ough a
word to the wise was, doubtless, in spite of the advantage, _not_
always enough, a word to the good could never fail to be. The sense our
young man read into her words was that she liked him because he was
good--was really, by her measure, good enough: good enough, that is, to
give up her niece for her and go his way in peace. But _was_ he good
enough--by his own measure? He fairly wondered, while she more fully
expressed herself, if it might be his doom to prove so. "She's the
finest possible creature--of course you flatter yourself that you know
it. But I know it, quite as well as you possibly can--by which I mean a
good deal better yet; and the tune to which I'm ready to prove my faith
compares favourably enough, I think, with anything _you_ can do. I
don't say it because she's my niece--that's nothing to me: I might have
had fifty nieces, and I wouldn't have brought one of them to this place
if I hadn't found her to my taste. I don't say I wouldn't have done
something else, but I wouldn't have put up with her presence. Kate's
presence, by good fortune, I marked early; Kate's presence--unluckily
for _you_--is everything I could possibly wish; Kate's presence is, in
short, as fine as you know, and I've been keeping it for the comfort of
my declining years. I've watched it long; I've been saving it up and
letting it, as you say of investments, appreciate, and you may judge
whether, now it has begun to pay so, I'm likely to consent to treat for
it with any but a high bidder. I can do the best with her, and I've my
idea of the best."

"Oh, I quite conceive," said Densher, "that your idea of the best isn't
me."

It was an oddity of Mrs. Lowder's that her face in speech was like a
lighted window at night, but that silence immediately drew the curtain.
The occasion for reply allowed by her silence was never easy to take;
yet she was still less easy to interrupt. The great glaze of her
surface, at all events, gave her visitor no present help. "I didn't ask
you to come to hear what it isn't--I asked you to come to hear what it
is."

"Of course," Densher laughed, "it's very great indeed."

His hostess went on as if his contribution to the subject were barely
relevant. "I want to see her high, high up--high up and in the light."

"Ah, you naturally want to marry her to a duke, and are eager to smooth
away any hitch."

She gave him so, on this, the mere effect of the drawn blind that it
quite forced him, at first,