on, and that that was as -great an humiliation in a
good cause as a proud man could desire. It had
not yet been so distinct to him that he made no
show literally not the smallest; so complete a
show seemed made ther?? all about him; so almost
abnormally affirmative, so aggressively erect, were
the huge, heavy objects that syllabled his hostess
story. " When all's said and done, you know, she's
colossally vulgar " he had once all but said that
of Mrs. Lowder to her niece; only just keeping it
back at the last, keeping it to himself with all its
danger about it. It mattered because it bore so
directly, and he at all events quite felt it a thing that
Kate herself would some day bring out to him. It
bore directly at present, and really all the more that
somehow, strangely, it didn't in the least imply that
Aunt Maud was dull or stale. She was vulgar with
freshness, almost with beauty, since there was
beauty, to a degree, in the play of so big and bold
a temperament. She was in fine quite the largest
possible quantity to deal with; and he was in the
cage of the lioness without his whip the whip, in a
word, of a supply of proper retorts. He had no
retort but that he loved the girl which in such a
house as that was painfully cheap. Kate had men
tioned to him more than once that her aunt was
Passionate, speaking of it as a kind of offset and
uttering it as with a capital P, marking it as some
thing that he might, that he in fact ought to, turn
about in some way to their advantage. He won-

[[86]]

p085 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p086w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p087

v?