"Of everything.
There's nothing you can't have.
There's nothing you can't do."
"So Mrs. Lowder tells me."
It just kept Kate's eyes fixed as possibly for more of that; then, however, without waiting, she went on.
"We all adore you."
"You're wonderful—you dear things!"
Milly laughed.
"No, it's you." And Kate seemed struck with the real interest of it. "In three weeks!"
Milly kept it up.
"Never were people on such terms! All the more reason," she added, "that I shouldn't needlessly torment you."
"But me? what becomes of me?" said Kate.
"Well, you—" Milly thought—"if there's anything to bear, you'll bear it."
"But I won't bear it!" said Kate Croy.
"Oh yes, you will: all the same!
You'll pity me awfully, but you'll help me very much.
And I absolutely trust you.
So there we are."
There they were, then, since Kate had so to take it; but there, Milly felt, she herself in particular was; for it was just the point at which she had wished to arrive.
She had wanted to prove to herself that she didn't horribly blame her friend for any reserve; and what better proof could there be than this quite special confidence?
If she desired to show Kate that she really believed the latter liked her, how could she show it more than by asking her for help?
XII
What it really came to, on the morrow, this first time—the time Kate went with her—was that the great man had, a little, to excuse himself; had, by a rare accident—for he kept his consulting-hours in general rigorously free—but ten minutes to give her; ten mere minutes which he yet placed at her service in a manner that she admired even more than she could meet it: so crystal-clean the great empty cup of attention that he set between them on the table.
He was presently to jump into his carriage, but he promptly made the point that he must see her again, see her within a day or two; and he named for her at once another hour—easing her off beautifully too even then in respect to her possibly failing of justice to her errand.
The minutes affected her in fact as ebbing more swiftly than her little army of items could muster, and they would probably have gone without her doing much more than secure another hearing, had it not been for her sense, at the last, that she had gained above all an impression.
The impression—all the sharp growth of the final few moments—was neither more nor less than that she might make, of a sudden, in quite another world, another straight friend, and a friend who would moreover be, wonderfully, the most appointed, the most thoroughly adjusted of the whole collection, inasmuch as he would somehow wear the character scientifically, ponderably, proveably—not just loosely and sociably.
Literally, furthermore, it wouldn't really depend on herself, Sir Luke Strett's friendship, in the least; perhaps what made her most stammer and pant was its thus queerly coming over her that she might find she had interested him even beyond her intention, find she was in fact launched in some current that would lose itself in the sea of science.
At the same time that she struggled, however, she also surrendered; there was a moment at which she almost dropped the form of stating, of explaining, and threw herself, without violence, only with a supreme pointless quaver that had turned, the next instant, to an intensity of interrogative stillness, upon his general goodwill.
His large, settled face, though firm, was not, as she had thought at first, hard; he looked, in the oddest manner, to her fancy, half like a general and half like a bishop, and she was soon sure that, within some such handsome range, what it would show her would be what was good, what was best for her.
She had established, in other words, in this time-saving way, a relation with it; and the relation was the special trophy that, for the hour, she bore off.
It was like an absolute possession, a new resource altogether, something done up in the softest silk and tucked away under the arm of memory.
She hadn't had it when she went in, and she had it when she came out; she had it there under her cloak, but dissimulated, invisibly carried, when smiling, smiling, she again faced Kate Croy.
That young lady had of course awaited her in another room, where, as the great man was to absent himself, no one else was in attendance; and she rose for her with such a face of sympathy as might have graced the vestibule of a dentist.
"Is it out?" she seemed to ask as if it had been a question of a tooth; and Milly indeed kept her in no suspense at all.
"He's a dear.
I'm to come again."
"But what does he say?"
Milly was almost gay.
"That I'm not to worry about anything in the world, and that if I'll be a good girl and do exactly what he tells me, he'll take care of me for ever and ever."
Kate wondered as if things scarce fitted.
"But does he allow then that you're ill?"
"I don't know what he allows, and I don't care.
I shall know, and whatever it is it will be enough.
He knows all about me, and I like it.
I don't hate it a bit."
Still, however, Kate stared.
"But could he, in so few minutes, ask you enough——?"
"He asked me scarcely anything—he doesn't need to do anything so stupid," Milly said. "He can tell.
He knows," she repeated; "and when I go back—for he'll have thought me over a little—it will be all right."
Kate, after a moment, made the best of this.