her companion a divination almost as deep. The
parenthesis would close with this admirable picture,
but the admirable picture still would show Aunt
Maud as not absolutely sure either if she herself were
destined to remain in it. What she was doing,
Milly might even not have escaped seeming to see,
was to talk herself into a sublimer serenity while she
ostensibly talked Milly. It was fine, the girl fully
felt, the way she did talk her, little as, at bottom, our
young woman needed it or found other persuasions
at fault. It was in particular during the minutes of
her grateful absorption of iced coffee qualified by
a sharp doubt of her wisdom that she most had in
view Lord Mark's relation to her being there, or at
least to the question of her being amused at it. It
wouldn't have taken much by the end of five minutes
quite to make her feel that this relation was charm
ing. It might, once more, simply have been that
everything, anything, was charming when one was so
justly and completely charmed; but, frankly, she had
not supposed anything so serenely sociable could de
fine itself between them as the friendly understanding
that was at present somehow in the air. They were,
many of them together, near the marquee that had
been erected on a stretch of sward as a temple of re
freshment and that happened to have the property
which was all to the good of making Milly think
of a " durbar "; her iced coffee had been a conse
quence of this connection, in which, further, the
bright company scattered about fell thoroughly into

[[231]]

p230 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p231w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p232

v?