ere, to see him interested and charmed, as well, clearly,
as delighted to have found her without some other person to spoil
it--these things were so pleasant for the first minutes that they might
have represented on her part some happy foreknowledge. She gave an
account of her companions while he on his side failed to press her
about them, even though describing his appearance, so unheralded, as
the result of an impulse obeyed on the spot. He had been shivering at
Carlsbad, belated there and blue, when taken by it; so that, knowing
where they all were, he had simply caught the first train. He explained
how he had known where they were; he had heard--what more
natural?--from their friends, Milly's and his. He mentioned this
betimes, but it was with his mention, singularly, that the girl became
conscious of her inner question about his reason. She noticed his
plural, which added to Mrs. Lowder or added to Kate; but she presently
noticed also that it didn't affect her as explaining. Aunt Maud had
written to him, Kate apparently--and this was interesting--had written
to him; but their design presumably hadn't been that he should come and
sit there as if rather relieved, so far as _they_ were concerned, at
postponements. He only said "Oh!" and again "Oh!" when she sketched
their probable morning for him, under Eugenio's care and Mrs.
Stringham's--sounding it quite as if any suggestion that he should
overtake them at the Rialto or the Bridge of Sighs would leave him
temporarily cold. This precisely it was that, after a little, operated
for Milly as an obscure but still fairly direct check to confidence. He
had known where they all were from the others, but it was not for the
others that, in his actual dispositions, he had come. That, strange to
say, was a pity; for, stranger still to say, she could have shown him
more confidence if he himself had had less intention. His intention so
chilled her, from the moment she found herself divining it, that, just
for the pleasure of going on with him fairly, just for the pleasure of
their remembrance together of Matcham and the Bronzino, the climax of
her fortune, she could have fallen to pleading with him and to
reasoning, to undeceiving him in time. There had been, for ten minutes,
with the directness of her welcome to him and the way this clearly
pleased him, something of the grace of amends made, even though he
couldn't know it--amends for her not having been originally sure, for
ins