lculations. Lord Mark was very well, but he
wasn't _the_ cleverest creature in England, and even if he had been he
still wouldn't have been the most obliging. He weighed it out in
ounces, and indeed each of the pair was really waiting for what the
other would put down.

"She has put down _you."_ said Milly, attached to the subject still;
"and I think what you mean is that, on the counter, she still keeps
hold of you."

"Lest"--Kate took it up--"he should suddenly grab me and run? Oh, as he
isn't ready to run, he's much less ready, naturally, to grab. I
_am_--you're so far right as that--on the counter, when I'm not in the
shop-window; in and out of which I'm thus conveniently, commercially
whisked: the essence, all of it, of my position, and the price, as
properly, of my aunt's protection." Lord Mark was substantially what
she had begun with as soon as they were alone; the impression was even
yet with Milly of her having sounded his name, having imposed it, as a
topic, in direct opposition to the other name that Mrs. Lowder had left
in the air and that all her own look, as we have seen, kept there at
first for her companion. The immediate strange effect had been that of
her consciously needing, as it were, an alibi--which, successfully, she
so found. She had worked it to the end, ridden it to and fro across the
course marked for Milly by Aunt Maud, and now she had quite, so to
speak, broken it in. "The bore is that if she wants him so much--wants
him, heaven forgive her! for _me_--he has put us all out, since your
arrival, by wanting somebody else. I don't mean somebody else than you."

Milly threw off the charm sufficiently to shake her head. "Then I
haven't made out who it is. If I'm any part of his alternative he had
better stop where he is."

"Truly, truly?--always, always?"

Milly tried to insist with an equal gaiety. "Would you like me to
swear?"

Kate appeared for a moment--though that was doubtless but gaiety
too--to think. "Haven't we been swearing enough?"

"You have perhaps, but I haven't, and I ought to give you the
equivalent. At any rate there it is. Truly, truly as you say--'always,
always.' So I'm not in the way."

"Thanks," said Kate--"but that doesn't help me."

"Oh, it's as simplifying for _him_ that I speak of it."

"The difficulty really is that he's a person with so many ideas that
it's particularly hard to simplify for him. That's exactly of course
what Aunt Maud has been trying. He w