so fast after this that Milly uttered but the truth
nearest to hand in saying to the gentleman on her right--who was, by
the same token, the gentleman on her hostess's left--that she scarce
even then knew where she was: the words marking her first full sense of
a situation really romantic. They were already dining, she and her
friend, at Lancaster Gate, and surrounded, as it seemed to her, with
every English accessory; though her consciousness of Mrs. Lowder's
existence, and still more of her remarkable identity, had been of so
recent and so sudden a birth. Susie, as she was apt to call her
companion for a lighter change, had only had to wave a neat little wand
for the fairy-tale to begin at once; in consequence of which Susie now
glittered--for, with Mrs. Stringham's new sense of success, it came to
that--in the character of a fairy godmother. Milly had almost insisted
on dressing her, for the present occasion, as one; and it was no fault
of the girl's if the good lady had not now appeared in a peaked hat, a
short petticoat and diamond shoe-buckles, brandishing the magic crutch.
The good lady, in truth, bore herself not less contentedly than if
these insignia had marked her work; and Milly's observation to Lord
Mark had just been, doubtless, the result of such a light exchange of
looks with her as even the great length of the table had not baffled.
There were twenty persons between them, but this sustained passage was
the sharpest sequel yet to that other comparison of views during the
pause on the Swiss pass. It almost appeared to Milly that their fortune
had been unduly precipitated--as if, properly, they were in the
position of having ventured on a small joke and found the answer out of
proportion grave. She could not at this moment, for instance, have said
whether, with her quickened perceptions, she were more enlivened or
oppressed; and the case might in fact have been serious had she not, by
good fortune, from the moment the picture loomed, quickly made up her
mind that what finally most concerned her was neither to seek nor to
shirk, was not even to wonder too much, but was to let things come as
they would, since there was little enough doubt of how they would go.

Lord Mark had been brought to her before dinner--not by Mrs. Lowder,
but by the handsome girl, that lady's niece, who was now at the other
end and on the same side as Susie; he had taken her in, and she meant
presently to ask him about Miss Croy, the h