xious, and
she has done all she need to be civil."

"I think," Densher remarked, "she has been quite beautifully civil."

It made Kate, he fancied, look at him the least bit harder; but she was
already, in a manner, explaining. "Her preoccupation is probably on two
different heads. One of them would make her hurry back, but the other
makes her stay. She's commissioned to tell Milly all about you."

"Well then," said the young man between a laugh and a sigh, "I'm glad I
felt, downstairs, a kind of 'drawing' to her. Wasn't I rather decent to
her?"

"Awfully nice. You've instincts, you fiend. It's all," Kate declared,
"as it should be."

"Except perhaps," he after a moment cynically suggested, "that she
isn't getting much good of me now. Will she report to Milly on _this?_"
And then as Kate seemed to wonder what "this" might be: "On our present
disregard for appearances."

"Ah leave appearances to me!" She spoke in her high way. "I'll make
them all right. Aunt Maud, moreover," she added, "has her so engaged
that she won't notice." Densher felt, with this, that his companion had
indeed perceptive flights he couldn't hope to match--had for instance
another when she still subjoined: "And Mrs. Stringham's appearing to
respond just in order to make that impression."

"Well," Densher dropped with some humour, "life's very interesting! I
hope it's really as much so for you as you make it for others; I mean
judging by what you make it for me. You seem to me to represent it as
thrilling for _ces dames_, and in a different way for each: Aunt Maud,
Susan Shepherd, Milly. But what _is_," he wound up, "the matter? Do you
mean she's as ill as she looks?"

Kate's face struck him as replying at first that his derisive speech
deserved no satisfaction; then she appeared to yield to a need of her
own--the need to make the point that "as ill as she looked" was what
Milly scarce could be. If she had been as ill as she looked she could
scarce be a question with them, for her end would in that case be near.
She believed herself nevertheless--and Kate couldn't help believing her
too--seriously menaced. There was always the fact that they had been on
the point of leaving town, the two ladies, and had suddenly been pulled
up. "We bade them good-bye--or all but--Aunt Maud and I, the night
before Milly, popping so very oddly into the National Gallery for a
farewell look, found you and me together. They were then to get off a
day or two late