as a circle of petticoats; he shouldn't have liked a
man to see him. He only had for a moment a sharp thought of Sir Luke
Strett, the great master of the knife whom Kate in London had spoken of
Milly as in commerce with, and whose renewed intervention at such a
distance, just announced to him, required some accounting for. He had a
vision of great London surgeons--if this one was a surgeon--as incisive
all round; so that he should perhaps after all not wholly escape the
ironic attention of his own sex. The most he might be able to do was
not to care; while he was trying not to he could take that in. It was a
train, however, that brought up the vision of Lord Mark as well. Lord
Mark had caught him twice in the fact--the fact of his absurd posture;
and that made a second male. But it was comparatively easy not to mind
Lord Mark.

His companion had before this taken him up, and in a tone to confirm
her discretion, on the matter of Milly's not being his princess. "Of
course she's not. You must do something first."

Densher gave it his thought. "Wouldn't it be rather _she_ who must?"

It had more than he intended the effect of bringing her to a stand. "I
see. No doubt, if one takes it so." Her cheer was for the time in
eclipse, and she looked over the place, avoiding his eyes, as in the
wonder of what Milly could do. "And yet she has wanted to be kind."

It made him on the spot feel a brute. "Of course she has. No one could
be more charming. She has treated me as if _I_ were somebody. Call her
my hostess as I've never had nor imagined a hostess, and I'm with you
altogether. Of course," he added in the right spirit for her, "I do see
that it's quite court life."

She promptly showed how this was almost all she wanted of him. "That's
all I mean, if you understand it of such a court as never was: one of
the courts of heaven, the court of a reigning seraph, a sort of a
vice-queen of an angel. That will do perfectly."

"Oh well then I grant it. Only court life as a general thing, you
know," he observed, "isn't supposed to pay."

"Yes, one has read; but this is beyond any book. That's just the beauty
here; it's why she's the great and only princess. With her, at her
court," said Mrs. Stringham, "it does pay." Then as if she had quite
settled it for him: "You'll see for yourself."

He waited a moment, but said nothing to discourage her. "I think you
were right just now. One must do something first."

"Well, you've done so