d more
sharply conscious of having--as with the door sharply slammed upon her
and the guard's hand raised in signal to the train--been popped into
the compartment in which she was to travel for him. It was a use of her
that many a girl would have been doubtless quick to resent; and the
kind of mind that thus, in our young lady, made all for mere seeing and
taking is precisely one of the charms of our subject. Milly had
practically just learned from him, had made out, as it were, from her
rumbling compartment, that he gave her the highest place among their
friend's actual properties. She was a success, that was what it came
to, he presently assured her, and that was what it was to be a success:
it always happened before one could know it. One's ignorance was in
fact often the greatest part of it. "You haven't had time yet," he
said; "this is nothing. But you'll see. You'll see everything. You can,
you know--everything you dream of."

He made her more and more wonder; she almost felt as if he were showing
her visions while he spoke; and strangely enough, though it was visions
that had drawn her on, she hadn't seen them in connection--that is in
such preliminary and necessary connection--with such a face as Lord
Mark's, such eyes and such a voice, such a tone and such a manner. He
had for an instant the effect of making her ask herself if she were
after all going to be afraid; so distinct was it for fifty seconds that
a fear passed over her. There they were again--yes, certainly: Susie's
overture to Mrs. Lowder had been their joke, but they had pressed in
that gaiety an electric bell that continued to sound. Positively, while
she sat there, she had the loud rattle in her ears, and she wondered,
during these moments, why the others didn't hear it. They didn't stare,
they didn't smile, and the fear in her that I speak of was but her own
desire to stop it. That dropped, however, as if the alarm itself had
ceased; she seemed to have seen in a quick, though tempered glare that
there were two courses for her, one to leave London again the first
thing in the morning, the other to do nothing at all. Well, she would
do nothing at all; she was already doing it; more than that, she had
already done it, and her chance was gone. She gave herself up--she had
the strangest sense, on the spot, of so deciding; for she had turned a
corner before she went on again with Lord Mark. Inexpressive, but
intensely significant, he met as no one else