promise or that Mr. Densher's name itself started
no train. But she really couldn't be so vague about
the promise, her interlocutress quickly saw, without
attaching it to something; it had to be a promise
to somebody in particular to be so repudiated. In
the event, accordingly, she acknowledged Mr. Mer-
ton Densher, the so unusually clever young Eng
lishman who had made his appearance in New York
on some special literary business wasn't it?
shortly before their departure, and who had been
three or four times in her house during the
brief period between her visit to Boston and her
companion's subsequent stay with her; but she re
quired much reminding before it came back to her
that she had mentioned to this companion just
afterwards the confidence expressed by the person
age in question in her never doing so dire a thing
as to come to London without, as the phrase was,
looking a fellow up. She had left him the enjoyment
of his confidence, the form of which might have
appeared a trifle free that she now reasserted; she
had done nothing either to impair or to enhance it;
but she had also left Mrs. Stringham, in the connec
tion and at the time, rather sorry to have missed Mr.
Densher. She had thought of him again after that,
the elder woman; she had likewise gone so far as to
notice that Milly appeared not to have done so
which the girl might easily have betrayed; and, in
terested as she was in everything that concerned
her, she had made out for herself, for herself only

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p151 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p152w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p153

v?