ly continued with her gentle eyes on him.

She had given him her hand for good-bye, and he thus for a moment did
keep her. Something then, while he seemed to think if there were
anything more, came back to him; though something of which there wasn't
too much to be made. "Of course if there's anything I _can_ do for your
friend: I mean the gentleman you speak of--?" He gave out in short that
he 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 away
from that.

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

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

III

Not yet so much as this morning had she felt herself sink into
possession; gratefully glad that the warmth of the Southern summer was
still in the high florid rooms, palatial chambers where hard cool
pavements took reflexions in their lifelong polish, and where the sun
on the stirred sea-water, flickering up through open windows, played
over the painted "subjects" in the splendid ceilings--medallions of
purple and brown, of brave old melancholy colour, medals as of old
reddened gold, embossed and beribboned, all toned with time and all
flourished and scolloped and gilded about, set in their great moulded
and figured concavity (a nest of white cherubs, friendly creatures of
the air) and appreciated by the aid of that second tier of smaller
lights, straight openings to the front, which did everything, even with
the Baedekers and photographs of Milly's party dreadfully meeting the
eye, 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 as
effective occupation; perhaps because it was the first time she had
been alone--really to call alone--since she had left London, it
ministered to her first full and unembarrassed sense of what the great
Eugenio had done for her. The great Eugenio, recommended by grand-dukes
and Americans, had entered her service during the last hours of
all--had crossed from Paris, after multiplied _pourparlers_ with Mrs.
Stringham, to whom she had allowed more than ever a free hand, on
purpose to escort her to the Continent and encom