ck afterwards, with confidence in a welcome, to the victim
of his inconstancy?"

Kate consented, as for argument, to be thought of as a victim. "Oh but
he has _had_ his try at _me_. So it's all right."

"Through your also having, you mean, refused him?"

She balanced an instant during which Densher might have just wondered
if pure historic truth were to suffer a slight strain. But she dropped
on the right side. "I haven't let it come to that. I've been too
discouraging. Aunt Maud," she went on--now as lucid as
ever--"considers, no doubt, that she has a pledge from him in respect
to me; a pledge that would have been broken if Milly had accepted him.
As the case stands that makes no difference."

Densher laughed out. "It isn't _his_ merit that he has failed."

"It's still his merit, my dear, that he's Lord Mark. He's just what he
was, and what he knew he was. It's not for me either to reflect on him
after I've so treated him."

"Oh," said Densher impatiently, "you've treated him beautifully."

"I'm glad," she smiled, "that you can still be jealous." But before he
could take it up she had more to say. "I don't see why it need puzzle
you that Milly's so marked line gratifies Aunt Maud more than anything
else can displease her. What does she see but that Milly herself
recognises her situation with you as too precious to be spoiled? Such a
recognition as that can't but seem to her to involve in some degree
your own recognition. Out of which she therefore gets it that the more
you have for Milly the less you have for me."

There were moments again--we know that from the first they had been
numerous--when he felt with a strange mixed passion the mastery of her
mere way of putting things. There was something in it that bent him at
once to conviction and to reaction. And this effect, however it be
named, now broke into his tone. "Oh if she began to know what I have
for you--!"

It wasn't ambiguous, but Kate stood up to it. "Luckily for us we may
really consider she doesn't. So successful have we been."

"Well," he presently said, "I take from you what you give me, and I
suppose that, to be consistent--to stand on my feet where I do stand at
all--I ought to thank you. Only, you know, what you give me seems to
me, more than anything else, the larger and larger size of my job. It
seems to me more than anything else what you expect of me. It never
seems to me somehow what I may expect of _you_. There's so much you
_don't_