The Wings of the Dove, Volume 2

'Oh,' Mrs. Stringham amended, 'her friend also. But not a single word that I know of.'

He had taken it for certain she hadn't—the thing being after all but a shade more strange than his having himself, with Milly, never for six weeks mentioned the young lady in question. It was for that matter but a shade more strange than Milly's not having mentioned her. In spite of which, and however inconsequently, he blushed anew for Kate's silence. He got away from it in fact as quickly as possible, and the furthest he could get was by reverting for a minute to the man they had been judging. 'How did he manage to get at her? She had only—with what had passed between them before—to say she couldn't see him.'

'Oh she was disposed to kindness. She was easier,' the good lady explained with a slight embarrassment, 'than at the other time.'

'Easier?'

'She was off her guard. There was a difference.'

'Yes. But exactly not the difference.'

'Exactly not the difference of her having to be harsh. Perfectly. She could afford to be the opposite.' With which, as he said nothing, she just impatiently completed her sense. 'She had had you here for six weeks.'

'Oh!' Densher softly groaned.

'Besides, I think he must have written her first—written I mean in a tone to smooth his way. That it would be a kindness to himself. Then on the spot—'

'On the spot,' Densher broke in, 'he unmasked? The horrid little beast!'

It made Susan Shepherd turn slightly pale, though quickening, as for hope, the intensity of her look at him. 'Oh he went off without an alarm.'

'And he must have gone off also without a hope.'

'Ah that, certainly.'

'Then it was mere base revenge. Hasn't he known her, into the bargain,' the young man asked—'didn't he, weeks before, see her, judge her, feel her, as having for such a suit as his not more perhaps than a few months to live?'

Mrs. Stringham at first, for reply, but looked at him in silence; and it gave more force to what she then remarkably added. 'He has doubtless been aware of what you speak of, just as you have yourself been aware.'

'He has wanted her, you mean, just because—?'

'Just because,' said Susan Shepherd.

'The hound!' Merton Densher brought out. He moved off, however, with a hot face, as soon as he had spoken, conscious again of an intention in his visitor's reserve. Dusk was now deeper, and after he had once more taken counsel of the dreariness without he turned to his companion. 'Shall we have lights—a lamp or the candles?'

'Not for me.'

'Nothing?'

'Not for me.'

He waited at the window another moment and then faced his friend with a thought. 'He will have proposed to Miss Croy. That's what has happened.'

Her reserve continued. 'It's you who must judge.'

'Well, I do judge. Mrs. Lowder will have done so too—only she, poor lady, wrong. Miss Croy's refusal of him will have struck him'—Densher continued to make it out—'as a phenomenon requiring a reason.'

'And you've been clear to him as the reason?'

'Not too clear—since I'm sticking here and since that has been a fact to make his descent on Miss Theale relevant. But clear enough. He has believed,' said Densher bravely, 'that I may have been a reason at Lancaster Gate, and yet at the same time have been up to something in Venice.'

Mrs. Stringham took her courage from his own. ''Up to' something? Up to what?'

'God knows. To some 'game,' as they say. To some deviltry. To some duplicity.'

'Which of course,' Mrs. Stringham observed, 'is a monstrous supposition.' Her companion, after a stiff minute—sensibly long for each—fell away from her again, and then added to it another minute, which he spent once more looking out with his hands in his pockets. This was no answer, he perfectly knew, to what she had dropped, and it even seemed to state for his own ears that no answer was possible. She left him to himself, and he was glad she had declined, for their further colloquy, the advantage of lights. These would have been an advantage mainly to herself. Yet she got her benefit too even from the absence of them. It came out in her very tone when at last she addressed him—so differently, for confidence—in words she had already used. 'If Sir Luke himself asks it of you as something you can do for him, will you deny to Milly herself what she has been made so dreadfully to believe?'

Oh how he knew he hung back! But at last he said: 'You're absolutely certain then that she does believe it?'

'Certain?' She appealed to their whole situation. 'Judge!'

He took his time again to judge. 'Do you believe it?'

He was conscious that his own appeal pressed her hard; it eased him a little that her answer must be a pain to her discretion. She answered none the less, and he was truly the harder pressed. 'What I believe will inevitably depend more or less on your action. You can perfectly settle it—if you care. I promise to believe you down to the