e gave her glare no time to act further;
he fell back on the spot, and with a light enough movement, within his
rights. "That's all very well, but why in the world, dear lady, should
she be swearing to you?"

She had to take this "dear lady" as applying to herself; which
disconcerted her when he might now so gracefully have used it for the
aspersed Kate. Once more it came to her that she must claim her own
part of the aspersion. "Because, as I've told you, we're such
tremendous friends."

"Oh," said Lord Mark, who for the moment looked as if that might have
stood rather for an absence of such rigours. He was going, however, as
if he had in a manner, at the last, got more or less what he wanted.
Milly felt, while he addressed his next few words to leave-taking, that
she had given rather more than she intended or than she should be able,
when once more getting herself into hand, theoretically to defend.
Strange enough in fact that he had had from her, about herself--and,
under the searching spell of the place, infinitely straight--what no
one else had had: neither Kate, nor Aunt Maud, nor Merton Densher, nor
Susan Shepherd. He had made her within a minute, in particular, she was
aware, lose her presence of mind, and she now wished he would take
himself off, so that she might either recover it or bear the loss
better in solitude. If he paused, however, she almost at the same time
saw, it was because of his watching the approach, from the end of the
sala, of one of the gondoliers, who, whatever excursions were appointed
for the party with the attendance of the others, always, as the most
decorative, most sashed and starched, remained at the palace on the
theory that she might whimsically want him--which she never, in her
caged freedom, had yet done. Brown Pasquale, slipping in white shoes
over the marble and suggesting to her perpetually charmed vision she
could scarce say what, either a mild Hindoo, too noiseless almost for
her nerves, or simply a barefooted seaman on the deck of a
ship--Pasquale offered to sight a small salver, which he obsequiously
held out to her with its burden of a visiting-card. Lord Mark--and as
if also for admiration of him--delayed his departure to let her receive
it; on which she read it with the instant effect of another blow to her
presence of mind. This precarious quantity was indeed now so gone that
even for dealing with Pasquale she had to do her best to conceal its
disappearance. The effo