"At Lancaster Gate?" Densher's surprise met it. "'Staying'?--since
when?"
"Since day before yesterday. He was there before I came away." And then
she explained--confessing it in fact anomalous. "It's an accident--like
Aunt Maud's having herself remained in town for Christmas, but it isn't
after all so monstrous. _We_ stayed--and, with my having come here,
she's sorry now--because we neither of us, waiting from day to day for
the news you brought, seemed to want to be with a lot of people."
"You stayed for thinking of--Venice?"
"Of course we did. For what else? And even a little," Kate wonderfully
added--"it's true at least of Aunt Maud--for thinking of you."
He appreciated. "I see. Nice of you every way. But whom," he enquired,
"has Lord Mark stayed for thinking of?"
"His being in London, I believe, is a very commonplace matter. He has
some rooms which he has had suddenly some rather advantageous chance to
let--such as, with his confessed, his decidedly proclaimed want of
money, he hasn't had it in him, in spite of everything, not to jump at."
Densher's attention was entire. "In spite of everything? In spite of
what?"
"Well, I don't know. In spite, say, of his being scarcely supposed to
do that sort of thing."
"To try to get money?"
"To try at any rate in little thrifty ways. Apparently however he has
had for some reason to do what he can. He turned at a couple of days'
notice out of his place, making it over to his tenant; and Aunt Maud,
who's deeply in his confidence about all such matters, said: 'Come then
to Lancaster Gate--to sleep at least--till, like all the world, you go
to the country.' He was to have gone to the country--I think to
Matcham--yesterday afternoon: Aunt Maud, that is, told me he was."
Kate had been somehow, for her companion, through this statement,
beautifully, quite soothingly, suggestive. "Told you, you mean, so that
you needn't leave the house?"
"Yes--so far as she had taken it into her head that his being there was
part of my reason."
"And _was_ it part of your reason?"
"A little if you like. Yet there's plenty here--as I knew there would
be--without it. So that," she said candidly, "doesn't matter. I'm glad
I am here: even if for all the good I do--!" She implied however that
that didn't matter either. "He didn't, as you tell me, get off then to
Matcham; though he may possibly, if it is possible, be going this
afternoon. But what strikes me as most probable--and it's really, I'm
bound to say, quite amiable of him--is that he has declined to leave
Aunt Maud, as I've been so ready to do, to spend her Christmas alone.
If moreover he has given up Matcham for her it's a _procédé_ that won't
please her less. It's small wonder therefore that she insists, on a
dull day, in driving him about. I don't pretend to know," she wound up,
"what may happen between them; but that's all I see in it."
"You see in everything, and you always did," Densher returned,
"something that, while I'm with you at least, I always take from you as
the truth itself."
She looked at him as if consciously and even carefully extracting the
sting of his reservation; then she spoke with a quiet gravity that
seemed to show how fine she found it. "Thank you." It had for him, like
everything else, its effect. They were still closely face to face, and,
yielding to the impulse to which he hadn't yielded just before, he laid
his hands on her shoulders, held her hard a minute and shook her a
little, far from untenderly, as if in expression of more mingled
things, all difficult, than he could speak. Then bending his head he
applied his lips to her cheek. He fell, after this, away for an
instant, resuming his unrest, while she kept the position in which, all
passive and as a statue, she had taken his demonstration. It didn't
prevent her, however, from offering him, as if what she had had was
enough for the moment, a further indulgence. She made a quiet lucid
connexion and as she made it sat down again. "I've been trying to place
exactly, as to its date, something that did happen to me while you were
in Venice. I mean a talk with him. He spoke to me--spoke out."
"Ah there you are!" said Densher who had wheeled round.
"Well, if I'm 'there,' as you so gracefully call it, by having refused
to meet him as he wanted--as he pressed--I plead guilty to being so.
Would you have liked me," she went on, "to give him an answer that
would have kept him from going?"