"Shall you run away from _her?"_ Mrs. Lowder profoundly inquired, while
they became aware of Susie's return through the room, opening out
behind them, in which they had dined.

This affected Milly as giving her but an instant; and suddenly, with
it, everything she felt in the connection rose to her lips in a
question that, even as she put it, she knew she was failing to keep
colourless. "Is it your own belief that he _is_ with her?"

Aunt Maud took it in--took in, that is, everything of the tone that she
just wanted her not to; and the result for some seconds, was but to
make their eyes meet in silence. Mrs. Stringham had rejoined them and
was asking if Kate had gone--an inquiry at once answered by this young
lady's reappearance. They saw her again in the open window, where,
looking at them, she had paused--producing thus, on Aunt Maud's part,
almost too impressive a "Hush!" Mrs. Lowder indeed, without loss of
time, smothered any danger in a sweeping retreat with Susie; but
Milly's words to her, just uttered, about dealing with her niece
directly, struck our young woman as already recoiling on herself.
Directness, however evaded, would be, fully, for _her;_ nothing in fact
would ever have been for her so direct as the evasion. Kate had
remained in the window, very handsome and upright, the outer dark
framing in a highly favourable way her summery simplicities and
lightnesses of dress. Milly had, given the relation of space, no real
fear she had heard their talk; only she hovered there as with conscious
eyes and some added advantage. Then indeed, with small delay, her
friend sufficiently saw. The conscious eyes, the added advantage were
but those she had now always at command--those proper to the person
Milly knew as known to Merton Densher. It was for several seconds again
as if the _total_ of her identity had been that of the person known to
him--a determination having for result another sharpness of its own.
Kate had positively but to be there just as she was to tell her he had
come back. It seemed to pass between them, in fine, without a word,
that he was in London, that he was perhaps only round the corner; and
surely therefore no dealing of Milly's with her would yet have been so
direct.

XV

It was doubtless because this queer form of directness had in itself,
for the hour, seemed so sufficient that Milly was afterwards aware of
having really, all the while--during the strange, indescribable session
befor