not to jump at."

Densher's attention was entire. "In spite of everything? In spite of
what?"

"Well, I don't know. In spite, say, of his being scarcely supposed to
do that sort of thing."

"To try to get money?"

"To try at any rate in little thrifty ways. Apparently however he has
had for some reason to do what he can. He turned at a couple of days'
notice out of his place, making it over to his tenant; and Aunt Maud,
who's deeply in his confidence about all such matters, said: 'Come then
to Lancaster Gate--to sleep at least--till, like all the world, you go
to the country.' He was to have gone to the country--I think to
Matcham--yesterday afternoon: Aunt Maud, that is, told me he was."

Kate had been somehow, for her companion, through this statement,
beautifully, quite soothingly, suggestive. "Told you, you mean, so that
you needn't leave the house?"

"Yes--so far as she had taken it into her head that his being there was
part of my reason."

"And _was_ it part of your reason?"

"A little if you like. Yet there's plenty here--as I knew there would
be--without it. So that," she said candidly, "doesn't matter. I'm glad
I am here: even if for all the good I do--!" She implied however that
that didn't matter either. "He didn't, as you tell me, get off then to
Matcham; though he may possibly, if it is possible, be going this
afternoon. But what strikes me as most probable--and it's really, I'm
bound to say, quite amiable of him--is that he has declined to leave
Aunt Maud, as I've been so ready to do, to spend her Christmas alone.
If moreover he has given up Matcham for her it's a _procede_ that won't
please her less. It's small wonder therefore that she insists, on a
dull day, in driving him about. I don't pretend to know," she wound up,
"what may happen between them; but that's all I see in it."

"You see in everything, and you always did," Densher returned,
"something that, while I'm with you at least, I always take from you as
the truth itself."

She looked at him as if consciously and even carefully extracting the
sting of his reservation; then she spoke with a quiet gravity that
seemed to show how fine she found it. "Thank you." It had for him, like
everything else, its effect. They were still closely face to face, and,
yielding to the impulse to which he hadn't yielded just before, he laid
his hands on her shoulders, held her hard a minute and shook her a
little, far from untenderly, as if in expressio