beauty of the early high-climbing spring, it might
have been longer and the places to pause and rest
more numerous.

Such at least had been the intimated attitude of
Mrs. Stringham, the elder of the companions, who
had her own view of the impatiences of the
younger, to which, however, she offered an opposi
tion but of the most circuitous. She moved, the
admirable Mrs. Stringham, in a fine cloud of ob
servation and suspicion; she was in the position,
as she believed, of knowing much more about Milly
Theale than Milly herself knew, and yet of having
to darken her knowledge as well as make it active.
! The woman in the world least formed by nature, as
she was quite aware, for duplicities and labyrinths,
she found herself dedicated to personal subtlety by
a new set of circumstances, above all by a new per
sonal relation; had now in fact to recognise that an
education in the occult she could scarce say what
to call it had begun for her the day she left New
York with Mildred. She had come on from Bos
ton for that purpose; had seen little of the girl
or rather had seen her but briefly, for Mrs. String-
ham, when she saw anything at all, saw much, saw
everything before accepting her proposal; and
had accordingly placed herself, by her act, in a boat
that she more and more estimated as, humanly
speaking, of the biggest, though likewise, no
doubt, in many ways, by reason of its size, of the
safest. In Boston, the winter before, the young

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p115 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p116w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p117

v?