rters, feeling his; and it was enough for him again that
her very aspect, as great a variation in its way as Milly's own, gave
him back the sense of his action. It had never yet in life been granted
him to know, almost materially to taste, as he could do in these
minutes, the state of what was vulgarly called conquest. He had lived
long enough to have been on occasion "liked," but it had never begun to
be allowed him to be liked to any such tune in any such quarter. It was
a liking greater than Milly's--or it would be: he felt it in him to
answer for that. So at all events he read the case while he noted that
Kate was somehow--for Kate--wanting in lustre. As a striking young
presence she was practically superseded; of the mildness that Milly
diffused she had assimilated all her share; she might fairly have been
dressed to-night in the little black frock, superficially
indistinguishable, that Milly had laid aside. This represented, he
perceived, the opposite pole from such an effect as that of her
wonderful entrance, under her aunt's eyes--he had never forgotten
it--the day of their younger friend's failure at Lancaster Gate. She
was, in her accepted effacement--it was actually her acceptance that
made the beauty and repaired the damage--under her aunt's eyes now; but
whose eyes were not effectually preoccupied? It struck him none the
less certainly that almost the first thing she said to him showed an
exquisite attempt to appear if not unconvinced at least self-possessed.

"Don't you think her good enough _now?_" Almost heedless of the danger
of overt freedoms, she eyed Milly from where they stood, noted her in
renewed talk, over her further wishes, with the members of her little
orchestra, who had approached her with demonstrations of deference
enlivened by native humours--things quite in the line of old Venetian
comedy. The girl's idea of music had been happy--a real solvent of
shyness, yet not drastic; thanks to the intermissions, discretions, a
general habit of mercy to gathered barbarians, that reflected the good
manners of its interpreters, representatives though these might be but
of the order in which taste was natural and melody rank. It was easy at
all events to answer Kate. "Ah my dear, you know how good I think her!"

"But she's _too_ nice," Kate returned with appreciation. "Everything
suits her so--especially her pearls. They go so with her old lace. I'll
trouble you really to look at them." Densher, though