Milly indeed at last couldn't say; so that she had really for the time brought it along to the point so oddly marked for her by her visitor's arrival, the truth that she was enviably strong. She carried this out, from that evening, for each hour still left her, and the more easily perhaps that the hours were now narrowly numbered. All she actually waited for was Sir Luke Strett's promised visit; as to her on which, however, her mind was quite made up. Since he wanted to get at Susie he should have the freest access, and then perhaps he would see how he liked it. What was between them they might settle as between them, and any pressure it should lift from her own spirit they were at liberty to convert to their use. If the dear man wished to fire Susan Shepherd with a still higher ideal, he would only after all, at the worst, have Susan on his hands. If devotion, in a word, was what it would come up for the interested pair to , she was herself ready to consume it as the dressed and served dish. He had talked to her of her "appetite" her account of which, she felt, must have been vague. But for devotion, she could now see, this appetite would be of the best. Gross, greedy, ravenous—these were doubtless the proper names for her: she was at all events resigned in advance to the machinations of sympathy. The day that followed her lonely excursion was to be the last but two or three of their stay in London; and the evening of that day practically ranked for them as, in the matter of outside relations, the last of all. People were by this time quite , and many of those who had so liberally manifested in calls, in cards, in evident about visits, later on, over the land, had passed in music out of sight; whether as members, these latter, more especially, of Mrs. Lowder's circle or as members of Lord Mark's—our friends being by this time able to make the distinction. The general pitch had thus, decidedly, dropped, and the occasions still to be dealt with were special and few. One of these, for Milly, announced itself as the doctor's call already mentioned, as to which she had now had a note from him: the single other, of importance, was their appointed leave-taking—for the shortest separation—in respect to Mrs. Lowder and Kate. The aunt and the niece were to dine with them alone, intimately and easily—as easily as should be consistent with the question of their afterwards going on together to some absurdly belated party, at which they had had it from Aunt Maud that they would do well to show. Sir Luke was to make his appearance on the morrow of this, and in respect to that complication Milly had already her plan.  
The night was, at all events, hot and stale, and it was late enough by the time the four ladies had been gathered in, for their small session, at the hotel, where the windows were still open to the high balconies and the flames of the candles, behind the pink shades—disposed as for the vigil of watchers—were motionless in the air in which the season lay dead. What was presently settled among them was that Milly, who betrayed on this occasion a preference more marked than usual, should not hold herself obliged to climb that evening the social stair, however it might stretch to meet her, and that, Mrs. Lowder and Mrs. Stringham facing the together, Kate Croy should remain with her and await their return. It was a pleasure to Milly, ever, to send Susan Shepherd ; she saw her go with complacency, liked, as it were, to put people off with her, and with satisfaction, when she so moved to the carriage, the further denudation—a markedly tide—of her little back. If it wasn't quite Aunt Maud's ideal, moreover, to take out the new American girl's funny friend instead of the new American girl herself, nothing could better indicate the range of that lady's merit than the spirit in which—as at the present hour for instance—she made the best of the advantage. And she did this with a broad, cheerful absence of illusion; she did it—confessing even as much to poor Susie—because, , she was good-natured. When Mrs. Stringham observed that her own light was too borrowed and that it was as a link alone, fortunately not missing, that she was valued, Aunt Maud to the extent of the remark: "Well, my dear, you're better than nothing." To-night, furthermore, it came up for Milly that Aunt Maud had something particular in mind. Mrs. Stringham, before with her, had gone off for some shawl or other accessory, and Kate, as if a little impatient for their , had wandered out to the balcony, where she , for the time, unseen, though with scarce more to look at than the dim London stars and the cruder glow, up the street, on a corner, of a small public-house, in front of which a fagged cab-horse was thrown into relief. 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?" She had lowered her fine voice to a depth, though speaking with all her rich ; and Milly, after a small sharpness of surprise, was already guessing the sense of her appeal. "Will you name him, in any way you like, to her"—and Aunt Maud gave a nod at the window; "so that you may perhaps find out whether he's back?"
 
Ever so many things, for Milly, fell into line at this; it was a wonder, she afterwards thought, that she could be conscious of so many at once. She smiled hard, however, for them all. "But I don't know that it's important to me to 'find out.'" The array of things was further , however, even as she said this, by its striking her as too much to say. She therefore tried as quickly to say less. "Except you mean, of course, that it's important to you." She fancied Aunt Maud was looking at her almost as hard as she was herself smiling, and that gave her another impulse. "You know I never have yet named him to her; so that if I should break out now——"
 
"Well?"—Mrs. Lowder waited.
 
"Why, she may wonder what I've been making a mystery of. She hasn't mentioned him, you know," Milly went on, "herself."
 
"No"—her friend a little heavily weighed it—"she wouldn't. So it's she, you see then, who has made the mystery."
 
Yes, Milly but wanted to see; only there was so much. "There has been of course no particular reason." Yet that indeed was neither here nor there. "Do you think," she asked, "he is back?"
 
"It will be about his time, I gather, and rather a comfort to me definitely to know."
 
"Then can't you ask her yourself?"
 
"Ah, we never speak of him!"
 
It helped Milly for the moment to the convenience of a puzzled pause. "Do you mean he's an acquaintance of whom you for her?"
 
Aunt Maud, as well, just hung fire. "I disapprove of her for the poor young man. She doesn't care for him."
 
"And he cares so much——?"
 
"Too much, too much. And my fear is," said Mrs. Lowder, "that he her. She keeps it to herself, but I don't want her worried. Neither, in truth," she both generously and concluded, "do I want him."
 
Milly showed all her own effort to meet the case. "But what can I do?"
 
"You can find out where they are. If I myself try," Mrs. Lowder explained, "I shall appear to treat them as if I supposed them deceiving me."
 
"And you don't. You don't," Milly for her, "suppose them deceiving you."
 
"Well," said Aunt Maud, whose fine onyx eyes failed to blink, even though Milly's questions might have been taken as drawing her rather further than she had originally meant to go—"well, Kate is aware of my views for her, and that I take her being with me, at present, in the way she is with me, if you know what I mean, as a loyal to them. Therefore as my views don't happen to provide a place, at all, for Mr. Densher, much, in a manner, as I like him"—therefore, therefore in short she had been prompted to this step, though she completed her sense, but , with the of her large fan.
 
It assisted them perhaps, however, for the moment, that Milly was able to pick out of her sense what might serve as the clearest part of it. "You do like him then?"
 
"Oh dear, yes. Don't you?"
 
Milly hesitated, for the question was somehow as the sudden point of something sharp on a nerve that . She just caught her breath, but she had ground for joy afterwards, she felt, in not really having failed to choose with quickness sufficient, out of fifteen possible answers, the one that would best serve her. She was then almost proud, as well, that she had cheerfully smiled. "I did—three times—in New York." So came and went for her, in these simple words, the speech that was to figure for her, later on, that night, as the one she had ever uttered that cost her most. She was to lie awake, at all events, half the night, for the gladness of not having taken any line so really inferior as the denial of a happy impression.
 
For Mrs. Lowder also, moreover, her simple words were the right ones; they were at any rate, that lady's laugh showed, in the natural note of the racy. "You dear American thing! But people may be very good, and yet not good for what one wants."
 
"............