illy 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, as
sometimes will happen, there's nothing else so good. One must always do
the best. But without lies then," she went on, "perhaps we can work it
out." Her interest had risen; her friend saw her, as within some
minutes, more enrolled and inflamed--presently felt in her what had
made the difference. Mrs. Stringham, it was true, descried this at the
time but dimly; she only made out at first that Maud had found a reason
for helping her. The reason was that, strangely, she might help Maud
too, 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 a
little disappointed at her doubt of the social solidity of this
appliance; and that in turn was to become a steadier light. The truth
about Kate's delusion, as her aunt presented it, the delusion about the
state of her affections, which might be removed--this was apparently
the ground on which they now might more intimately meet. Mrs. Stringham
saw herself recruited for the removal of Kate's delusion--by arts,
however, in truth, that she as yet quite failed to compass. Or was it
perhaps to be only for the removal of Mr. Densher's?--success in which
indeed might entail other successes. Before that job, unfortunately,
her heart had already failed. She felt that she believed in her bones
what Milly believed, and what would now make working for Milly such a
dreadful upward tug. All this within her was confusedly present--a
cloud of questions out of which Maud Manningham's large seated self
loomed, however, as a mass more and more definite, taking in fact for
the consultative relation something of the form of an oracle. From the
oracle the sound did come--or at any rate the sense did, a sense all
accordant with the insufflation she had just seen working. "Yes," the
sense was, "I'll help you for Milly, because if that comes off I shall
be helped, by its doing so, for Kate"--a view into which Mrs. Stringham
could now sufficiently enter. She found herself of a sudden, strange to
say, quite willing to operate to Kate's harm, or at least to Kate's
good as Mrs. Lowder with a noble anxiety measured it. She found herself
in short not caring what became of Kate--only convinced at bottom of
the predominance of Kate's star. Kate wasn't