Densher again gravely a.s.sented. "Magnificent!"

"And _he_," she went on, "is an idiot of idiots."

"An idiot of idiots." For a moment, on it all, on the stupid doom in it, they looked at each other. "Yet he's thought so awfully clever."

"So awfully--it's Maud Lowder's own view. And he was nice, in London,"

said Mrs. Stringham, "to _me_. One could almost pity him--he has had such a good conscience."

"That's exactly the inevitable a.s.s."

"Yes, but it wasn't--I could see from the only few things she first told me--that he meant _her_ the least harm. He intended none whatever."

"That's always the a.s.s at his worst," Densher returned. "He only of course meant harm to me."

"And good to himself--he thought that would come. He had been unable to swallow," Mrs. Stringham pursued, "what had happened on his other visit. He had been then too sharply humiliated."

"Oh I saw that."

"Yes, and he also saw you. He saw you received, as it were, while he was turned away."

"Perfectly," Densher said--"I've filled it out. And also that he has known meanwhile for _what_ I was then received. For a stay of all these weeks. He had had it to think of."

"Precisely--it was more than he could bear. But he has it," said Mrs.

Stringham, "to think of still."

"Only, after all," asked Densher, who himself somehow, at this point, was having more to think of even than he had yet had--"only, after all, how has he happened to know? That is, to know enough."

"What do you call enough?" Mrs. Stringham enquired.

"He can only have acted--it would have been his sole safety--from full knowledge."

He had gone on without heeding her question; but, face to face as they were, something had none the less pa.s.sed between them. It was this that, after an instant, made her again interrogative. "What do you mean by full knowledge?"

Densher met it indirectly. "Where has he been since October?"

"I think he has been back to England. He came in fact, I've reason to believe, straight from there."

"Straight to do this job? All the way for his half-hour?"

"Well, to try again--with the help perhaps of a new fact. To make himself possibly right with her--a different attempt from the other. He had at any rate something to tell her, and he didn't know his opportunity would reduce itself to half an hour. Or perhaps indeed half an hour would be just what was most effective. It _has_ been!" said Susan Shepherd.

Her companion took it in, understanding but too well; yet as she lighted the matter for him more, really, than his own courage had quite dared--putting the absent dots on several i's--he saw new questions swarm. They had been till now in a bunch, entangled and confused; and they fell apart, each showing for itself. The first he put to her was at any rate abrupt. "Have you heard of late from Mrs. Lowder."

"Oh yes, two or three times. She depends naturally upon news of Milly."

He hesitated. "And does she depend, naturally, upon news of _me?_"

His friend matched for an instant his deliberation.

"I've given her none that hasn't been decently good. This will have been the first."

"'This'?" Densher was thinking.

"Lord Mark's having been here, and her being as she is."

He thought a moment longer. "What has Mrs. Lowder written about him?

Has she written that he has been with them?"

"She has mentioned him but once--it was in her letter before the last.

Then she said something."

"And what did she say?"

Mrs. Stringham produced it with an effort. "Well it was in reference to Miss Croy. That she thought Kate was thinking of him. Or perhaps I should say rather that he was thinking of _her_--only it seemed this time to have struck Maud that he was seeing the way more open to him."

Densher listened with his eyes on the ground, but he presently raised them to speak, and there was that in his face which proved him aware of a queerness in his question. "Does she mean he has been encouraged to _propose_ to her niece?"

"I don't know what she means."

"Of course not"--he recovered himself; "and I oughtn't to seem to trouble you to piece together what I can't piece myself. Only I 'guess,'" he added, "I _can_ piece it."

She spoke a little timidly, but she risked it. "I dare say I can piece it too."

It was one of the things in her--and his conscious face took it from her as such--that from the moment of her coming in had seemed to mark for him, as to what concerned him, the long jump of her perception.

They had parted four days earlier with many things, between them, deep down. But these things were now on their troubled surface, and it wasn't he who had brought them so quickly up. Women were wonderful--at least this one was. But so, not less, was Milly, was Aunt Maud; so, most of all, was his very Kate. Well, he already knew what he had been feeling about the circle of petticoats. They were all _such_ petticoats! It was just the fineness of his tangle. The sense of that, in its turn, for us too, might have been not unconnected with his putting to his visitor a question that quite pa.s.sed over her remark.

"Has Miss Croy meanwhile written to our friend?"

"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 pa.s.sed 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 embarra.s.sment, "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."