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He gave the appearances before him all the benefit of being critical, so that if blame were to accrue he shouldn't feel he had dodged it. But it wasn't a bit he who, that day, had touched her, and if she was upset it wasn't a bit his act. The ability so to think about it amounted for Densher during several hours to a kind of exhilaration.
"You can say something both handsome and sincere to her about Milly whom you honestly like so much. That wouldn't be lying; and, coming from you, it would have an effect. You don't, you know, say much about her." And Kate put before him the fruit of observation. "You don't, you know, speak of her at all." "And has Aunt Maud," Densher asked, "told you so?"
Lowder continued, "you'll probably put in for yourself that it was part of the reason of my welcome to you. So you see what I give up. I do give it up. But when I take that line," she further set forth, "I take it handsomely. So good-bye to it all. Good-day to Mrs. Densher! Heavens!" she growled. Susie held herself a minute. "Even as Mrs. Densher my girl will be somebody."
He could scarce have said if the visitor's manner less showed the remembrance that might have suggested expectation, or made shorter work of surprise in presence of the fact. Sir Luke had clean forgotten so Densher read the rather remarkable young man he had formerly gone about with, though he picked him up again, on the spot, with one large quiet look.
"And you've been clear to him as the reason?" "Not too clear since I'm sticking here and since that has been a fact to make his descent on Miss Theale relevant. But clear enough. He has believed," said Densher bravely, "that I may have been a reason at Lancaster Gate, and yet at the same time have been up to something in Venice." Mrs. Stringham took her courage from his own. "'Up to' something?
That made, while they faced each other over it without speech, the gravity of everything. It was as if there were almost danger, which the wrong word might start. Densher accordingly at last acted to better purpose: he drew, standing there before her, a pocket-book from the breast of his waistcoat and he drew from the pocket-book a folded letter to which her eyes attached themselves.
Their scheme has been successful, for Milly in dying has bequeathed a fortune to Densher. But also she has bequeathed the memory of her last signal to them, which was one that neither could foresee and which the man at any rate could never forget.
There is only one way to save Milly, to restore to Milly, not indeed her life, but her desire of it. Densher has it in his power to make her wish to live again, and that is all that he or any one else could achieve for her. The thought is between him and the good woman as they talk; the dialogue, with its allusions and broken phrases, slowly shapes itself to the form of the suppressed appeal.
"I mean for you." "That's what I mean too," Kate smiled. "There he is. Now you can judge." "Judge of what?" "Judge of him." "Why should I judge of him?" Densher asked. "I've nothing to do with him." "Then why do you ask about him?" "To judge of you which is different." Kate seemed for a little to look at the difference. "To take the measure, do you mean, of my danger?"
The weather, from early morning, had turned to storm, the first sea-storm of the autumn, and Densher had almost invidiously brought him down the outer staircase the massive ascent, the great feature of the court, to Milly's piano nobile.
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