thing will have to come out." Her friend would
have felt of her that she joked about it now, had not
her scale from grave to gay been a thing of such
unnamable shades that her contrasts were never
sharp. She made up for failures of gravity by fail
ures of mirth; if she hadn t, that is, been at times
as earnest as might have been liked, so she was cer
tain not to be at other times as easy as she would like
herself. " I must face the music. It isn t, at any
rate, its coming out, " she added; " it's that Mrs.
Condrip would put the fact before her to his injury."

Her companion wondered. " But how to his?"

"Why, if he pretends to love her!"

"And does he only pretend?"

"I mean if, trusted by her in strange countries, he
forgets her so far as to make up to other people."

The amendment, however, brought Susie in, as if
with gaiety, for a comfortable end. " Did he make
up, the false creature, to you?"

"No but the question isn't of that. It's of what
Kate might be made to believe."

"That, given the fact that he evidently more or
less followed up his acquaintance with you, to say
nothing of your obvious weird charm, he must have
been all ready if you had at all led him on?"

Milly neither accepted nor qualified this; she only
said, after a moment, as with a conscious excess of
the pensive: " No, I don't think she'd quite wish to
suggest that I made up to him; for that I should have
had to do so would only bring out his constancy. All

[[221]]

p220 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p221w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p222

v?