though it might be, it was, in the same
place, by a whim of the weather, almost as much to their purpose as the
days of sunny afternoons when they had taken their first trysts. This
and that tree, within sight, on the grass, stretched bare boughs over
the couple of chairs in which they had sat of old and in which--for
they really could sit down again--they might recover the clearness of
their prime. It was to all intents however this very reference that
showed itself in Kate's face as, with her swift motion, she came toward
him. It helped him, her swift motion, when it finally brought her
nearer; helped him, for that matter, at first, if only by showing him
afresh how terribly well she looked. It had been all along, he
certainly remembered, a phenomenon of no rarity that he had felt her,
at particular moments, handsomer than ever before; one of these for
instance being still present to him as her entrance, under her aunt's
eyes, at Lancaster Gate, the day of his dinner there after his return
from America; and another her aspect on the same spot two Sundays
ago--the light in which she struck the eyes he had brought back from
Venice. In the course of a minute or two now he got, as he had got it
the other times, his apprehension of the special stamp of the fortune
of the moment.

Whatever it had been determined by as the different hours recurred to
him, it took on at present a prompt connexion with an effect produced
for him in truth more than once during the past week, only now much
intensified. This effect he had already noted and named: it was that of
the attitude assumed by his friend in the presence of the degree of
response on his part to Mrs. Lowder's welcome which she couldn't
possibly have failed to notice. She _had_ noticed it, and she had
beautifully shown him so; wearing in its honour the finest shade of
studied serenity, a shade almost of gaiety over the workings of time.
Everything of course was relative, with the shadow they were living
under; but her condonation of the way in which he now, for confidence,
distinguished Aunt Maud had almost the note of cheer. She had so by her
own air consecrated the distinction, invidious in respect to herself
though it might be; and nothing, really, more than this demonstration,
could have given him had he still wanted it the measure of her
superiority. It was doubtless for that matter this superiority alone
that on the winter noon gave smooth decision to her step and char