to him
to wait at least she appealed to something that she presently made him
feel as his pity. It was on that special shade of tenderness that he
thus found himself thrown back; and while he asked of his spirit and of
his flesh just what concession they could arrange she pressed him yet
again on the subject of her singular remedy for their embarrassment. It
might have been irritating had she ever struck him as having in her
mind a stupid corner. "You'll see," she said, "the difference it will
make."

Well, since she wasn't stupid she was intelligent; it was he who was
stupid--the proof of which was that he would do what she liked. But he
made a last effort to understand, her allusion to the "difference"
bringing him round to it. He indeed caught at something subtle but
strong even as he spoke. "Is what you meant a moment ago that the
difference will be in her being made to believe you hate me?"

Kate, however, had simply, for this gross way of putting it, one of her
more marked shows of impatience; with which in fact she sharply closed
their discussion. He opened the door on a sign from her, and she
accompanied him to the top of the stairs with an air of having so put
their possibilities before him that questions were idle and doubts
perverse. "I verily believe I _shall_ hate you if you spoil for me the
beauty of what I see!"

III

He was really, notwithstanding, to hear more from her of what she saw;
and the very next occasion had for him still other surprises than that.
He received from Mrs. Lowder on the morning after his visit to Kate the
telegraphic expression of a hope that he might be free to dine with
them that evening; and his freedom affected him as fortunate even
though in some degree qualified by her missive. "Expecting American
friends whom I'm so glad to find you know!" His knowledge of American
friends was clearly an accident of which he was to taste the fruit to
the last bitterness. This apprehension, however, we hasten to add,
enjoyed for him, in the immediate event, a certain merciful shrinkage;
the immediate event being that, at Lancaster Gate, five minutes after
his due arrival, prescribed him for eight-thirty, Mrs. Stringham came
in alone. The long daylight, the postponed lamps, the habit of the
hour, made dinners late and guests still later; so that, punctual as he
was, he had found Mrs. Lowder alone, with Kate herself not yet in the
field. He had thus had with her several bewildering
mom