_had,_ all the
same, been lovely, and one was going to meet her now quite as far on as
one had one's self been met. She had been with them at their
hotel--they were a pair--before even they had supposed she could have
got their letter. Of course indeed they had written in advance, but
they had followed that up very fast. She had thus engaged them to dine
but two days later, and on the morrow again, without waiting for a
return visit, waiting for anything, she had called with her niece. It
was as if she really cared for them, and it was magnificent
fidelity--fidelity to Mrs. Stringham, her own companion and Mrs.
Lowder's former schoolmate, the lady with the charming face and the
rather high dress down there at the end.

Lord Mark took in through his nippers these balanced attributes of
Susie. "But isn't Mrs. Stringham's fidelity then equally magnificent?"

"Well, it's a beautiful sentiment; but it isn't as if she had anything
to _give."_

"Hasn't she got you?" Lord Mark presently asked.

"Me--to give Mrs. Lowder?" Milly had clearly not yet seen herself in
the light of such an offering. "Oh, I'm rather a poor present; and I
don't feel as if, even at that, I've as yet quite been given."

"You've been shown, and if our friend has jumped at you it comes to the
same thing." He made his jokes, Lord Mark, without amusement for
himself; yet it wasn't that he was grim. "To be seen you must
recognise, _is,_ for you, to be jumped at; and, if it's a question of
being shown, here you are again. Only it has now been taken out of your
friend's hands; it's Mrs. Lowder, already, who's getting the benefit.
Look round the table and you'll make out, I think, that you're being,
from top to bottom, jumped at."

"Well, then," said Milly, "I seem also to feel that I like it better
than being made fun of."

It was one of the things she afterwards saw--Milly was for ever seeing
things afterwards--that her companion had here had some way of his own,
quite unlike any one's else, of assuring her of his consideration. She
wondered how he had done it, for he had neither apologised nor
protested. She said to herself, at any rate, that he had led her on;
and what was most odd was the question by which he had done so. "Does
she know much about you?"

"No, she just likes us."

Even for this his travelled lordship, seasoned and saturated, had no
laugh. "I mean _you_ particularly. Has that lady with the charming
face, which _is_ charming, told