her in her "hole" and then heartlessly reflected on her being
in it. Yet she didn't explain how she had picked up the report on which
her sister had challenged her--so that it was thus left to her sister
to see in it, once more, a sign of the creeping curiosity of the Miss
Condrips. They lived in a deeper hole than Marian, but they kept their
ear to the ground, they spent their days in prowling, whereas Marian,
in garments and shoes that seemed steadily to grow looser and larger,
never prowled. There were times when Kate wondered if the Miss Condrips
were offered her by fate as a warning for her own future--to be taken
as showing her what she herself might become at forty if she let things
too recklessly go. What was expected of her by others--and by so many
of them--could, all the same, on occasion, present itself as beyond a
joke; and this was just now the aspect it particularly wore. She was
not only to quarrel with Merton Densher to oblige her five
spectators--with the Miss Condrips there were five; she was to set
forth in pursuit of Lord Mark on some preposterous theory of the
premium attached to success. Mrs. Lowder's hand had attached it, and it
figured at the end of the course as a bell that would ring, break out
into public clamour, as soon as touched. Kate reflected sharply enough
on the weak points of this fond fiction, with the result at last of a
certain chill for her sister's confidence; though Mrs. Condrip still
took refuge in the plea--which was after all the great point--that
their aunt would be munificent when their aunt should be pleased. The
exact identity of her candidate was a detail; what was of the essence
was her conception of the kind of match it was open to her niece to
make with her aid. Marian always spoke of marriages as "matches," but
that was again a detail. Mrs. Lowder's "aid" meanwhile awaited them--if
not to light the way to Lord Mark, then to somebody better. Marian
would put up, in fine, with somebody better; she only wouldn't put up
with somebody so much worse. Kate had, once more, to go through all
this before a graceful issue was reached. It was reached by her paying
with the sacrifice of Mr. Densher for her reduction of Lord Mark to the
absurd. So they separated softly enough. She was to be let off hearing
about Lord Mark so long as she made it good that she wasn't underhand
about anybody else. She had denied everything and every one, she
reflected as she went away--and that was a