"For Aunt Maud?" She saw what he meant--the deprecation, by their old
law, of betrayals of the intimate note. "Oh you needn't mind now. We've
done it!"
"Humbugged her?"
"Squared her. You've pleased her."
Densher mechanically accepted his tea. He was thinking of something
else, and his thought in a moment came out. "What a brute then I must
be!"
"A brute--?"
"To have pleased so many people."
"Ah," said Kate with a gleam of gaiety, "you've done it to please
_me_." But she was already, with her gleam, reverting a little. "What I
don't understand is--won't you have any sugar?"
"Yes, please."
"What I don't understand," she went on when she had helped him, "is
what it was that had occurred to bring her round again. If she gave you
up for days and days, what brought her back to you?"
She asked the question with her own cup in her hand, but it found him
ready enough in spite of his sense of the ironic oddity of their going
into it over the tea-table. "It was Sir Luke Strett who brought her
back. His visit, his presence there did it."
"He brought her back then to life."
"Well, to what I saw."
"And by interceding for you?"
"I don't think he interceded. I don't indeed know what he did."