pleasantly affected by her asking no promise of him,
her not proposing he should pay for her indulgence
by his word of honour not to interfere, that he gave
her a kind of general assurance of esteem. Imme
diately afterwards, then, he spoke of these things
to Kate, and what then came back to him first of
all was the way he had said to her he mentioned
it to the girl very much as one of a pair of lovers
says in a rupture by mutual consent: " I hope im
mensely, of course, that you ll always regard me as
a friend." This had perhaps been going far he
submitted it all to Kate; but really there had been
so much in it that it was to be looked at, as they
might say, wholly in its own light. Other things
than those we have presented had come up before
the close of his scene with Aunt Maud, but this mat
ter of her not treating him as a peril of the first
order easily predominated. There was moreover
plenty to talk about on the occasion of his subse
quent passage with our young woman, it having
been put to him abruptly, the night before, that he
might give himself a lift and do his newspaper a
service so flatteringly was the case expressed by
going, for fifteen or twenty weeks, to America.
The idea of a series of letters from the United States
from the strictly social point of view had for some
time been nursed in the inner sanctuary at whose
door he sat, and the moment was now deemed
happy for letting it loose. The imprisoned thought
had, in a word, on the opening of the door, flown

[[95]]

p094 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p095w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p096

v?