interest to Mrs. Lowder's parting injunction not to sit too tight.
Our especial young man sat tighter when restored to the drawing-room;
he made it out perfectly with Kate that they might, off and on,
foregather without offence. He had perhaps stronger needs in this
general respect than she; but she had better names for the scant risks
to which she consented. It was the blessing of a big house that
intervals were large and, of an August night, that windows were open;
whereby, at a given moment, on the wide balcony, with the songs
sufficiently sung, Aunt Maud could hold her little court more freshly.
Densher and Kate, during these moments, occupied side by side a small
sofa--a luxury formulated by the latter as the proof, under criticism,
of their remarkably good conscience. "To seem not to know each
other--once you're here--would be," the girl said, "to overdo it"; and
she arranged it charmingly that they _must_ have some passage to put
Aunt Maud off the scent. She would be wondering otherwise what in the
world they found their account in. For Densher, none the less, the
profit of snatched moments, snatched contacts, was partial and poor;
there were in particular at present more things in his mind than he
could bring out while watching the windows. It was true, on the other
hand, that she suddenly met most of them--and more than he could see on
the spot--by coming out for him with a reference to Milly that was not
in the key of those made at dinner. "She's not a bit right, you know. I
mean in health. Just see her to-night. I mean it looks grave. For you
she would have come, you know, if it had been at all possible."

He took this in such patience as he could muster. "What in the world's
the matter with her?"

But Kate continued without saying. "Unless indeed your being here has
been just a reason for her funking it."

"What in the world's the matter with her?" Densher asked again.

"Why just what I've told you--that she likes you so much."

"Then why should she deny herself the joy of meeting me?"

Kate cast about--it would take so long to explain. "And perhaps it's
true that she _is_ bad. She easily may be."

"Quite easily, I should say, judging by Mrs. Stringham, who's visibly
preoccupied and worried."

"Visibly enough. Yet it mayn't," said Kate, "be only for that."

"For what then?"

But this question too, on thinking, she neglected. "Why, if it's
anything real, doesn't that poor lady go home? She'd be an