place. Certain of its members might have repre
sented the contingent of " native princes " familiar,
but scarce the less grandly gregarious term! and
Lord Mark would have done for one of these even
though for choice he but presented himself as a
supervisory friend of the family. The Lancaster
Gate family, he clearly intended, in which he includ
ed its American recruits, and included above all Kate
Croy a young person blessedly easy to take care of.
She knew people, and people knew her, and she was
the handsomest thing there this last a declaration
made by Milly, in a sort of soft mid-summer mad
ness, a straight skylark-flight of charity, to Aunt
Maud.

Kate had, for her new friend's eyes, the extraordi
nary and attaching property of appearing at a given
moment to show as a beautiful stranger, to cut her
connections and lose her identity, letting the imagi
nation for the time make what it would of them
make her merely a person striking from afar, more
and more pleasing as one watched, but who was
above all a subject for curiosity. Nothing could
have given her, as a party to a relation, a greater
freshness than this sense which sprang up at its
own hours of being as curious about her as if one
hadn't known her. It had sprung up, we have gath
ered, as soon as Milly had seen her after hearing
from Mrs. Stringham of her knowledge of Merton
Densher; she had looked then other and, as Milly
knew the real critical mind would call it, more ob-

[[232]]

p231 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p232w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p233

v?