"Why, if he pretends to love her----!"
"And does he only 'pretend'?"
"I mean if, trusted by her in strange countries, he forgets her so far
as to make up to other people."
The amendment, however, brought Susie in, as if with gaiety, for a
comfortable end. "Did he make up, the false creature, to _you?"_
"No--but the question isn't of that. It's of what Kate might be made to
believe."
"That, given the fact that he evidently more or less followed up his
acquaintance with you, to say nothing of your obvious weird charm, he
must have been all ready if you had at all led him on?"
Milly neither accepted nor qualified this; she only said, after a
moment, as with a conscious excess of the pensive: "No, I don't think
she'd quite wish to suggest that I made up to _him;_ for that I should
have had to do so would only bring out his constancy. All I mean is,"
she added--and now at last, as with a supreme impatience "that her
being able to make him out a little a person who could give cause for
jealousy would evidently help her, since she's afraid of him, to do him
in her sister's mind a useful ill turn."
Susan Shepherd perceived in this explanation such signs of an appetite
for motive as would have sat gracefully even on one of her own New
England heroines. It was seeing round several corners; but that was
what New England heroines did, and it was moreover interesting for the
moment to make out how many really her young friend had undertaken to
see round. Finally, too, weren't they braving the deeps? They got their
amusement where they could. "Isn't it only," she asked, "rather
probable she'd see that Kate's knowing him as (what's the pretty old
word?) _volage_----?"
"Well?" She hadn't filled out her idea, but neither, it seemed, could
Milly.
"Well, might but do what that often does--by all _our_ blessed little
laws and arrangements at least; excite Kate's own sentiment instead of
depressing it."
The idea was bright, yet the girl but beautifully stared. "Kate's own
sentiment? Oh, she didn't speak of that. I don't think," she added as
if she had been unconsciously giving a wrong impression, "I don't think
Mrs. Condrip imagines _she's_ in love."