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 passed 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 passed 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 embarrassment, "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."
"And he must have gone off also without a hope."
"Ah that, certainly."
"Then it _was_ mere base revenge. Hasn't he known her, into the
bargain," the young man asked--"didn't he, weeks before, see her, judge
her, feel her, as having for such a suit as his not more perhaps than a
few months to live?"
Mrs. Stringham at first, for reply, but looked at him in silence; and
it gave more force to what she then remarkably added. "He has doubtless
been aware of what you speak of, just as you have yourself been aware."
"He has wanted her, you mean, just _because_--?"
"Just because," said Susan Shepherd.
"The hound!" Merton Densher brought out. He moved off, however, with a
hot face, as soon as he had spoken, conscious again of an intention in
his visitor's reserve. Dusk was now deeper, and after he had once more
taken counsel of the dreariness without he turned to his companion.
"Shall we have lights--a lamp or the candles?"
"Not for me."
"Nothing?"
"Not for me."
He waited at the window another moment and then faced his friend with a
thought. "He _will_ have proposed to Miss Croy. That's what has
happened."