wasn't their fault, and anything might happen
that would, and everything now again melted together, and kind eyes
were always kind eyes--if it were never to be worse than that! She got
with her companion into the house; they brushed, beneficently, past all
their accidents. The Bronzino was, it appeared, deep within, and the
long afternoon light lingered for them on patches of old colour and
waylaid them, as they went, in nooks and opening vistas.

It was all the while for Milly as if Lord Mark had really had something
other than this spoken pretext in view; as if there were something he
wanted to say to her and were only--consciously yet not awkwardly, just
delicately--hanging fire. At the same time it was as if the thing had
practically been said by the moment they came in sight of the picture;
since what it appeared to amount to was "Do let a fellow who isn't a
fool take care of you a little." The thing somehow, with the aid of the
Bronzino, was done; it hadn't seemed to matter to her before if he were
a fool or no; but now, just where they were, she liked his not being;
and it was all moreover none the worse for coming back to something of
the same sound as Mrs. Lowder's so recent reminder. She too wished to
take care of her--and wasn't it, _a peu pres_ what all the people with
the kind eyes were wishing? Once more things melted together--the
beauty and the history and the facility and the splendid midsummer
glow: it was a sort of magnificent maximum, the pink dawn of an
apotheosis, coming so curiously soon. What in fact befell was that, as
she afterwards made out, it was Lord Mark who said nothing in
particular--it was she herself who said all. She couldn't help that--it
came; and the reason it came was that she found herself, for the first
moment, looking at the mysterious portrait through tears. Perhaps it
was her tears that made it just then so strange and fair--as wonderful
as he had said: the face of a young woman, all magnificently drawn,
down to the hands, and magnificently dressed; a face almost livid in
hue, yet handsome in sadness and crowned with a mass of hair rolled
back and high, that must, before fading with time, have had a family
resemblance to her own. The lady in question, at all events, with her
slightly Michaelangelesque squareness, her eyes of other days, her full
lips, her long neck, her recorded jewels, her brocaded and wasted reds,
was a very great personage--only unaccompanied by a joy. And