the departure of the
disconcerted, since Lord Mark was not looking disconcerted now any more
than he had looked from his bench at his cafe. Densher was thinking
that _he_ seemed to show as vagrant while another was ensconced. He was
thinking of the other as--in spite of the difference of situation--more
ensconced than ever; he was thinking of him above all as the friend of
the person with whom his recognition had, the minute previous,
associated him. The man was seated in the very place in which, beside
Mrs. Lowder's, he had looked to find Kate, and that was a sufficient
identity. Meanwhile at any rate the door of the house had opened and
Mrs. Lowder stood before him. It was something at least that _she_
wasn't Kate. She was herself, on the spot, in all her affluence; with
presence of mind both to decide at once that Lord Mark, in the
brougham, didn't matter and to prevent Sir Luke's butler, by a firm
word thrown over her shoulder, from standing there to listen to her
passage with the gentleman who had rung. "_I'll_ tell Mr. Densher; you
needn't wait!" And the passage, promptly and richly, took place on the
steps.

"He arrives, travelling straight, to-morrow early. I couldn't not come
to learn."

"No more," said Densher simply, "could I. On my way," he added, "to
Lancaster Gate."

"Sweet of you." She beamed on him dimly, and he saw her face was
attuned. It made him, with what she had just before said, know all, and
he took the thing in while he met the air of portentous, of almost
functional, sympathy that had settled itself as her medium with him and
that yet had now a fresh glow. "So you _have_ had your message?"

He knew so well what she meant, and so equally with it what he "_had_
had" no less than what he hadn't, that, with but the smallest
hesitation, he strained the point. "Yes--my message."

"Our dear dove then, as Kate calls her, has folded her wonderful wings."

"Yes--folded them."

It rather racked him, but he tried to receive it as she intended, and
she evidently took his formal assent for self-control. "Unless it's
more true," she accordingly added, "that she has spread them the wider."

He again but formally assented, though, strangely enough, the words
fitted a figure deep in his own imagination. "Rather, yes--spread them
the wider."

"For a flight, I trust, to some happiness greater--!"

"Exactly. Greater," Densher broke in; but now with a look, he feared,
that did a little warn her off.