed himself again of his hat. "Do youwant me to marry Kate Croy?"

  "Mrs. Lowder wants it--I do no wrong, I think, in saying that; and sheunderstands moreover that you know she does."

  Well, he showed how beautifully he could take it; and it wasn't obscureto her, on her side, that it was a comfort to deal with a gentleman."It's ever so kind of you to see such opportunities for me. But what'sthe use of my tackling Miss Croy?"

  Milly rejoiced on the spot to be so able to point out. "Because she'sthe handsomest and cleverest and most charming creature I ever saw, andbecause if I were a man I should simply adore her. In fact I do as itis." It was a luxury of response.

  "Oh, my dear lady, plenty of people adore her. But that can't furtherthe case of _all._"

  "Ah," she went on, "I know about 'people.' If the case of one's bad,the case of another's good. I don't see what you have to fear from anyone else," she said, "save through your being foolish, this way, about_me_."

  So she said, but she was aware the next moment of what he was making ofwhat she didn't see. "Is it your idea--since we're talking of thesethings in these ways--that the young lady you describe in suchsuperlative terms is to be had for the asking?"

  "Well, Lord Mark, try. She is a great person. But don't be humble." Shewas almost gay.

  It was this apparently, at last, that was too much for him. "But don'tyou really _know?_"

  As a challenge, practically, to the commonest intelligence she couldpretend to, it made her of course wish to be fair. "I 'know' yes, thata particular person's very much in love with her."

  "Then you must know by the same token that she's very much in love witha particular person."

  "Ah I beg your pardon!"--and Milly quite flushed at having so crude ablunder imputed to her. "You're wholly mistaken."

  "It's not true?"

  "It's not true."

  His stare became a smile. "Are you very, very sure?"

  "As sure as one can be"--and Milly's manner could match it--"when onehas every assurance. I speak on the best authority."

  He hesitated. "Mrs. Lowder's?"

  "No. I don't call Mrs. Lowder's the best."

  "Oh I thought you were just now saying," he laughed, "that everythingabout her's so good."

  "Good for you"--she was perfectly clear. "For you," she went on, "lether authority be the best. She doesn't believe what you mention, andyou must know yourself how little she makes of it. So you can take itfrom her. _I_ take it--" But Milly, with the positive tremor of heremphasis, pulled up.

  "You take it from Kate?"

  "From Kate herself."

  "That she's thinking of no one at all?"

  "Of no one at all." Then, with her intensity, she went on. "She hasgiven me her word for it."

  "Oh!" said Lord Mark. To which he next added: "And what do you call herword?"

  It made Milly, on her side, stare--though perhaps partly but with theinstinct of gaining time for the consciousness that she was already alittle further "in" than she had designed. "Why, Lord Mark, what should_you_ call her word?"

  "Ah I'm not obliged to say. I've not asked her. You apparently have."

  Well, it threw her on her defence--a defence that she felt, however,especially as of Kate. "We're very intimate," she said in a moment; "sothat, without prying into each other's affairs, she naturally tells methings."

  Lord Mark smiled as at a lame conclusion. "You mean then she made youof her own movement the declaration you quote?"

  Milly thought again, though with hindrance rather than help in hersense of the way their eyes now met--met as for their each seeing inthe other more than either said. What she most felt that she herselfsaw was the strange disposition on her companion's part to disparageKate's veracity. She could be only concerned to "stand up" for that.

  "I mean what I say: that when she spoke of her having no privateinterest--"

  "She took her oath to you?" Lord Mark interrupted.

  Milly didn't quite see why he should so catechise her; but she met itagain for Kate. "She left me in no doubt whatever of her being free."

  At this Lord Mark did look at her, though he continued to smile. "Andthereby in no doubt of _your_ being too?" It was as if as soon as hehad said it, however, he felt it as something of a mistake, and shecouldn't herself have told by what queer glare at him she had instantlysignified that. He at any rate gave her glare no time to act further;he fell back on the spot, and with a light enough movement, within hisrights. "That's all very well, but why in the world, dear lady, shouldshe be swearing to you?"

  She had to take this "dear lady" as applying to herself; whichdisconcerted her when he might now so gracefully have used it for theaspersed Kate. Once more it came to her that she must claim her ownpart of the aspersion. "Because, as I've told you, we're suchtremendous friends."

  "Oh," said Lord Mark, who for the moment looked as if that might havestood rather for an absence of such rigours. He was going, however, asif he had in a manner, at the last, got more or less what he wanted.Milly felt, while he addressed his next few words to leave-taking, thatshe had given rather more than she intended or than she should be able,when once more getting herself into hand, theoretically to defend.Strange enough in fact that he had had from her, about herself--and,under the searching spell of the place, infinitely straight--what noone else had had: neither Kate, nor Aunt Maud, nor Merton Densher, norSusan Shepherd. He had made her within a minute, in particular, she wasaware, lose her presence of mind, and she now wished he would takehimself off, so that she might either recover it or bear the lossbetter in solitude. If he paused, however, she almost at the same timesaw, it was because of his watching the approach, from the end of thesala, of one of the gondoliers, who, whatever excursions were appointedfor the party with the attendance of the others, always, as the mostdecorative, most sashed and starched, remained at the palace on thetheory that she might whimsically want him--which she never, in hercaged freedom, had yet done. Brown Pasquale, slipping in white shoesover the marble and suggesting to her perpetually charmed vision shecould scarce say what, either a mild Hindoo, too noiseless almost forher nerves, or simply a barefooted seaman on the deck of aship--Pasquale offered to sight a small salver, which he obsequiouslyheld out to her with its burden of a visiting-card. Lord Mark--and asif also for admiration of him--delayed his departure to let her receiveit; on which she read it with the instant effect of another blow to herpresence of mind. This precarious quantity was indeed now so gone thateven for dealing with Pasquale she had to do her best to conceal itsdisappearance. The effort was made, none the less, by the time she hadasked if the gentleman were below and had taken in the fact that he hadcome up. He had followed the gondolier and was waiting at the top ofthe staircase.
/>
  "I'll see him with pleasure." To which she added for her companion,while Pasquale went off: "Mr. Merton Densher."

  "Oh!" said Lord Mark--in a manner that, making it resound through thegreat cool hall, might have carried it even to Densher's ear as ajudgement of his identity heard and noted once before

  BOOK EIGHTH