"Don't tell me that in this for instance there are
not abysses. I want abysses."

Her friend looked at her it was not unfrequently
the case a little harder than the surface of the occa
sion seemed to require; and another person present
at such times might have wondered to what inner
thought of her own the good lady was trying to fit
the speech. It was too much her disposition, no
doubt, to treat her young companion's words as
symptoms of an imputed malady. It was none the
less, however, her highest law to be light when the
girl was light. She knew how to be quaint with
the new quaintness the great Boston gift; it
had been, happily, her note in the magazines; and
Maud Lowder, to whom it was new indeed and who
had never heard anything remotely like it, quite cher
ished her, as a social resource, for it. It should not
therefore fail her now; with it in fact one might
face most things. " Ah, then let us hope we shall
sound the depths I'm prepared for the worst of
sorrow and sin! But she would like her niece
we re not ignorant of that, are we? to marry Lord
Mark. Hasn't she told you so?"

"Hasn't Mrs. Lowder told me?"

"No; hasn't Kate? It isn t, you know, that she
doesn't know it."

Milly had, under her comrade's eyes, a minute of
mute detachment. She had lived with Kate Croy
for several days in a state of intimacy as deep as it
had been sudden, and they had clearly, in talk, in

[[206]]

p205 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p206w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p207

v?