"what you think I
have to conceal."

"It doesn't matter, at a given moment," Mrs. Stringham returned, "what
you know or don't know as to what I think; for you always find out the
very next moment, and when you do find out, dearest, you never _really_
care. Only," she presently asked, "have you heard of him from Miss
Croy?"

"Heard of Mr. Densher? Never a word. We haven't mentioned him. Why
should we?"

"That _you_ haven't, I understand; but that she hasn't," Susie opined,
"may mean something."

"May mean what?"

"Well," Mrs. Stringham presently brought out, "I tell you all when I
tell you that Maud asks me to suggest to you that it may perhaps be
better for the present not to speak of him: not to speak of him to her
niece, that is, unless she herself speaks to you first. But Maud thinks
she won't."

Milly was ready to engage for anything; but in respect to the facts--as
they so far possessed them--it all sounded a little complicated. "Is it
because there's anything between them?"

"No--I gather not; but Maud's state of mind is precautionary. She's
afraid of something. Or perhaps it would be more correct to say she's
afraid of everything."

"She's afraid, you mean," Milly asked, "of their--a--liking each other?"

Susie had an intense thought and then an effusion. "My dear child, we
move in a labyrinth."

"Of course we do. That's just the fun of it!" said Milly with a strange
gaiety. Then she added: "Don't tell me that--in this for
instance--there are not abysses. I want abysses."

Her friend looked at her--it was not unfrequently the case--a little
harder than the surface of the occasion seemed to require; and another
person present at such times might have wondered to what inner thought
of her own the good lady was trying to fit the speech. It was too much
her disposition, no doubt, to treat her young companion's words as
symptoms of an imputed malady. It was none the less, however, her
highest law to be light when the girl was light. She knew how to be
quaint with the new quaintness--the great Boston gift; it had been,
happily, her note in the magazines; and Maud Lowder, to whom it was new
indeed and who had never heard anything remotely like it, quite
cherished her, as a social resource, for it. It should not therefore
fail her now; with it in fact one might face most things. "Ah, then let
us hope we shall sound the depths--I'm prepared for the worst--of
sorrow and sin! But she would like her niece--w