You've heard me of course before, in my country, often enough."
"Oh, never too often," he protested; "I'm sure I hope I shall still hear you again and again."
"But what good then has it done you?" the girl went on as if now frankly to amuse him.
"Oh, you'll see when you know me."
"But, most assuredly, I shall never know you."
"Then that will be exactly," he laughed, "the good!"
If it established thus that they couldn't, or Wouldn't, mix, why, none the less, did Milly feel, through it, a perverse quickening of the relation to which she had been, in spite of herself, appointed?
What queerer consequence of their not mixing than their talking—for it was what they had arrived at—almost intimately?
She wished to get away from him, or indeed, much rather, away from herself so far as she was present to him.
She saw already—wonderful creature, after all, herself too—that there would be a good deal more of him to come for her, and that the special sign of their intercourse would be to keep herself out of the question.
Everything else might come in—only never that; and with such an arrangement they might even go far.
This in fact might quite have begun, on the spot, with her returning again to the topic of the handsome girl.
If she was to keep herself out she could naturally best do so by putting in somebody else.
She accordingly put in Kate Croy, being ready to that extent—as she was not at all afraid for her—to sacrifice her if necessary.
Lord Mark himself, for that matter, had made it easy by saying a little while before that no one among them did anything for nothing.
"What then"—she was aware of being abrupt—"does Miss Croy, if she's so interested, do it for?
What has she to gain by her lovely welcome?
Look at her now!" Milly broke out with characteristic freedom of praise, though pulling herself up also with a compunctious
"Oh!" as the direction thus given to their eyes happened to coincide with a turn of Kate's face to them.
All she had meant to do was to insist that this face was fine; but what she had in fact done was to renew again her effect of showing herself to its possessor as conjoined with Lord Mark for some interested view of it.
He had, however, promptly met her question.
"To gain?
Why, your acquaintance."
"Well, what's my acquaintance to her?
She can care for me—she must feel that—only by being sorry for me; and that's why she's lovely: to be already willing to take the trouble to be.
It's the height of the disinterested."
There were more things in this than one that Lord Mark might have taken up; but in a minute he had made his choice.
"Ah then, I'm nowhere, for I'm afraid I'm not sorry for you in the least.
What do you make then," he asked, "of your success?"
"Why, just the great reason of all.
It's just because our friend there sees it that she pities me.
She understands," Milly said; "she's better than any of you.
She's beautiful."
He appeared struck with this at last—with the point the girl made of it; to which she came back even after a diversion created by a dish presented between them.
"Beautiful in character, I see. Is she so?
You must tell me about her."
Milly wondered.
"But haven't you known her longer than I?
Haven't you seen her for yourself?"
"No—I've failed with her.
It's no use.
I don't make her out.
And I assure you I really should like to."
His assurance had in fact for his companion a positive suggestion of sincerity; he affected her as now saying something that he felt; and she was the more struck with it as she was still conscious of the failure even of curiosity he had just shown in respect to herself.
She had meant something—though indeed for herself almost only—in speaking of their friend's natural pity; it had been a note, doubtless, of questionable taste, but it had quavered out in spite of her; and he had not so much as cared to inquire
"Why 'natural'?"
Not that it wasn't really much better for her that he shouldn't: explanations would in truth have taken her much too far.
Only she now perceived that, in comparison, her word about this other person really "drew" him; and there were things in that, probably, many things, as to which she would learn more and which glimmered there already as part and parcel of that larger "real" with which, in her new situation, she was to be beguiled.
It was in fact at the very moment, this element, not absent from what Lord Mark was further saying.
"So you're wrong, you see, as to our knowing all about each other.