XI

A prime reason, we must add, why sundry impressions were not to be

fully present to the girl till later on was that they yielded at this

stage, with an effect of sharp supersession, to a detached quarter of

an hour--her only one--with Lord Mark. "Have you seen the picture in

the house, the beautiful one that's so like you?"--he was asking that

as he stood before her; having come up at last with his smooth

intimation that any wire he had pulled and yet wanted not to remind her

of wasn't quite a reason for his having no joy at all.

"I've been through rooms and I've seen pictures. But if I'm 'like'

anything so beautiful as most of them seemed to me----!" It needed in

short for Milly some evidence, which he only wanted to supply. She was

the image of the wonderful Bronzino, which she must have a look at on

every ground. He had thus called her off and led her away; the more

easily that the house within was above all what had already drawn round

her its mystic circle. Their progress, meanwhile, was not of the

straightest; it was an advance, without haste, through innumerable

natural pauses and soft concussions, determined for the most part by

the appearance before them of ladies and gentlemen, singly, in couples,

in groups, who brought them to a stand with an inveterate "I say,

Mark." What they said she never quite made out; it was their all so

domestically knowing him, and his knowing them, that mainly struck her,

while her impression, for the rest, was but of fellow-strollers more

vaguely afloat than themselves, supernumeraries mostly a little

battered, whether as jaunty males or as ostensibly elegant women. They

might have been moving a good deal by a momentum that had begun far

back, but they were still brave and personable, still warranted for

continuance as long again, and they gave her, in especial collectively,

a sense of pleasant voices, pleasanter than those of actors, of

friendly, empty words and kind, lingering eyes. The lingering eyes

looked her over, the lingering eyes were what went, in almost confessed

simplicity, with the pointless "I say, Mark "; and what was really most

sensible of all was that, as a pleasant matter of course, if she didn't

mind, he seemed to suggest their letting people, poor dear things, have

the benefit of her.

The odd part was that he made her herself believe, for amusement, in

the benefit, measured by him in mere manner--for wonderful, of a truth,

was, as a means of expression, his slightness of emphasis--that her

present good-nature conferred. It was, as she could easily see, a mild

common carnival of good-nature--a mass of London people together, of

sorts and sorts, but who mainly knew each other and who, in their way,

did, no doubt, confess to curiosity. It had gone round that she was

there; questions about her would be passing; the easiest thing was to

run the gauntlet with _him_--just as the easiest thing was in fact to

trust him generally. Couldn't she know for herself, passively, how

little harm they meant her?--to that extent that it made no difference

whether or not he introduced them. The strangest thing of all for Milly

was perhaps the uplifted assurance and indifference with which she

could simply give back the particular bland stare that appeared in such

cases to mark civilisation at its highest. It was so little her fault,

this oddity of what had "gone round" about her, that to accept it

without question might be as good a way as another of feeling life. It

was inevitable to supply the probable description--that of the awfully

rich young American who was so queer to behold, but nice, by all

accounts, to know; and she had really but one instant of speculation as

to fables or fantasies perchance originally launched. She asked herself

once only if Susie could, inconceivably, have been blatant about her;

for the question, on the spot, was really blown away for ever. She knew

in fact on the spot and with sharpness just why she had "elected" Susan

Shepherd: she had had from the first hour the conviction of her being

precisely the person in the world least possibly a trumpeter. So it

wasn't their fault, it wasn't their fault, and anything might happen

that would, and everything now again melted together, and kind eyes

were always kind eyes--if it were never to be worse than that! She got

with her companion into the house; they brushed, beneficently, past all

their accidents. The Bronzino was, it appeared, deep within, and the

long afternoon light lingered for them on patches of old colour and

waylaid them, as they went, in nooks and opening vistas.

It was all the while for Milly as if Lord Mark had really had something

other than this spoken pretext in view; as if there were something he

wanted to say to her and were only--consciously yet not awkwardly, just

delicately--hanging fire. At the same time it was as if the thing had

practically been said by the moment they came in sight of the picture;

since what it appeared to amount to was "Do let a fellow who isn't a

fool take care of you a little." The thing somehow, with the aid of the

Bronzino, was done; it hadn't seemed to matter to her before if he were

a fool or no; but now, just where they were, she liked his not being;

and it was all moreover none the worse for coming back to something of

the same sound as Mrs. Lowder's so recent reminder. She too wished to

take care of her--and wasn't it, _à peu près_ what all the people with

the kind eyes were wishing? Once more things melted together--the

beauty and the history and the facility and the splendid midsummer

glow: it was a sort of magnificent maximum, the pink dawn of an

apotheosis, coming so curiously soon. What in fact befell was that, as

she afterwards made out, it was Lord Mark who said nothing in

particular--it was she herself who said all. She couldn't help that--it

came; and the reason it came was that she found herself, for the first

moment, looking at the mysterious portrait through tears. Perhaps it

was her tears that made it just then so strange and fair--as wonderful

as he had said: the face of a young woman, all magnificently drawn,

down to the hands, and magnificently dressed; a face almost livid in

hue, yet handsome in sadness and crowned with a mass of hair rolled

back and high, that must, before fading with time, have had a family

resemblance to her own. The lady in question, at all events, with her

slightly Michaelangelesque squareness, her eyes of other days, her full

lips, her long neck, her recorded jewels, her brocaded and wasted reds,

was a very great personage--only unaccompanied by a joy. And she was

dead, dead, dead. Milly recognised her exactly in words that had

nothing to do with her. "I shall never be better than this."

He smiled for her at the portrait. "Than she? You'd scarce need to be

better, for surely that's well enough. But you _are,_ one feels, as it

happens, better; because, splendid as she is, one doubts if she was

good."

He hadn't understood. She was before the picture, but she had turned to

him, and she didn't care if, for the minute, he noticed her tears. It

was probably as good a moment as she should ever have with him. It was

perhaps as good a moment as she should have with any one, or have in

any connection whatever. "I mean that everything this afternoon has

been too beautiful, and that perhaps everything together will never be

so right again. I'm very glad therefore you've been a part of it."

Though he still didn't understand her he was as nice as if he had; he

didn't ask for insistence, and that was just a part of his looking

after her. He simply protected her now from herself, and there was a

world of practice in it. "Oh, we must talk about these things!"

Ah, they had already done that, she knew, as much as she ever would;

and she was shaking her head at her pale sister the next moment with a

world, on her side, of slowness. "I wish I could see the resemblance.

Of course her complexion's green," she laughed; "but mine's several

shades greener."

"It's down to the very hands," said Lord Mark.

"Her hands are large," Milly went on, "but mine are larger. Mine are

huge."

"Oh, you go her, all round, 'one better'--which is just what I said.

But you're a pair. You must surely catch it," he added as if it were

important to his character as a serious man not to appear to have

invented his plea.

"I don't know one never knows one's self. It's a funny fancy, and I

don't imagine it would have occurred----"

"I see it _has_ occurred"--he has already taken her up. She had her

back, as she faced the picture, to one of the doors of the room, which

was open, and on her turning, as he spoke, she saw that they were in

the presence of three other persons, also, as appeared, interested

inquirers. Kate Croy was one of these; Lord Mark had just become aware

of her, and she, all arrested, had immediately seen, and made the best

of it, that she was far from being first in the field. She had brought

a lady and a gentleman to whom she wished to show what Lord Mark was

showing Milly, and he took her straightway as a reinforcement. Kate

herself had spoken, however, before he had had time to tell her so.

_"You_ had noticed too?"--she smiled at him without looking at Milly.

"Then I'm not original--which one always hopes one has been. But the

likeness is so great." And now she looked at Milly--for whom again it

was, all round indeed, kind, kind eyes. "Yes, there you are, my dear,

if you want to know. And you're superb." She took now but a glance at

the picture, though it was enough to make her question to her friends

not too straight. "Isn't she superb?"

"I brought Miss Theale," Lord Mark explained to the latter, "quite off

my own bat."

"I wanted Lady Aldershaw," Kate continued to Milly, "to see for

herself."

_"Les grands esprits se rencontrent!"_ laughed her attendant gentleman,

a high, but slightly stooping, shambling and wavering person, who

represented urbanity by the liberal aid of certain prominent front

teeth and whom Milly vaguely took for some sort of great man.

Lady Aldershaw meanwhile looked at Milly quite as if Milly had been the

Bronzino and the Bronzino only Milly. "Superb, superb. Of course I had

noticed you. It is wonderful," she went on with her back to the

picture, but with some other eagerness which Milly felt gathering,

directing her motions now. It was enough--they were introduced, and she

was saying "I wonder if you could give us the pleasure of coming----"

She was not fresh, for she was not young, even though she denied at

every pore that she was old; but she was vivid and much bejewelled for

the midsummer daylight; and she was all in the palest pinks and blues.

She didn't think, at this pass, that she could "come" anywhere--Milly

didn't; and she already knew that somehow Lord Mark was saving her from

the question. He had interposed, taking the words out of the lady's

mouth and not caring at all if the lady minded. That was clearly the

right way to treat her--at least for him; as she had only dropped,

smiling, and then turned away with him. She had been dealt with--it

would have done an enemy good. The gentleman still stood, a little

helpless, addressing himself to the intention of urbanity as if it were

a large loud whistle; he had been signing sympathy, in his way, while

the lady made her overture; and Milly had, in this light, soon arrived

at their identity. They were Lord and Lady Aldershaw, and the wife was

the clever one. A minute or two later the situation had changed, and

she knew it afterwards to have been by the subtle operation of Kate.

She was herself saying that she was afraid she must go now if Susie

could be found; but she was sitting down on the nearest seat to say it.

The prospect, through opened doors, stretched before her into other

rooms, down the vista of which Lord Mark was strolling with Lady

Aldershaw, who, close to him and much intent, seemed to show from

behind as peculiarly expert. Lord Aldershaw, for his part, had been

left in the middle of the room, while Kate, with her back to him, was

standing before her with much sweetness of manner. The sweetness was

all for _her;_ she had the sense of the poor gentleman's having somehow

been handled as Lord Mark had handled his wife. He dangled there, he

shambled a little; then he bethought himself of the Bronzino, before

which, with his eyeglass, he hovered. It drew from him an odd, vague

sound, not wholly distinct from a grunt, and a "Humph--most

remarkable!" which lighted Kate's face with amusement. The next moment

he had creaked away, over polished floors, after the others, and Milly

was feeling as if _she_ had been rude. But Lord Aldershaw was in every

way a detail, and Kate was saying to her that she hoped she wasn't ill.

Thus it was that, aloft there in the great gilded historic chamber and

the presence of the pale personage on the wall, whose eyes all the

while seemed engaged with her own, she found herself suddenly sunk in

something quite intimate and humble and to which these grandeurs were

strange enough witnesses. It had come up, in the form in which she had

had to accept it, all suddenly, and nothing about it, at the same time,

was more marked than that she had in a manner plunged into it to escape

from something else. Something else, from her first vision of her

friend's appearance three minutes before, had been present to her even

through the call made by the others on her attention; something that

was perversely _there,_ she was more and more uncomfortably finding, at

least for the first moments and by some spring of its own, with every

renewal of their meeting. "Is it the way she looks to _him?"_ she asked

herself--the perversity being that she kept in remembrance that Kate

was known to him. It wasn't a fault in Kate--nor in him assuredly; and

she had a horror, being generous and tender, of treating either of them

as if it had been. To Densher himself she couldn't make it up--he was

too far away; but her secondary impulse was to make it up to Kate. She

did so now with a strange soft energy--the impulse immediately acting.

"Will you render me to-morrow a great service?"

"Any service, dear child, in the world."

"But it's a secret one--nobody must know. I must be wicked and false

about it."

"Then I'm your woman," Kate smiled, "for that's the kind of thing I

love. _Do_ let us do something bad. You're impossibly without sin, you

know."

Milly's eyes, on this, remained a little with their companion's. "Ah, I

shan't perhaps come up to your idea. It's only to deceive Susan

Shepherd."

"Oh!" said Kate as if this were indeed mild.

"But thoroughly--as thoroughly as I can."

"And for cheating," Kate asked, "my powers will contribute? Well, I'll

do my best for you." In accordance with which it was presently settled

between them that Milly should have the aid and comfort of her presence

for a visit to Sir Luke Strett. Kate had needed a minute for

enlightenment, and it was quite grand for her comrade that this name

should have said nothing to her. To Milly herself it had for some days

been secretly saying much. The personage in question was, as she

explained, the greatest of medical lights if she had got hold, as she

believed (and she had used to this end the wisdom of the serpent) of

the right, the special man. She had written to him three days before,

and he had named her an hour, eleven-twenty; only it had come to her,

on the eve, that she couldn't go alone. Her maid, on the other hand,

wasn't good enough, and Susie was too good. Kate had listened, above

all, with high indulgence. "And I'm betwixt and between, happy thought!

Too good for what?"

Milly thought. "Why, to be worried if it's nothing. And to be still

more worried--I mean before she need be--if it isn't."

Kate fixed her with deep eyes. "What in the world is the matter with

you?" It had inevitably a sound of impatience, as if it had been a

challenge really to produce something; so that Milly felt her for the

moment only as a much older person, standing above her a little,

doubting the imagined ailments, suspecting the easy complaints, of

ignorant youth. It somewhat checked her, further, that the matter with

her was what exactly as yet she wanted knowledge about; and she

immediately declared, for conciliation, that if she were merely

fanciful Kate would see her put to shame. Kate vividly uttered, in

return, the hope that, since she could come out and be so charming,

could so universally dazzle and interest, she wasn't all the while in

distress or in anxiety--didn't believe herself, in short, to be in any

degree seriously menaced. "Well, I want to make out--to make out!" was

all that this consistently produced. To which Kate made clear answer:

"Ah then, let us by all means!"

"I thought," Milly said, "you would like to help me. But I must ask

you, please, for the promise of absolute silence."

"And how, if you _are_ ill, can your friends remain in ignorance?"

"Well, if I am, it must of course finally come out. But I can go for a

long time." Milly spoke with her eyes again on her painted

sister's--almost as if under their suggestion. She still sat there

before Kate, yet not without a light in her face. "That will be one of

my advantages. I think I could die without its being noticed."

"You're an extraordinary young woman," her friend, visibly held by her,

declared at last. "What a remarkable time to talk of such things!"

"Well, we won't talk, precisely"--Milly got herself together again. "I

only wanted to make sure of you."

"Here in the midst of----!" But Kate could only sigh for wonder--almost

visibly too for pity.

It made a moment during which her companion waited on her word; partly

as if from a yearning, shy but deep, to have her case put to her just

as Kate was struck by it; partly as if the hint of pity were already

giving a sense to her whimsical "shot," with Lord Mark, at Mrs.

Lowder's first dinner. Exactly this--the handsome girl's compassionate

manner, her friendly descent from her own strength--was what she had

then foretold. She took Kate up as if positively for the deeper taste

of it. "Here in the midst of what?"

"Of everything. There's nothing you can't have. There's nothing you

can't do."

"So Mrs. Lowder tells me."

It just kept Kate's eyes fixed as possibly for more of that; then,

however, without waiting, she went on. "We all adore you."

"You're wonderful--you dear things!" Milly laughed.

"No, it's _you."_ And Kate seemed struck with the real interest of it.

"In three weeks!"

Milly kept it up. "Never were people on such terms! All the more

reason," she added, "that I shouldn't needlessly torment you."

"But me? what becomes of _me?"_ said Kate.

"Well, you--" Milly thought--"if there's anything to bear, you'll bear

it."

"But I _won't_ bear it!" said Kate Croy.

"Oh yes, you will: all the same! You'll pity me awfully, but you'll

help me very much. And I absolutely trust you. So there we are." There

they were, then, since Kate had so to take it; but there, Milly felt,

she herself in particular was; for it was just the point at which she

had wished to arrive. She had wanted to prove to herself that she

didn't horribly blame her friend for any reserve; and what better proof

could there be than this quite special confidence? If she desired to

show Kate that she really believed the latter liked her, how could she

show it more than by asking her for help?