dously of money. This prompted in Susie a laugh,
not untender, the innocent meaning of which was
that it came, as a subject for indifference, money
did, easier to some people than to others: she made
the point in fairness, however, that you couldn't have
told, by any too crude transparency of air, what
place it held for Maud Manningham. She did
her worldliness with grand proper silences if it
mightn't better be put perhaps that she did her de
tachment with grand occasional pushes. However
Susie put it, in truth, she was really, in justice to her
self, thinking of the difference, as favourites of fort
une, between her old friend and her new. Aunt
Maud sat somehow in the midst of her money,
founded on it and surrounded by it, even if with a
clever high manner about it, her manner of looking,
hard and bright, as if it weren't there. Milly, about
hers, had no manner at all which was possibly,
from a point of view, a fault: she was at any rate
far away on the edge of it, and you hadn t, as might
be said, in order to get at her nature, to traverse, by
whatever avenue, any piece of her property. It was
clear, on the other hand, that Mrs. Lowder was keep
ing her wealth as for purposes, imaginations, ambi
tions, that would figure as large, as honourably un
selfish, on the day they should take effect. She
would impose her will, but her will would be only
that a person or two shouldn't lose a benefit by not
submitting if they could be made to submit. To
Milly, as so much younger, such far views couldn't

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p215 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p216w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p217

v?