"That he ll never do anything?"

"No quite the contrary: that he's exceptionally
able."

"Oh yes; I know " Milly had again, in refer
ence to what her friend had already told her of this,
her little tone of a moment before. " But Mrs. Con-
drip's own great point is that Aunt Maud herself
won't hear of any such person. Mr. Densher, she
holds that's the way, at any rate, it was explained
to me won't ever be either a public man or a rich
man. If he were public she'd be willing, as I under
stand, to help him; if he were rich without being
anything else she'd do her best to swallow him.
As it is, she taboos him."

"In short," said Mrs. Stringham as with a private
purpose, " she told you, the sister, all about it. But
Mrs. Lowder likes him," she added.

"Mrs. Condrip didn't tell me that."

"Well, she does, all the same, my dear, ex
tremely."

"Then there it is! " On which, with a drop and
one of those sudden, slightly sighing surrenders to
a vague reflux and a general fatigue that had recently
more than once marked themselves for her compan
ion, Milly turned away. Yet the matter was not
left so, that night, between them, albeit neither per
haps could afterwards have said which had first
come back to it. Milly's own nearest approach, at
least, for a little, to doing so, was to remark that they
appeared all every one they saw to think tremen-

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v?