selves into the light literary legend a mixed, wan
dering echo of Trollope, of Thackeray, perhaps
mostly of Dickens under favour of which her pil
grimage had so much appealed? She could relate
to Susie later on, late the same evening, that the
legend, before she had done with it, had run clear,
that the adored author of The Newcomes, in fine, had
been on the whole the note: the picture lacking thus
more than she had hoped, or rather perhaps showing
less than she had feared, a certain possibility of Pick
wickian outline. She explained how she meant by
this that Mrs. Condrip had not altogether proved an
other Mrs. Nickleby, nor even for she might have
proved almost anything, from the way poor worried
Kate had spoken a widowed and aggravated Mrs.
Micawber.

Mrs. Stringham, in the midnight conference, inti
mated rather yearningly that, however the event
might have turned, the side of English life such ex
periences opened to Milly were just those she herself
seemed " booked " as they were all, roundabout
her now, always saying to miss: she had begun to
have a little, for her fellow-observer, these moments
of fanciful reaction reaction in which she was once
more all Susan Shepherd against the high sphere
of colder conventions into which her overwhelming
connection with Maud Manningham had rapt her.
Milly never lost sight, for long, of the Susan Shep
herd side of her, and was always there to meet it
when it came up and vaguely, tenderly, impatiently

[[212]]

p211 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p212w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p213

v?