United States or Philippines ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
At the same time, while many things in quick succession came up for them, came up in particular for Densher, nothing perhaps was just so sharp as the odd influence of their present conditions on their view of their past ones.
Kate spoke as if she wouldn't perhaps understand their way of appreciating Milly, but would let them none the less, in justice to their good will, express it in their coarser fashion. Densher himself wasn't unconscious in respect to this of a certain broad brotherhood with Mrs. Stringham; wondering indeed, while he followed the talk, how it might move American nerves.
Lord Mark had caught him twice in the fact the fact of his absurd posture; and that made a second male. But it was comparatively easy not to mind Lord Mark. His companion had before this taken him up, and in a tone to confirm her discretion, on the matter of Milly's not being his princess. "Of course she's not. You must do something first." Densher gave it his thought.
She hesitated. "Couldn't you write?" It made him also think, but with a difference. "She had turned her face to the wall." This again for a moment hushed her, and they were both too grave now for parenthetic pity. But her interest came out for at least the minimum of light. "She refused even to let you speak to her?" "My dear girl," Densher returned, "she was miserably, prohibitively ill."
Densher had said nothing about his appreciation: hadn't his behaviour since the hour itself sufficiently shown it? But he presently said he couldn't help going so far: "I don't doubt, certainly, that Miss Croy would have stayed." And he saw again into the bargain what a marvel was Susan Shepherd. She did nothing but protect him she had done nothing but keep it up.
Mrs. Lowder made use of the moment: Milly felt as soon as she had spoken that what she was doing was somehow for use. "Dear Susan tells me that you saw, in America, Mr. Densher whom I've never till now, as you may have noticed, asked you about. But do you mind at last, in connection with him, doing something for me?"
Densher had asked for her, at her hotel, the day after Aunt Maud's dinner, with a rich, that is with a highly troubled, preconception of the part likely to be played for him at present, in any contact with her, by Kate's and Mrs. Lowder's so oddly conjoined and so really superfluous attempts to make her interesting.
Aunt Maud, before what you call his second descent, hadn't convinced him all the more that my refusal of him didn't help. But he came back convinced." And then as her companion still showed a face at a loss: "I mean after he had seen Milly, spoken to her and left her. Milly convinced him." "Milly?" Densher again but vaguely echoed. "That you were sincere. That it was her you loved."
Stringham," the young man laughed, "advised me he would." "Then let him. Be right with him. I don't need," Kate went on in answer to the previous question, "to deceive him. Aunt Maud, if it's necessary, will do that. I mean that, knowing nothing about me, he can see me only as she sees me. She sees me now so well. He has nothing to do with me." "Except to reprobate you," Densher suggested.
He hesitated; then he said: "I'm thinking, I dare say, of Miss Theale's. How does your aunt reconcile his interest in her ?" "With his interest in me?" "With her own interest in you," Densher said while she reflected. "If that interest Mrs. Lowder's takes the form of Lord Mark, hasn't he rather to look out for the forms he takes?"
Word Of The Day