She was in the act herself of having one, directed
precisely to their present spectacle. She could but
seek strength in the thought that she had never had
one or had never yielded to one, which came to the
same thing before. The sustaining sense of it all,
moreover, as literary material that quite dropped
from her. She must wait, at any rate, she should
see: it struck her, so far as she had got, as vast, ob
scure, lurid. She reflected in the watches of the
night that she was probably just going to love it for
itself that is for itself and Milly. The odd thing
was that she could think of Milly's loving it without
dread or with dread, at least not on the score of
conscience, only on the score of peace. It was a
mercy, at all events, for the hour, that their fancies
jumped together.

While, for this first week that followed their din
ner, she drank deep at Lancaster Gate, her compan
ion was no less happily, appeared to be indeed on the
whole quite as romantically, provided for. The
handsome English girl from the heavy English house
had been as a figure in a picture stepping by magic
out of its frame: it was a case, in truth, for which
Mrs. Stringham presently found the perfect image.
She had lost none of her grasp, but quite the con
trary, of that other conceit in virtue of which Milly
was the wandering princess: so what could be more
in harmony now than to see the princess waited upon
at the city gate by the worthiest maiden, the chosen
daughter of the burgesses? It was the real again,

[[189]]

p188 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p189w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p190

v?