h, certainly, there was something
else--an influence, at the particular juncture, still more obscure.
Kate had lost, on the way upstairs, the look--_the_ look--that made her
young hostess so subtly think and one of the signs of which was that
she never kept it for many moments at once; yet she stood there, none
the less, so in her bloom and in her strength, so completely again the
"handsome girl" beyond all others, the "handsome girl" for whom Milly
had at first gratefully taken her, that to meet her now with the note
of the plaintive would amount somehow to a surrender, to a confession.
_She_ would never in her life be ill; the greatest doctor would keep
her, at the worst, the fewest minutes; and it was as if she had asked
just _with_ all this practical impeccability for all that was most
mortal in her friend. These things, for Milly, inwardly danced their
dance; but the vibration produced and the dust kicked up had lasted
less than our account of them. Almost before she knew it she was
answering, and answering, beautifully, with no consciousness of fraud,
only as with a sudden flare of the famous "will-power" she had heard
about, read about, and which was what her medical adviser had mainly
thrown her back on. "Oh, it's all right. He's lovely."

Kate was splendid, and it would have been clear for Milly now, had the
further presumption been needed, that she had said no word to Mrs.
Stringham. "You mean you've been absurd?"

"Absurd." It was a simple word to say, but the consequence of it, for
our young woman, was that she felt it, as soon as spoken, to have done
something for her safety.

And Kate really hung on her lips. "There's nothing at all the matter?"

"Nothing to worry about. I shall take a little watching, but I shan't
have to do anything dreadful, or even, in the least, inconvenient. I
can do in fact as I like." It was wonderful for Milly how just to put
it so made all its pieces fall at present quite properly into places.

Yet even before the full effect came Kate had seized, kissed, blessed
her. "My love, you're too sweet! It's too dear! But it's as I was
sure." Then she grasped the full beauty. "You can do as you like?"

"Quite. Isn't it charming?"

"Ah, but catch you," Kate triumphed with gaiety, _"not_ doing----! And
what _shall_ you do?"

"For the moment simply enjoy it. Enjoy"--Milly was completely
luminous--"having got out of my scrape."

"Learning, you mean, so easily, that you _are_ well."