minder that her hostess was deep: it was definitely
then that she had begun to ask herself what Aunt
Maud was, in vulgar parlance, " up to." You
may receive, my dear, whom you like " that was
what Aunt Maud, who in general objected to peo
ple's doing as they liked, had replied; and it bore,
this unexpectedness, a good deal of looking into.
There were many explanations, and they were all
amusing amusing, that is, in the line of the som
bre and brooding amusement, cultivated by Kate in
her actual high retreat. Merton Densher came the
very next Sunday; but Mrs. Lowder was so con
sistently magnanimous as to make it possible to
her niece to see him alone. She saw him, however,
on the Sunday following, in order to invite him to
dinner; and when, after dining, he came again
which he did three times, she found means to treat
his visit as preponderantly to herself. Kate's con
viction that she didn't like him made that remark
able; it added to the evidence, by this time volum
inous, that she was remarkable all round. If she
had been, in the way of energy, merely usual, she
would have kept her dislike direct; whereas it was
now as if she were seeking to know him in order to
see best where to " have " him. That was one of
the reflections made in our young woman's high
retreat; she smiled from her lookout, in the silence
that was only the fact of hearing irrelevant sounds,
as she caught the truth that you could easily accept
people when you wanted them so to be delivered

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p063 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p064w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p065

v?