on't," Kate firmly continued, "make
up his mind about me."

"Well," Milly smiled, "give him time."

Her friend met it in perfection. "One is _doing_ that--one _is._ But
one remains, all the same, but one of his ideas."

"There's no harm in that," Milly returned, "if you come out in the end
as the best of them. What's a man," she pursued, "especially an
ambitious one, without a variety of ideas?"

"No doubt. The more the merrier." And Kate looked at her grandly. "One
can but hope to come out, and do nothing to prevent it."

All of which made for the impression, fantastic or not, of the _alibi._
The splendour, the grandeur were, for Milly, the bold ironic spirit
behind it, so interesting too in itself. What, moreover, was not less
interesting was the fact, as our young woman noted it, that Kate
confined her point to the difficulties, so far as _she_ was concerned,
raised only by Lord Mark. She referred now to none that her own taste
might present; which circumstance again played its little part. She was
doing what she liked in respect to another person, but she was in no
way committed to the other person, and her furthermore talking of Lord
Mark as not young and not true were only the signs of her clear
self-consciousness, were all in the line of her slightly hard, but
scarce the less graceful extravagance. She didn't wish to show too much
her consent to be arranged for, but that was a different thing from not
wishing sufficiently to give it. There was something moreover, on it
all, that Milly still found occasion to say, "If your aunt has been, as
you tell me, put out by me, I feel that she has remained remarkably
kind."

"Oh, but she has--whatever might have happened in that respect--plenty
of use for you! You put her in, my dear, more than you put her out. You
don't half see it, but she has clutched your petticoat. You can do
anything--you can do, I mean, lots that _we_ can't. You're an outsider,
independent and standing by yourself; you're not hideously relative to
tiers and tiers of others." And Kate, facing in that direction, went
further and further; wound up, while Milly gaped, with extraordinary
words. "We're of no use to you--it's decent to tell you. You'd be of
use to us, but that's a different matter. My honest advice to you would
be--" she went indeed all lengths--"to drop us while you can. It would
be funny if you didn't soon see how awfully better you can do. We've
not really done for you the least t