as
speedily able to do, that she, Susan Shepherd--the name with which
Milly for the most part amused herself--was _not_ anybody else. She had
renounced that character; she had now no life to lead; and she honestly
believed that she was thus supremely equipped for leading Milly's own.
No other person whatever, she was sure, had to an equal degree this
qualification, and it was really to assert it that she fondly embarked.

Many things, though not in many weeks, had come and gone since then,
and one of the best of them, doubtless, had been the voyage itself, by
the happy southern course, to the succession of Mediterranean ports,
with the dazzled wind-up at Naples. Two or three others had preceded
this; incidents, indeed rather lively marks, of their last fortnight at
home, and one of which had determined on Mrs. Stringham's part a rush
to New York, forty-eight breathless hours there, previous to her final
rally. But the great sustained sea-light had drunk up the rest of the
picture, so that for many days other questions and other possibilities
sounded with as little effect as a trio of penny whistles might sound
in a Wagner overture. It was the Wagner overture that practically
prevailed, up through Italy, where Milly had already been, still
further up and across the Alps, which were also partly known to Mrs.
Stringham; only perhaps "taken" to a time not wholly congruous, hurried
in fact on account of the girl's high restlessness. She had been
expected, she had frankly promised, to be restless--that was partly why
she was "great"--or was a consequence, at any rate, if not a cause; yet
she had not perhaps altogether announced herself as straining so hard
at the cord. It was familiar, it was beautiful to Mrs. Stringham that
she had arrears to make up, the chances that had lapsed for her through
the wanton ways of forefathers fond of Paris, but not of its higher
sides, and fond almost of nothing else; but the vagueness, the
openness, the eagerness without point and the interest without
pause--all a part of the charm of her oddity as at first presented--had
become more striking in proportion as they triumphed over movement and
change. She had arts and idiosyncrasies of which no great account could
have been given, but which were a daily grace if you lived with them;
such as the art of being almost tragically impatient and yet making it
as light as air; of being inexplicably sad and yet making it as clear
as noon; of being unmi