have, and it was just the point. Repeatedly, how
ever, it was a point that, in the face of strange and
special things, he judged it rather awkwardly gross
to urge. It was impossible to keep Mrs. Lowder
out of their scheme. She stood there too close to
it and too solidly; it had to open a gate, at a given
point, do what they would to take her in. And she
came in, always, while they sat together rather help
lessly watching her, as in a coach-in-four; she drove
round their prospect as the principal lady at the
circus drives round the ring, and she stopped the
coach in the middle to alight with majesty. It was
our young man's sense that she was magnificently
vulgar, but yet, quite, that this wasn't all. It wasn't
with her vulgarity that she felt his want of means,
though that might have helped her richly to em
broider it; nor was it with the same infirmity that
she was strong, original, dangerous.

His want of means of means sufficient for any
one but himself was really the great ugliness, and
was, moreover, at no time more ugly for him than
when it rose there, as it did seem to rise, shame
less, face to face with the elements in Kate's life
colloquially and conveniently classed by both of
them as funny. He sometimes indeed, for that mat
ter, asked himself if these elements were as funny
as the innermost fact, so often vivid to him, of his
own consciousness his private inability to believe
he should ever be rich. His conviction on this head
was in truth quite positive and a thing by itself; he

[[70]]

p069 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p070w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p071

v?