aloft and that would naturally dash them wherever
it liked. They meanwhile, we hasten to add, make
the best of their precarious position, and if Milly had
had no other help for it she would have found not
a little in the sight of Susan Shepherd's state. The
girl had had nothing to say to her, for three days,
about the " success " announced by Lord Mark
which they saw, besides, otherwise established; she
was too taken up, too touched, by Susie's own exal
tation. Susie glowed in the light of her justified
faith; everything had happened that she had been
acute enough to think least probable; she had ap
pealed to a possible delicacy in Maud Manningham
a delicacy, mind you, but barely possible and her
appeal had been met in a way that was an honour to
human nature. This proved sensibility of the lady
of Lancaster Gate performed verily, for both our
friends, during these first days, the office of a fine
floating gold-dust, something that threw over the
prospect a harmonising blur. The forms, the colours
behind it were strong and deep we have seen how
they already stood out for Milly; but nothing, com
paratively, had had so much of the dignity of truth
as the fact of Maud's fidelity to a sentiment. That
was what Susie was proud of, much more than of
her great place in the world, which she was moreover
conscious of not as yet wholly measuring. That
was what was more vivid even than her being in
senses more worldly and in fact almost in the degree
of a revelation English and distinct and positive,

[[186]]

p185 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p186w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p187

v?