the particular loss than
as a kind of irritating mark of her expertness. This expertness, under
providence, had been great from the first, so far as joining him was
concerned; and he was critical only because it had been still greater,
even from the first too, in respect to leaving him. He had put the
question to her again that afternoon, on the repetition of her
appeal--had asked her once more what she supposed he wished to do. He
recalled, on his bench in the Regent's Park, the freedom of fancy,
funny and pretty, with which she had answered; recalled the moment
itself, while the usual hansom charged them, during which he felt
himself, disappointed as he was, grimacing back at the superiority of
her very "humour," in its added grace of gaiety, to the celebrated
solemn American. Their fresh appointment had been at all events by that
time made, and he should see what her choice in respect to it--a
surprise as well as a relief--would do toward really simplifying. It
meant either new help or new hindrance, though it took them at least
out of the streets. And her naming this privilege had naturally made
him ask if Mrs. Lowder knew of his return.

"Not from me," Kate had replied. "But I shall speak to her now." And
she had argued, as with rather a quick fresh view, that it would now be
quite easy. "We've behaved for months so properly that I've margin
surely for my mention of you. You'll come to see _her_, and she'll
leave you with me; she'll show her good nature, and her lack of
betrayed fear, in that. With her, you know, you've never broken, quite
the contrary, and she likes you as much as ever. We're leaving town; it
will be the end; just now therefore it's nothing to ask. I'll ask
to-night," Kate had wound up, "and if you'll leave it to me--my
cleverness, I assure you, has grown infernal--I'll make it all right."

He had of course thus left it to her and he was wondering more about it
now than he had wondered there in Brook Street. He repeated to himself
that if it wasn't in the line of triumph it was in the line of muddle.
This indeed, no doubt, was as a part of his wonder for still other
questions. Kate had really got off without meeting his little challenge
about the terms of their intercourse with her dear Milly. Her dear
Milly, it was sensible, _was_ somehow in the picture. Her dear Milly,
popping up in his absence, occupied--he couldn't have said quite why he
felt it--more of the foreground than one would have ex