"Well, we shall see"--and he felt almost basely superficial. More and
more, for the last five minutes, had he known she had brought something
with her, and never in respect to anything had he had such a wish to
postpone. He would have liked to put everything off till Thursday; he
was sorry it was now Tuesday; he wondered if he were afraid. Yet it
wasn't of Sir Luke, who was coming; nor of Milly, who was dying; nor of
Mrs. Stringham, who was sitting there. It wasn't, strange to say, of
Kate either, for Kate's presence affected him suddenly as having
swooned or trembled away. Susan Shepherd's, thus prolonged, had cast on
it some influence under which it had ceased to act. She was as absent
to his sensibility as she had constantly been, since her departure,
absent, as an echo or a reference, from the palace; and it was the
first time, among the objects now surrounding him, that his sensibility
so noted her. He knew soon enough that it was of himself he was afraid,
and that even, if he didn't take care, he should infallibly be more so.
"Meanwhile," he added for his companion, "it has been everything for me
to see you." She slowly rose at the words, which might almost have
conveyed to her the hint of his taking care. She stood there as if she
had in fact seen him abruptly moved to dismiss her. But the abruptness
would have been in this case so marked as fairly to offer ground for
insistence to her imagination of his state. It would take her moreover,
she clearly showed him she was thinking, but a minute or two to insist.
Besides, she had already said it. "Will you do it if _he_ asks you? I
mean if Sir Luke himself puts it to you. And will you give him"--oh she
was earnest now!--"the opportunity to put it to you?"
"The opportunity to put what?"
"That if you deny it to her, that may still do something."
Densher felt himself--as had already once befallen him in the quarter
of an hour--turn red to the top of his forehead. Turning red had,
however, for him, as a sign of shame, been, so to speak, discounted:
his consciousness of it at the present moment was rather as a sign of
his fear. It showed him sharply enough of what he was afraid. "If I
deny what to her?"
Hesitation, on the demand, revived in her, for hadn't he all along been
letting her see that he knew? "Why, what Lord Mark told her."
"And what did Lord Mark tell her?"
Mrs. Stringham had a look of bewilderment--of seeing him as suddenly
perverse. "I've been judging that you yourself know." And it was she
who now blushed deep.
It quickened his pity for her, but he was beset too by other things.
"Then _you_ know--"
"Of his dreadful visit?" She stared. "Why it's what has done it."
"Yes--I understand that. But you also know--"
He had faltered again, but all she knew she now wanted to say. "I'm
speaking," she said soothingly, "of what he told her. It's _that_ that
I've taken you as knowing."
"Oh!" he sounded in spite of himself.
It appeared to have for her, he saw the next moment, the quality of
relief, as if he had supposed her thinking of something else.
Thereupon, straightway, that lightened it. "Oh you thought I've known
it for _true!_"
Her light had heightened her flush, and he saw that he had betrayed
himself. Not, however, that it mattered, as he immediately saw still
better. There it was now, all of it at last, and this at least there
was no postponing. They were left with her idea--the one she was
wishing to make him recognise. He had expressed ten minutes before his
need to understand, and she was acting after all but on that. Only what
he was to understand was no small matter; it might be larger even than
as yet appeared.
He took again one of his turns, not meeting what she had last said; he
mooned a minute, as he would have called it, at a window; and of course
she could see that she had driven him to the wall. She did clearly,
without delay, see it; on which her sense of having "caught" him became
as promptly a scruple, which she spoke as if not to press. "What I mean
is that he told her you've been all the while engaged to Miss Croy."
He gave a jerk round; it was almost--to hear it--the touch of a lash;
and he said--idiotically, as he afterwards knew--the first thing that
came into his head. "All _what_ while?"
"Oh it's not I who say it." She spoke in gentleness. "I only repeat to
you what he told her."
Densher, from whom an impatience had escaped, had already caught
himself up. "Pardon my brutality. Of course I know what you're talking
about. I saw him, toward the evening," he further explained, "in the
Piazza; only just saw him--through the glass at Florian's--without any
words. In fact I scarcely know him--there wouldn't have been occasion.
It was but once, moreover--he must have gone that night. But I knew he
wouldn't have come for nothing, and I turned it over--what he would
have come for."