Kate replied, "you don't understand what Aunt Maud
gets."

"Exactly so--and it's what I don't understand that keeps me so
fascinated with the question. _She_ gives me no light; she's
prodigious. She takes everything as of a natural--!"

"She takes it as 'of a natural' that at this rate I shall be making my
reflexions about you. There's every appearance for her," Kate went on,
"that what she had made her mind up to as possible is possible; that
what she had thought more likely than not to happen is happening. The
very essence of her, as you surely by this time have made out for
yourself, is that when she adopts a view she--well, to her own sense,
really brings the thing about, fairly terrorizes with her view any
other, any opposite view, and those, not less, who represent that. I've
often thought success comes to her"--Kate continued to study the
phenomenon--"by the spirit in her that dares and defies her idea not to
prove the right one. One has seen it so again and again, in the face of
everything, become the right one."

Densher had for this, as he listened, a smile of the largest response.
"Ah my dear child, if you can explain I of course needn't not
'understand.' I'm condemned to that," he on his side presently
explained, "only when understanding fails." He took a moment; then he
pursued: "Does she think she terrorises _us?_" To which he added while,
without immediate speech, Kate but looked over the place: "Does she
believe anything so stiff as that you've really changed about me?" He
knew now that he was probing the girl deep--something told him so; but
that was a reason the more. "Has she got it into her head that you
dislike me?"

To this, of a sudden, Kate's answer was strong. "You could yourself
easily put it there!"

He wondered. "By telling her so?"

"No," said Kate as with amusement at his simplicity; "I don't ask that
of you."

"Oh my dear," Densher laughed, "when you ask, you know, so little--!"

There was a full irony in this, on his own part, that he saw her resist
the impulse to take up. "I'm perfectly justified in what I've asked,"
she quietly returned. "It's doing beautifully for you." Their eyes
again intimately met, and the effect was to make her proceed. "You're
not a bit unhappy."

"Oh ain't I?" he brought out very roundly.

"It doesn't practically show--which is enough for Aunt Maud. You're
wonderful, you're beautiful," Kate said; "and if you really want to
know whether I believe y