r. "Do you want me to marry
Mrs. Lowder?"

At which it seemed to her that it was he who was almost vulgar! But she
wouldn't in any way have that. "You know, Lord Mark, what I mean. One
isn't in the least turning you out into the cold world. There's no cold
world for you at all, I think," she went on; "nothing but a very warm
and watchful and expectant world that's waiting for you at any moment
you choose to take it up."

He never budged, but they were standing on the polished concrete and he
had within a few minutes possessed himself again of his hat. "Do you
want me to marry Kate Croy?"

"Mrs. Lowder wants it--I do no wrong, I think, in saying that; and she
understands moreover that you know she does."

Well, he showed how beautifully he could take it; and it wasn't obscure
to her, on her side, that it was a comfort to deal with a gentleman.
"It's ever so kind of you to see such opportunities for me. But what's
the use of my tackling Miss Croy?"

Milly rejoiced on the spot to be so able to point out. "Because she's
the handsomest and cleverest and most charming creature I ever saw, and
because if I were a man I should simply adore her. In fact I do as it
is." It was a luxury of response.

"Oh, my dear lady, plenty of people adore her. But that can't further
the case of _all._"

"Ah," she went on, "I know about 'people.' If the case of one's bad,
the case of another's good. I don't see what you have to fear from any
one else," she said, "save through your being foolish, this way, about
_me_."

So she said, but she was aware the next moment of what he was making of
what she didn't see. "Is it your idea--since we're talking of these
things in these ways--that the young lady you describe in such
superlative terms is to be had for the asking?"

"Well, Lord Mark, try. She is a great person. But don't be humble." She
was almost gay.

It was this apparently, at last, that was too much for him. "But don't
you really _know?_"

As a challenge, practically, to the commonest intelligence she could
pretend to, it made her of course wish to be fair. "I 'know' yes, that
a particular person's very much in love with her."

"Then you must know by the same token that she's very much in love with
a particular person."

"Ah I beg your pardon!"--and Milly quite flushed at having so crude a
blunder imputed to her. "You're wholly mistaken."

"It's not true?"

"It's not true."

His stare became a smile. "Are you very, ver