wledge?"

Densher met it indirectly. "Where has he been since October?"

"I think he has been back to England. He came in fact, I've reason to
believe, straight from there."

"Straight to do this job? All the way for his half-hour?"

"Well, to try again--with the help perhaps of a new fact. To make
himself possibly right with her--a different attempt from the other. He
had at any rate something to tell her, and he didn't know his
opportunity would reduce itself to half an hour. Or perhaps indeed half
an hour would be just what was most effective. It _has_ been!" said
Susan Shepherd.

Her companion took it in, understanding but too well; yet as she
lighted the matter for him more, really, than his own courage had quite
dared--putting the absent dots on several i's--he saw new questions
swarm. They had been till now in a bunch, entangled and confused; and
they fell apart, each showing for itself. The first he put to her was
at any rate abrupt. "Have you heard of late from Mrs. Lowder."

"Oh yes, two or three times. She depends naturally upon news of Milly."

He hesitated. "And does she depend, naturally, upon news of _me?_"

His friend matched for an instant his deliberation.

"I've given her none that hasn't been decently good. This will have
been the first."

"'This'?" Densher was thinking.

"Lord Mark's having been here, and her being as she is."

He thought a moment longer. "What has Mrs. Lowder written about him?
Has she written that he has been with them?"

"She has mentioned him but once--it was in her letter before the last.
Then she said something."

"And what did she say?"

Mrs. Stringham produced it with an effort. "Well it was in reference to
Miss Croy. That she thought Kate was thinking of him. Or perhaps I
should say rather that he was thinking of _her_--only it seemed this
time to have struck Maud that he was seeing the way more open to him."

Densher listened with his eyes on the ground, but he presently raised
them to speak, and there was that in his face which proved him aware of
a queerness in his question. "Does she mean he has been encouraged to
_propose_ to her niece?"

"I don't know what she means."

"Of course not"--he recovered himself; "and I oughtn't to seem to
trouble you to piece together what I can't piece myself. Only I
'guess,'" he added, "I _can_ piece it."

She spoke a little timidly, but she risked it. "I dare say I can piece
it too."

It was one of the things i