the highest
medical lights in the world; so that really when the personage in
question, following up a tinkle of the bell, solidly rose in the
doorway, it was to impose on Densher a vision that for the instant cut
like a knife. It spoke, the fact, and in a single dreadful word, of the
magnitude--he shrank from calling it anything else--of Milly's case.
The great man had not gone then, and an immense surrender to her
immense need was so expressed in it that some effect, some help, some
hope, were flagrantly part of the expression. It was for Densher, with
his reaction from disappointment, as if he were conscious of ten things
at once--the foremost being that just conceivably, since Sir Luke _was_
still there, she had been saved. Close upon its heels, however, and
quite as sharply, came the sense that the crisis--plainly even now to
be prolonged for him--was to have none of that sound simplicity. Not
only had his visitor not dropped in to gossip about Milly, he hadn't
dropped in to mention her at all; he had dropped in fairly to show that
during the brief remainder of his stay, the end of which was now in
sight, as little as possible of that was to be looked for. The
demonstration, such as it was, was in the key of their previous
acquaintance, and it was their previous acquaintance that had made him
come. He was not to stop longer than the Saturday next at hand, but
there were things of interest he should like to see again meanwhile. It
was for these things of interest, for Venice and the opportunity of
Venice, for a prowl or two, as he called it, and a turn about, that he
had looked his young man up--producing on the latter's part, as soon as
the case had, with the lapse of a further twenty-four hours, so defined
itself, the most incongruous, yet most beneficent revulsion. Nothing
could in fact have been more monstrous on the surface--and Densher was
well aware of it--than the relief he found during this short period in
the tacit drop of all reference to the palace, in neither hearing news
nor asking for it. That was what had come out for him, on his visitor's
entrance, even in the very seconds of suspense that were connecting the
fact also directly and intensely with Milly's state. He had come to say
he had saved her--he had come, as from Mrs. Stringham, to say how she
might _be_ saved--he had come, in spite of Mrs. Stringham, to say she
was lost: the distinct throbs of hope, of fear, simultaneous for all
their distinctn