What it really came to, on the morrow, this first time--the time Kate
went with her--was that the great man had, a little, to excuse himself;
had, by a rare accident--for he kept his consulting-hours in general
rigorously free--but ten minutes to give her; ten mere minutes which he
yet placed at her service in a manner that she admired even more than
she could meet it: so crystal-clean the great empty cup of attention
that he set between them on the table. He was presently to jump into
his carriage, but he promptly made the point that he must see her
again, see her within a day or two; and he named for her at once
another hour--easing her off beautifully too even then in respect to
her possibly failing of justice to her errand. The minutes affected her
in fact as ebbing more swiftly than her little army of items could
muster, and they would probably have gone without her doing much more
than secure another hearing, had it not been for her sense, at the
last, that she had gained above all an impression. The impression--all
the sharp growth of the final few moments--was neither more nor less
than that she might make, of a sudden, in quite another world, another
straight friend, and a friend who would moreover be, wonderfully, the
most appointed, the most thoroughly adjusted of the whole collection,
inasmuch as he would somehow wear the character scientifically,
ponderably, proveably--not just loosely and sociably. Literally,
furthermore, it wouldn't really depend on herself, Sir Luke Strett's
friendship, in the least; perhaps what made her most stammer and pant
was its thus queerly coming over her that she might find she had
interested him even beyond her intention, find she was in fact launched
in some current that would lose itself in the sea of science. At the
same time that she struggled, however, she also surrendered; there was
a moment at which she almost dropped the form of stating, of
explaining, and threw herself, without violence, only with a supreme
pointless quaver that had turned, the next instant, to an intensity of
interrogative stillness, upon his general goodwill. His large, settled
face, though firm, was not, as she had thought at first, hard; he
looked, in the oddest manner, to her fancy, half like a general and
half like a bishop, and she was soon sure that, within some such
handsome range, what it would show her would be what was good, what was
best for her. She had established, in other words, in this time-saving
way, a relation with it; and the relation was the special trophy that,
for the hour, she bore off. It was like an absolute possession, a new
resource altogether, something done up in the softest silk and tucked
away under the arm of memory. She hadn't had it when she went in, and
she had it when she came out; she had it there under her cloak, but
dissimulated, invisibly carried, when smiling, smiling, she again faced
Kate Croy. That young lady had of course awaited her in another room,
where, as the great man was to absent himself, no one else was in
attendance; and she rose for her with such a face of sympathy as might
have graced the vestibule of a dentist. "Is it out?" she seemed to ask
as if it had been a question of a tooth; and Milly indeed kept her in
no suspense at all.
"He's a dear. I'm to come again."
"But what does he say?"
Milly was almost gay. "That I'm not to worry about anything in the
world, and that if I'll be a good girl and do exactly what he tells me,
he'll take care of me for ever and ever."
Kate wondered as if things scarce fitted. "But does he allow then that
you're ill?"
"I don't know what he allows, and I don't care. I shall know, and
whatever it is it will be enough. He knows all about me, and I like it.
I don't hate it a bit."
Still, however, Kate stared. "But could he, in so few minutes, ask you
enough----?"
"He asked me scarcely anything--he doesn't need to do anything so
stupid," Milly said. "He can tell. He knows," she repeated; "and when I
go back--for he'll have thought me over a little--it will be all right."