ainly to Kate's
advantage: Milly didn't quite see what her friend could keep back, was
possessed of, in fine, that would be so subject to retention; whereas
it was comparatively plain sailing for Kate that poor Milly had a
treasure to hide. This was not the treasure of a shy, an abject
affection--concealment, on that head, belonging to quite another phase
of such states; it was much rather a principle of pride relatively bold
and hard, a principle that played up like a fine steel spring at the
lightest pressure of too near a footfall. Thus insuperably guarded was
the truth about the girl's own conception of her validity; thus was a
wondering pitying sister condemned wistfully to look at her from the
far side of the moat she had dug round her tower. Certain aspects of
the connexion of these young women show for us, such is the twilight
that gathers about them, in the likeness of some dim scene in a
Maeterlinck 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, hung
about with amulets, reminders, relics, mainly seated, mainly still, and
that of the upright restless slow-circling lady of her court who
exchanges with her, across the black water streaked with evening
gleams, fitful questions and answers. The upright lady, with thick dark
braids down her back, drawing over the grass a more embroidered train,
makes the whole circuit, and makes it again, and the broken talk, brief
and 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 their
words. Such an impression as that was in fact grave, and might be
tragic; so that, plainly enough, systematically at last, they settled
to a care of what they said.

There could be no gross phrasing to Milly, in particular, of the
probability that if she wasn't so proud she might be pitied with more
comfort--more to the person pitying; there could be no spoken proof, no
sharper demonstration than the consistently considerate attitude, that
this marvellous mixture of her weakness and of her strength, her peril,
if such it were, and her option, made her, kept her, irresistibly
interesting. Kate's predicament in the matter was, after all, very much
Mrs. Stringham's own, and Susan Shepherd herself indeed, in o