Chapter IX

SHE certainly made up with Susie directly, however,
for any allowance she might have had privately to
extend to tepid appreciation; since the late and long
talks of these two embraced not only everything
offered and suggested by the hours they spent apart,
but a good deal more besides. She might be as de
tached as the occasion required at four o'clock in the
afternoon, but she used no such freedom to any one
about anything as she habitually used about every
thing to Susan Shepherd at midnight. All the same,
it should with much less delay than this have been
mentioned, she had not yet had not, that is, at the
end of six days produced any news for her comrade
to compare with an announcement made her by the
latter as a result of a drive with Mrs. Lowder, for a
change, in the remarkable Battersea Park. The
elder friends had sociably revolved there while the
younger ones followed bolder fancies in the admira
ble equipage appointed to Milly at the hotel a
heavier, more emblazoned, more amusing chariot
than she had ever, with " stables " notoriously mis
managed, known at home; whereby, in the course
of the circuit, more than once repeated, it had " come
out," as Mrs. Stringham said, that the couple at Lan
caster Gate were, of all people, acquainted with Mil-

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v?