evidently, the amusement of the meeting for the
princess too; princesses living for the most part, in
such an appeased way, on the plane of mere elegant
representation. That was why they pounced, at city
gates, on deputed flower-strewing damsels; that was
why, after effigies, processions, and other stately
games, frank human company was pleasant to them.
Kate Croy really presented herself to Milly the lat
ter abounded for Mrs. Stringham in accounts of it
as the wondrous London girl in person, by what
she had conceived, from far back, of the London
girl; conceived from the tales of travellers and the
anecdotes of New York, from old porings over
Punch and a liberal acquaintance with the fiction of
the day. The only thing was that she was nicer,
for the creature in question had rather been, to our
young woman, an image of dread. She had thought
of her, at her best, as handsome just as Kate was,
with turns of head and tones of voice, felicities of
stature and attitude, things " put on " and, for that
matter, put off, all the marks of the product of a
packed society who should be at the same time the
heroine of a strong story. She placed this striking
young person from the first in a story, saw her, by a
necessity of the imagination, for a heroine, felt it the
only character in which she wouldn't be wasted; and
this in spite of the heroine's pleasant abruptness, her
forbearance from gush, her umbrellas and jackets
and shoes as these things sketched themselves to
Milly and something rather of a breezy boy in the

[[190]]

p189 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p190w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p191

v?