Or rather your line must be that you deny it utterly."
"Deny that she cares for him?"
"Deny that she so much as thinks that she does.
Positively and absolutely.
Deny that you've so much as heard of it."
Susie faced this new duty.
"To Milly, you mean—if she asks?"
"To Milly, naturally.
No one else will ask."
"Well," said Mrs. Stringham after a moment, "Milly won't."
Mrs. Lowder wondered. "Are you sure?"
"Yes, the more I think of it.
And luckily for me.
I lie badly."
"I lie well, thank God," Mrs. Lowder almost snorted, "when, as sometimes will happen, there's nothing else so good.
One must always do the best.
But without lies then," she went on, "perhaps we can work it out."
Her interest had risen; her friend saw her, as within some minutes, more enrolled and inflamed—presently felt in her what had made the difference.
Mrs. Stringham, it was true, descried this at the time but dimly; she only made out at first that Maud had found a reason for helping her.
The reason was that, strangely, she might help Maud too, for which she now desired to profess herself ready even to lying.
What really perhaps most came out for her was that her hostess was a little disappointed at her doubt of the social solidity of this appliance; and that in turn was to become a steadier light.
The truth about Kate's delusion, as her aunt presented it, the delusion about the state of her affections, which might be removed—this was apparently the ground on which they now might more intimately meet.
Mrs. Stringham saw herself recruited for the removal of Kate's delusion—by arts, however, in truth, that she as yet quite failed to compass.
Or was it perhaps to be only for the removal of Mr. Densher's?—success in which indeed might entail other successes.
Before that job, unfortunately, her heart had already failed.
She felt that she believed in her bones what Milly believed, and what would now make working for Milly such a dreadful upward tug.
All this within her was confusedly present—a cloud of questions out of which Maud Manningham's large seated self loomed, however, as a mass more and more definite, taking in fact for the consultative relation something of the form of an oracle.
From the oracle the sound did come—or at any rate the sense did, a sense all accordant with the insufflation she had just seen working.
"Yes," the sense was, "I'll help you for Milly, because if that comes off I shall be helped, by its doing so, for Kate"—a view into which Mrs. Stringham could now sufficiently enter.
She found herself of a sudden, strange to say, quite willing to operate to Kate's harm, or at least to Kate's good as Mrs. Lowder with a noble anxiety measured it.
She found herself in short not caring what became of Kate—only convinced at bottom of the predominance of Kate's star.
Kate wasn't in danger, Kate wasn't pathetic; Kate Croy, whatever happened, would take care of Kate Croy.
She saw moreover by this time that her friend was travelling even beyond her own speed.
Mrs. Lowder had already, in mind, drafted a rough plan of action, a plan vividly enough thrown off as she said:
"You must stay on a few days, and you must immediately, both of you, meet him at dinner." In addition to which Maud claimed the merit of having by an instinct of pity, of prescient wisdom, done much, two nights before, to prepare that ground.
"The poor child, when I was with her there while you were getting your shawl, quite gave herself away to me."
"Oh I remember how you afterwards put it to me. Though it was nothing more," Susie did herself the justice to observe, "than what I too had quite felt."
But Mrs. Lowder fronted her so on this that she wondered what she had said.
"I suppose I ought to be edified at what you can so beautifully give up."
"Give up?" Mrs. Stringham echoed. "Why, I give up nothing—I cling."
Her hostess showed impatience, turning again with some stiffness to her great brass-bound cylinder-desk and giving a push to an object or two disposed there.
"I give up then.
You know how little such a person as Mr. Densher was to be my idea for her.
You know what I've been thinking perfectly possible."
"Oh you've been great"—Susie was perfectly fair. "A duke, a duchess, a princess, a palace: you've made me believe in them too.
But where we break down is that she doesn't believe in them.
Luckily for her—as it seems to be turning out—she doesn't want them.
So what's one to do?
I assure you I've had many dreams.
But I've only one dream now."