there was only the sense of finding they liked, wher
ever they were, the place to which they had been
brought. Such was highly the case as to their cur
rent consciousness which could be indeed, in an
equally eminent degree, but a matter of course; im
pressions this afternoon having by a happy turn of
their wheel been gathered for them into a splendid
cluster, an offering like an armful of the rarest
flowers. They were in presence of the offering
they had been led up to it; and if it had been still
their habit to look at each other across distances for
increase of unanimity his hand would have been si
lently named between them as the hand applied to the
wheel. He had administered the touch that, under
light analysis, made the difference the difference of
their not having lost, as Susie on the spot and at
the hour phrased it again and again, both for herself
and for such others as the question might concern,
so beautiful and interesting an experience; the dif
ference also, in fact, of Mrs. Lowder's not having
lost it either, though it was with Mrs. Lowder, super
ficially, they had come, and though it was further
with that lady that our young woman was directly
engaged during the half-hour or so of her most
agreeably inward response to the scene.

The great historic house had, for Milly, beyond
terrace and garden, as the centre of an almost ex
travagantly grand Watteau-composition, a tone as
of old gold kept " down " by the quality of the air,
summer full-flushed, but attuned to the general per-

[[228]]

p227 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p228w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p229

v?