n her--and his conscious face took it from
her as such--that from the moment of her coming in had seemed to mark
for him, as to what concerned him, the long jump of her perception.
They had parted four days earlier with many things, between them, deep
down. But these things were now on their troubled surface, and it
wasn't he who had brought them so quickly up. Women were wonderful--at
least this one was. But so, not less, was Milly, was Aunt Maud; so,
most of all, was his very Kate. Well, he already knew what he had been
feeling about the circle of petticoats. They were all _such_
petticoats! It was just the fineness of his tangle. The sense of that,
in its turn, for us too, might have been not unconnected with his
putting to his visitor a question that quite passed over her remark.
"Has Miss Croy meanwhile written to our friend?"

"Oh," Mrs. Stringham amended, "_her_ friend also. But not a single word
that I know of."

He had taken it for certain she hadn't--the thing being after all but a
shade more strange than his having himself, with Milly, never for six
weeks mentioned the young lady in question. It was for that matter but
a shade more strange than Milly's not having mentioned her. In spite of
which, and however inconsequently, he blushed anew for Kate's silence.
He got away from it in fact as quickly as possible, and the furthest he
could get was by reverting for a minute to the man they had been
judging. "How did he manage to get _at_ her? She had only--with what
had passed between them before--to say she couldn't see him."

"Oh she was disposed to kindness. She was easier," the good lady
explained with a slight embarrassment, "than at the other time."

"Easier?"

"She was off her guard. There was a difference."

"Yes. But exactly not _the_ difference."

"Exactly not the difference of her having to be harsh. Perfectly. She
could afford to be the opposite." With which, as he said nothing, she
just impatiently completed her sense. "She had had _you_ here for six
weeks."

"Oh!" Densher softly groaned.

"Besides, I think he must have written her first--written I mean in a
tone to smooth his way. That it would be a kindness to himself. Then on
the spot--"

"On the spot," Densher broke in, "he unmasked? The horrid little beast!"

It made Susan Shepherd turn slightly pale, though quickening, as for
hope, the intensity of her look at him. "Oh he went off without an
alarm."

"And he must have gone off al