e?"

"With her own interest in you," Densher said while she reflected. "If
that interest--Mrs. Lowder's--takes the form of Lord Mark, hasn't he
rather to look out for the forms _he_ takes?"

Kate seemed interested in the question, but "Oh he takes them easily,"
she answered. "The beauty is that she doesn't trust him."

"That Milly doesn't?"

"Yes--Milly either. But I mean Aunt Maud. Not really."

Densher gave it his wonder. "Takes him to her heart and yet thinks he
cheats?"

"Yes," said Kate--"that's the way people are. What they think of their
enemies, goodness knows, is bad enough; but I'm still more struck with
what they think of their friends. Milly's own state of mind, however,"
she went on, "is lucky. That's Aunt Maud's security, though she doesn't
yet fully recognise it--besides being Milly's own."

"You conceive it a real escape then not to care for him?"

She shook her head in beautiful grave deprecation. "You oughtn't to
make me say too much. But I'm glad I don't."

"Don't say too much?"

"Don't care for Lord Mark."

"Oh!" Densher answered with a sound like his lordship's own. To which
he added: "You absolutely hold that that poor girl doesn't?"

"Ah you know what I hold about that poor girl!" It had made her again
impatient.

Yet he stuck a minute to the subject. "You scarcely call him, I
suppose, one of the dukes."

"Mercy, no--far from it. He's not, compared with other possibilities,
'in' it. Milly, it's true," she said, to be exact, "has no natural
sense of social values, doesn't in the least understand our differences
or know who's who or what's what."

"I see. That," Densher laughed, "is her reason for liking _me_."

"Precisely. She doesn't resemble me," said Kate, "who at least know
what I lose."

Well, it had all risen for Densher to a considerable interest. "And
Aunt Maud--why shouldn't _she_ know? I mean that your friend there
isn't really anything. Does she suppose him of ducal value?"

"Scarcely; save in the sense of being uncle to a duke. That's
undeniably something. He's the best moreover we can get."

"Oh, oh!" said Densher; and his doubt was not all derisive.

"It isn't Lord Mark's grandeur," she went on without heeding this;
"because perhaps in the line of that alone--as he has no money--more
could be done. But she's not a bit sordid; she only counts with the
sordidness of others. Besides, he's grand enough, with a duke in his
family and at the other end of the string