sher just after her visit to Mr.
Croy; but most of it went, as usual, to their sitting in talk. They
had, under the trees, by the lake, the air of old friends--phases of
apparent earnestness, in particular, in which they might have been
settling every question in their vast young world; and periods of
silence, side by side, perhaps even more, when "a long engagement!"
would have been the final reading of the signs on the part of a passer
struck with them, as it was so easy to be. They would have presented
themselves thus as very old friends rather than as young persons who
had met for the first time but a year before and had spent most of the
interval without contact. It was indeed for each, already, as if they
were older friends; and though the succession of their meetings might,
between them, have been straightened out, they only had a confused
sense of a good many, very much alike, and a confused intention of a
good many more, as little different as possible. The desire to keep
them just as they were had perhaps to do with the fact that in spite of
the presumed diagnosis of the stranger there had been for them as yet
no formal, no final understanding. Densher had at the very first
pressed the question, but that, it had been easy to reply, was too
soon; so that a singular thing had afterwards happened. They had
accepted their acquaintance as too short for an engagement, but they
had treated it as long enough for almost anything else, and marriage
was somehow before them like a temple without an avenue. They belonged
to the temple and they met in the grounds; they were in the stage at
which grounds in general offered much scattered refreshment. But Kate
had meanwhile had so few confidants that she wondered at the source of
her father's suspicions. The diffusion of rumour was of course, in
London, remarkable, and for Marian not less--as Aunt Maud touched
neither directly--the mystery had worked. No doubt she had been seen.
Of course she had been seen. She had taken no trouble not to be seen,
and it was a thing, clearly, she was incapable of taking. But she had
been seen how?--and _what_ was there to see? She was in love--she knew
that: but it was wholly her own business, and she had the sense of
having conducted herself, of still so doing, with almost violent
conformity.

"I've an idea--in fact I feel sure--that Aunt Maud means to write to
you; and I think you had better know it." So much as this she said to
him as soo