emember
something I said to you that day at Matcham--or at least fully meant
to?"

"Oh yes, I remember everything at Matcham. It's another life."

"Certainly it will be--I mean the kind of thing: what I then wanted it
to represent for you. Matcham, you know," he continued, "is symbolic. I
think I tried to rub that into you a little."

She met him with the full memory of what he had tried--not an inch, not
an ounce of which was lost to her. "What I meant is that it seems a
hundred years ago."

"Oh for me it comes in better. Perhaps a part of what makes me remember
it," he pursued, "is that I was quite aware of what might have been
said about what I was doing. I wanted you to take it from me that I
should perhaps be able to look after you--well, rather better. Rather
better, of course, than certain other persons in particular."

"Precisely--than Mrs. Lowder, than Miss Croy, even than Mrs. Stringham."

"Oh Mrs. Stringham's all right!" Lord Mark promptly amended.

It amused her even with what she had else to think of; and she could
show him at all events how little, in spite of the hundred years, she
had lost what he alluded to. The way he was with her at this moment
made in fact the other moment so vivid as almost to start again the
tears it had started at the time. "You could do so much for me, yes. I
perfectly understood you."

"I wanted, you see," he despite this explained, "to _fix_ your
confidence. I mean, you know, in the right place."

"Well, Lord Mark, you did--it's just exactly now, my confidence, where
you put it then. The only difference," said Milly, "is that I seem now
to have no use for it. Besides," she then went on, "I do seem to feel
you disposed to act in a way that would undermine it a little."

He took no more notice of these last words than if she hadn't said
them, only watching her at present as with a gradual new light. "Are
you _really_ in any trouble?"

To this, on her side, she gave no heed. Making out his light was a
little a light for herself. "Don't say, don't try to say, anything
that's impossible. There are much better things you can do."

He looked straight at it and then straight over it. "It's too monstrous
that one can't ask you as a friend what one wants so to know."

"What is it you want to know?" She spoke, as by a sudden turn, with a
slight hardness. "Do you want to know if I'm badly ill?"

The sound of it in truth, though from no raising of her voice, invested
the id