Chapter VII

IT had all gone so fast after this that Milly uttered
but the truth nearest to hand in saying to the
gentleman on her right who was, by the same
token, the gentleman on her hostess's left that she
scarce even then knew where she was: the words
marking her first full sense of a situation really ro
mantic. They were already dining, she and her
friend, at Lancaster Gate, and surrounded, as it
seemed to her, with every English accessory; though
her consciousness of Mrs. Lowder's existence, and
still more of her remarkable identity, had been of so
recent and so sudden a birth. Susie, as she was apt
to call her companion for a lighter change, had only
had to wave a neat little wand for the fairy-tale to
begin at once; in consequence of which Susie now
glittered for, with Mrs. Stringham's new sense of
success, it came to that in the character of a fairy
godmother. Milly had almost insisted on dressing
her, for the present occasion, as one; and it was no
fault of the girl's if the good lady had not now ap
peared in a peaked hat, a short petticoat and dia
mond shoe-buckles, brandishing the magic crutch.
The good lady, in truth, bore herself not less con-

[[161]]

p160 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p161w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p162

v?